LEGO® Serious
Play® Workshops
A hands-on, minds-on methodology that gets every voice in the room.
The Methodology
What is LEGO® Serious Play®?
LEGO® Serious Play® is a facilitation methodology developed at the IMD Business School in Lausanne and later adopted by the LEGO Group. It uses the act of building with LEGO bricks as a medium for thinking, communication, and problem-solving.
Unlike conventional workshops where 20% of participants do 80% of the talking, LSP operates on a 100% participation principle — every person builds, every person shares, every voice is heard. Insights that stay locked inside people's heads get externalised as models on the table.
The methodology is rooted in the idea that the hands are connected to the brain in a way that talking alone isn't. When you build, you access deeper, more honest knowledge — and when you tell the story of what you built, you own it.
At Korelate, we bring this methodology to life through facilitated workshops designed around your team's specific challenge — not a generic script.
What We Can Cover
Workshop Themes
Every LSP session is built around a specific outcome — not a generic team activity. Here are the themes Korelate designs and facilitates using the LEGO® Serious Play® methodology.
Teams build a shared model of where they want to go — creating a vision that every person in the room has genuinely shaped and will own. Useful before annual planning, post-restructure, or when direction feels unclear.
- Shared, co-created picture of the future
- Alignment on strategic priorities
- Clarity on what success looks like in 1–3 years
- A landscape model the team can refer back to
Surfaces unspoken tensions, siloed thinking, and assumptions that slow teams down — by getting people to build what they see, not just say it. Powerful for new teams, teams going through change, or teams that feel stuck.
- Named and worked-through tensions
- Shared understanding of team strengths and gaps
- Rebuilt trust and psychological safety
- Concrete commitments on how to work differently
Leaders build models of who they are as leaders — their strengths, their impact, and what they want to stand for. A powerful mirror for senior leadership teams who rarely get the space to reflect together.
- Personal leadership identity articulated
- Shared view of team's leadership culture
- Priority-setting as a leadership collective
- Behaviours to start, stop, and continue
Makes abstract values tangible. Teams build what the values mean to them, where the values are lived, and where the gaps are. Ideal for post-merger culture integration, values launches, or culture reviews.
- Values brought to life as lived behaviours
- Honest look at culture gaps
- Shared narrative around what the team stands for
- Concrete actions to strengthen the desired culture
Uses the building process to access unconventional thinking. Teams model the problem, the system, the obstacles — then test scenarios and identify simple guiding principles. Useful for product, process, or strategic innovation.
- New frames for a stuck or complex problem
- Shared map of the challenge landscape
- Tested scenarios and de-risked options
- Simple guiding principles for action
Helps teams make sense of change by externalising their experience of it. Participants build what the change feels like, what's being left behind, and what the new landscape looks like — processing emotionally while planning practically.
- Named fears and resistances brought to the surface
- Shared map of the transition journey
- Clarity on what to hold onto and what to release
- Commitments to navigate the change together
How It Works
The Core Process
Every LSP session, regardless of theme, runs on the same four-step cycle — repeated multiple times across the day, moving from individual to collective.
The facilitator poses a carefully designed question linked to your team's challenge. Questions are open, non-leading, and impossible to answer with words alone.
Everyone builds — simultaneously, individually. No spectators. The hands are doing the thinking, accessing knowledge that doesn't surface in conversation. Time-boxed to create focus.
Every person tells the story of their model. The builder alone decides what their model means. Others listen, observe, and are curious — not evaluative. All voices, every time.
The group asks questions, draws connections, and extracts insight. The facilitator guides the debrief toward the organisational question. From individual models to collective understanding.
Academic Foundations
The Theory Behind the Bricks
LSP is not a fun icebreaker dressed up as a methodology. It is grounded in 14+ solid academic theories.
Constructivism — Jean Piaget
We learn best by constructing something in the physical world. Building externalises thinking and makes it visible, editable, and shareable.
Constructionism — Seymour Papert
Learning is most powerful when you build something that others can see and respond to. The model becomes the object of thought.
Flow Theory — Csikszentmihalyi
Serious play creates optimal conditions for flow — the state where challenge meets skill and engagement peaks. This is where the best thinking happens.
Complex Adaptive Systems
Organisations are not machines — they are living, adaptive systems. LSP's landscape and systems phases model this complexity directly.
Organisational Epistemology — Von Krogh & Roos
Knowledge in organisations lives in people's heads and relationships — not just documents. LSP surfaces this tacit knowledge into shared models.
Hand–Brain Connection — Wilson
The hand is not just a tool — it is directly wired to cognition. Using the hands activates neural pathways that verbal-only reflection doesn't reach.
The Korelate Difference
How We Do It Differently
Many facilitators use LEGO bricks as a prop. We use the LSP methodology as it was designed — with rigour, customisation, and a relentless focus on what your team leaves with.
Trained by the Source
Our facilitators are certified through Inthrface — the training programme co-developed with Johan Roos, co-inventor of LSP and co-author of the original LEGO® Serious Play® manuals. This isn't a YouTube certification.
Designed for Your Challenge
We don't deliver a standard LSP script. Every session begins with a diagnostic conversation about your team's specific context, tension, or goal. The questions, the build sequence, and the debrief are built around you.
Individual → Collective → Action
We follow the full LSP arc: from individual models (what each person sees) to collective models (shared understanding) to system maps (the bigger picture) to guiding principles that become concrete actions.
100% Voices, Every Round
In most workshops, the same three people speak while others check their phones. In LSP, everyone builds, everyone shares, every time. Quiet participants consistently report feeling heard in a way they rarely do in meetings.
Insights Captured & Carried Forward
We document the session through photos of models and a written debrief summary. What's built on the table doesn't disappear after the day — it becomes a reference point for the team's ongoing conversations.
Korelate's Apply Phase
Like all Korelate programmes, LSP sessions end with our Apply phase — structured commitments that translate the day's insights into specific workplace behaviours. The session ends with change, not just inspiration.
Session Formats
Half-Day & Full-Day Workshops
Both formats deliver the complete LSP experience. The full-day goes deeper — into system mapping, scenario testing, and more complex debrief layers.
- Welcome & ground rules — setting the space and the build etiquette
- Skills building — 2–3 warm-up builds to unlock hands-on thinking (30 min)
- Individual builds: Round 1 — building to the core question (e.g. "Build your role on this team")
- Individual builds: Round 2 — going deeper (e.g. "Build the biggest challenge you face")
- Collective model — teams combine individual builds into one shared model
- Meaning-making debrief — facilitated reflection on what's on the table
- Apply phase — individual and team commitments to act on the insight
- Welcome & deeper skills building — extended warm-up including metaphor and storytelling (45 min)
- Individual builds: 3–4 rounds — progressively deeper questions linked to the day's theme
- Collective model — combining individual models into a shared team model
- Landscape build — adding agents (customers, competitors, stakeholders) to build the wider system
- Connections & system mapping — identifying relationships, dependencies, and leverage points
- Scenario testing — introducing challenges into the landscape and observing how the system responds
- Simple guiding principles — distilling the session into 3–5 principles to navigate by
- Apply phase — translating principles into concrete, timed team commitments
What Your Team Leaves With
Learning Outcomes
LSP doesn't produce a slide deck. It produces shared understanding, honest conversation, and concrete commitments. Here's what participants consistently report.
Genuine Self-Awareness
Participants articulate — often for the first time — how they see their role, their contribution, and what gets in the way. The building process accesses honest reflection that talking alone rarely does.
A Shared Team Language
The models built during the session become reference points. Teams leave with metaphors and images they can use to name dynamics, challenges, and aspirations without the conversation becoming personal.
Every Voice Heard
The quieter members of the team — the ones who observe in meetings — build, share, and are taken seriously. Participants regularly report that LSP changes how they listen to each other after the session.
Surfaced Assumptions & Blind Spots
When a team builds their shared landscape and connects the pieces, gaps and contradictions that were invisible become visible. The model shows the team what they collectively see — and what they're missing.
Increased Psychological Safety
The ground rules of LSP — "only you own the meaning of your model," "there's no right or wrong" — create a genuinely safe space for honest contribution. Teams that struggle with candour find LSP unlocks it.
Concrete Actions & Commitments
Through Korelate's Apply phase, insights don't stay on the table. Every participant leaves with at least one specific, named behaviour change or commitment. The team ends with shared accountability.
On the Credibility of the Tool
Why LSP Holds Up
LEGO® Serious Play® is not a novelty team activity. It was developed at one of the world's top business schools (IMD Lausanne), commissioned by the CEO of one of the world's most innovative companies, and built on a foundation of 14+ academic theories spanning psychology, organisational science, and systems thinking. The methodology was so robust that LEGO released it open-source in 2010 — making it freely available to certified facilitators worldwide. Today it is used across Fortune 500 boardrooms, NGO strategy sessions, and government planning processes. What makes it different from most interventions is not the bricks — it is the epistemological rigour behind the process. Every design choice in the methodology (why you build before you talk, why only the builder owns the meaning of their model, why individual precedes collective) is grounded in research. At Korelate, we hold that rigour carefully in every session we design.
Academic foundations
Is This for You?
Who This Is For
Leadership Teams
Who want to align on strategy, clarify priorities, or understand how their individual leadership styles shape the culture they're creating — together.
Intact Working Teams
Who collaborate daily and want to reduce friction, build stronger trust, and understand why certain dynamics keep repeating — with a common language to change them.
Cross-Functional Teams
Who need to build shared understanding across different functions, working styles, or geographies — and want a methodology that gets everyone to the same table.
New or Forming Teams
Coming together after a restructure, merger, or new initiative — who need to build trust quickly and establish shared working practices from the start.
Teams in Transition
Navigating significant change — new leadership, market shifts, cultural transformation — who need to process the change together and plan forward collectively.
HR & L&D Leaders
Looking for a facilitation tool that delivers genuine team insight rather than a one-day high that fades. LSP produces documented outputs that last beyond the session.
Ready to bring LSP to your team?
Tell us about your team's challenge and we'll design a session around it.
Facilitated by Siddharth Chaudhary, Trained Facilitator of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method and materials. Certified through Inthrface Online Foundational Certification, April 2026 (Certification code: 26-OFC-C02-4).