Is LEGO® dispute resolution the next step for conflict professionals? Is above-the-neck mediation old-fashioned?

LEGO® products are being used in corporations to build teams, products, and ideas. Using the toys in this way started at the LEGO® company over a decade ago. From "Lego Toys: A Diagnostic Tool?" (ManageUp!) [click for newer link to article]:

Here’s how it came about. Back in 1996, the chairman of the Lego toys company, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen was looking to improve his company’s strategy process. He approached Johan Roos and Bart Victor, both professors at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland to help him. While looking for alternatives to the conventional strategic planning process, they realised that the answer may be in the actual Lego games themselves. And so Lego Serious Play was born. The professors were drawing from Constructionism theory – a school of thought, attributed to Jean Piaget and Seymour Papert, which postulates that the learning process is greatly supported by physical construction. ...

In essence, Lego Serious Play is a form of business consultancy that aims to foster creative thinking through tangible interaction. ... [T]he real time strategy became a managerial mainstay for other corporate bigwigs like Daimler Chrysler, Roche Pharmaceutical, SABMiller, Tupperware, Nokia and

Orange. So how does it work? ... [T]he objective of Serious Play is to allow team members to build physical metaphors for their personal understanding of their company’s organisational entities using Lego toys. These three-dimensional ‘metaphors’ are then used to facilitate strategic planning, conflict resolution and team development.

Yes, conflict resolution. That was the first use that came to my mind when I learned of Lego® Serious Play™. Further research only deepened my interest in using the LEGO® approach to conflict resolution.

For example, here is an article [link no longer works] looking at the connection between Eastern traditional ways of thinking and the LEGO® process. It stresses some of the factors we know can be facilitative in dispute resolution, such as storytelling.

And from the LEGO® Serious Play™ Website:

LEGO SERIOUS PLAY uses LEGO bricks and elements and a unique method where people are empowered to "think through their fingers" - unleashing insight, inspiration and imagination. ...

You will explore the relationships and connections between people and their world, to observe the dynamics both internal and external, to explore various hypothetical scenarios, and to gain awareness of the possibilities. \

You will be building landscape models with LEGO bricks, giving them meaning through storymaking, and playing-out various possible scenarios, which deepens understanding, sharpens insight, and socially "bonds" together the group who "plays" together. LEGO SERIOUS PLAY will guide you into free and honest exchange of opinion. The physical and tangible construction allows for you to have conversations to flow without the fear of treading on personal feelings. You will experience that the real issues are addressed and ultimately allows you to see things through the eyes of your colleagues – and have them see through yours.

Sounds like a good recipe for resolving conflict, yes? The LEGO® approach will not be appropriate for all conflicts but probably would be for more than you might imagine. The body below the neck needs to be more welcomed into the room. With what we are learning about embodied cognition, above-the-neck dispute resolution will, I hope, soon be seen as a tad bit old-school.

Note (added October 3, 2011): A blog post about LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®: "Importance of Play to Innovation" (Innovation Excellence). Put a Google Alert on "lego serious play" and all sorts of interesting things show up.

Comments

[Heartandcraft.blogspot.com]

This sounds like another stop on a long curve.

Back in the early 1980s I helped facilitate a Rotary leadership development retreat for young adults. We used soda straws and straight pins in one exercise. The teams were instructed to "build a bridge." Results were phenomenal, way beyond anything we had hoped for.

In the 1990's I worked in a pre-employment assessment center for hiring the startup team for a new Sony plant, using the DDI behavioral assessment process. In one exercise management candidates worked on teams to build circuit boards, selecting a pattern, production strategy, etc.

It's not surprising that Lego (I've heard this word means "creativity in Swedish") picked up on this potential to further expand their market. Kudos to them!