LEGO® Serious Play® at #21CLHK

Thanks for taking the time to follow up and find out more following my LEGO Serious Play workshops at 21CLHK and beyond. Here you’ll find more info about me, how I can help you out, and how to get in touch with me.

tl;dr

(too long, didn’t read)

I know you’re busy, so here’s the whole page in brief.

I used to teach kids, then I taught adults, now I help people have more creative, authentic conversations that matter. I do this with a big bag of LEGO and a method called LEGO Serious Play.

LEGO Serious Play (or “LSP” for short) is a facilitated method for conducting big conversations amongst adults (it can work on young people too, but I recommend getting the hang of it on its intended audience first). It has deep roots in play based, constructivist, and constructionist learning, and in the neuroscience of the hand-brain connection. It is designed to overcome the conventional barriers to communication, and is excellent at getting people thinking more broadly and deeply, sharing their insight more authentically, and finding solutions to the actual challenges in the room, rather than just the surface interpretation of them with their potentially detrimental assumptions intact.

The LEGO becomes the common language as participants use the bricks as metaphors for their ideas as they build models to respond to some big, open ended questions designed to steer the group towards the solutions they’ve come looking for.

  • I can train and certify people in your school to run LSP workshops themselves.
  • I can consult, collaborate, and co-design with people I’ve trained to take it in new directions.
  • I can come to your school and run LSP workshops for you.

Or I could do a combination of all 3 things.

  • I ran a preconference giving a group of people an experience boost in experience to step out as self-taught LSP experimenters.
  • I ran a workshop giving a curious group a lightning fast overview of the process, and how deep a conversation can go in a very short period of time.
  • I ran a workshop on how I’ve used the process to help schools recruit teachers.
  • I ran a workshop demonstrating how I use the process to help schools with big, important conversations like strategic planning.

You can reach me by:

Introductions

Hi! I’m Joel Birch.

I’m a longtime K-12 educator, and I spent a long time as an instructional coach with a focus on the creative and critical use of  learning technologies. These days I work with school leaders to help them conduct the big, important conversations that help them to steer their schools towards their preferred vision of the future. Conversations that invite the unique perspective of everyone at the table, graciously facilitated to help the contributions that connect find their right place. 

(I’m also a conscientious objector to ever fully growing up.)

As a Certified Facilitator and Pro Trainer of LEGO Serious Play, I rely wholeheartedly upon the power of play, stories, and solving problems by thinking with our hands. In doing this I help individuals, teams, and communities to begin from an honest and authentic place to craft deep understanding, rich communication, and creative solutions. I also train and certify others to design and facilitate those conversations by themselves.

Why work on a challenge when you could play with it instead?

Building on a successful career enabling and developing the creativity of children and their teachers in schools in Perth and internationally, I now work across a wide range of industries, with groups ranging from youth to senior leadership.

Before we get into details from the conference…

what is LEGO Serious Play?

LEGO Serious Play is a powerful, world-renowned method for facilitating important meetings, workshops, and conversations. It leverages the power of play-based learning to get the people at the table thinking at their best and most creative, and it is designed to overcome the conventional barriers to communication. The LEGO bricks become metaphors for the ideas in participants’ heads, helping them to make connections (figuratively and literally) that might otherwise slip through the cracks. It is this alchemy of the hand-brain connection and a collection of unique-looking LEGO models that makes it an intensely collaborative experience that gives consensus and dissent an appreciative place to coexist and balance each other in nuance.

The result is a far more honest, authentic conversation that gives each participant the time they need to convey their perspective in full, having first deeply understood it for themselves. The outcomes are as diverse as the intentions we begin with. What makes them shine is a complex topic of conversation, the curiosity to hear and appreciate every voice at the table, and the sense that there’s no single “right answer.”

here’s how I can help.

Facilitation

If your school has a big conversation coming up that really needs the best of everyone at the table, you can do better than talk and sticky notes.

Leadership retreats, strategic planning, recruitment (yes!), farewells and onboarding, community consultation…

Training

Upskill people inside your school as Certified Facilitators of LEGO Serious Play, to make deep, authentic, creative conversations the norm.

Attend a public course, work together in-house, or invite others for a hybrid of the two.

Co-Design

While I love a business model that makes me redundant (it keeps me on my toes!), it’s a thrill to help a school continue to build on their practice.

For bigger projects beyond the ongoing support offered to all training alumni.

conference highlights

Here’s a little highlight reel of what I brought to the conference.

The Pre-Conference Workshop

A full-day deep-dive for playfully curious people interested in the LEGO Serious Play method, without diving into full training and certification just yet.

The Broad Spectrum Workshop

For the people that have heard about LSP, and wanted to dip their toe to experience how it works, what it’s capable of, and where they might look next.

The Big Conversations Workshop

For people that believe that their schools can be more authentic, creative, and inclusive in how they bring their people to the table for the important stuff.

The Pre-Conference Workshop

16 educators interested in opening up big, deep conversations in their schools came together to experience a full facilitated day of LEGO Serious Play. Designed as “the day I wish I got to attend when I first discovered LSP,” it gave participants the experience to approach the Open Source document with strength and confidence, before deciding to go all-in with training and certification.

The Broad-Spectrum, Big Intro Workshop

This was the quickest way to get a pretty complete introduction to the LSP method. It gave everyone in the room the chance to experience the process from individual to collective play and storytelling, all revolving around the question;

What aren’t you talking about enough in your schools?

These images offer a glimpse at the depth of conversation we were able to reach in under an hour of active workshop time. In big intentional sessions, we can go a LOT deeper.

The Big Conversations Workshop

LEGO Serious Play is most at home when there’s a big job to do. This workshop was a lightning fast exploration of how I’ve used the process to help schools in Australia with their big important conversations like strategic planning, community engagement, and culture change.

Using LSP via the International Futures Forum’s Three Horizons Framework, I facilitated a systems-informed conversation about managing change from the status quo to a preferred version of the future. One hour’s brief, but we went deep.

Bonus!

The Recruitment Workshop

Yes, you read that right.

LEGO Serious Play excels at inviting someone’s entire, authentic self to the table, in a way that allows them to also show who they are at their best. It cuts through the rigidity of a written application, and soars over the limitations of even the most relaxed and comfortable formal interview.

This was the most informal and conversational of my workshops at the conference, because every school, semester, position, and conceivable recruitment scenario is different, as it has been with the new-build and established schools that I’ve supported in finding the right people in Australia.

sounds great!

I’m still curious, what next?

Send me an email

Got questions? Curious about LSP for your school? Want to see training in your city? Let’s talk more.

Schedule a Call

Want to experience the process and bring others from your team in on the conversation?

Explore Training

Want training & certification for your school? In-house, or a hybrid public course.

Attend a course

My next certification course in Asia is in Singapore on September 12th-13th. Want to join?