LEGO SERIOUS PLAY: The Most Unexpected Tool in Your Presentation Arsenal
- 11 hours ago
- 3 min read
Introduction: The Meeting Nobody Wanted to Leave
Picture a workshop in a church in southern Italy on a warm summer evening. The participants range in age from 18 to 70-plus. Most of them have never picked up a LEGO brick as an adult. The topic? The creation of the world. The method? LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. Within minutes, people who had never met — and who would never normally collaborate — were building, laughing, and telling stories with genuine depth and imagination.
That's not a metaphor. That actually happened. And it's exactly the kind of outcome Luca Bruschi has been generating with LSP for years — in churches, in boardrooms, in one-to-one conversations, and on the red carpet of a TEDx stage.
The Problem LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Was Built to Solve
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® was developed in the 1990s after the CEO of the LEGO Group noticed a recurring problem in his senior leadership meetings: 20% of people were taking up 80% of the time. The rest were on their phones, staring out of the window, or mentally drafting their weekend plans.
A pair of academics were brought in to find a solution. What they built was a methodology that uses physical model-building to unlock participation, knowledge, and commitment in a way that talking simply cannot.
With LSP, 100% of people participate 100% of the time. And because every decision is anchored to a shared model rather than a person's opinion, people leave genuinely committed to outcomes — not just resigned to them.
How It Works
The process has four steps, repeated as many times as needed: the facilitator asks a question, everyone builds a model in response, everyone shares the story of their model, and the group reflects together. The model becomes the focus — which means no one has to defend themselves, only their brick structure.
This matters more than it sounds. When the answer to a question is a physical object, it forces the brain to search differently. Knowledge that lives deep — the intuition, the lived experience, the thing you know but can't quite articulate — starts to surface. And because most of the nerve connections from the hands run directly to the brain, the act of building generates ideas, not just represents them.
The other power of LSP is metaphor. A handful of LEGO containers is just plastic. But when Luca built that same model and it reminded him of getting lost in a bamboo forest in Hawaii, the containers became a story. That story became a conversation. That conversation became insight.
LSP in the Real World
Luca has used LSP in more contexts than most certified facilitators, and the range is instructive.
For a TEDx talk, he used LEGO bricks to explore two futures — one dystopian, one hopeful — turning an abstract topic about technology into something an audience could literally see and feel. For an end-of-year performance review, he built models representing his motivation, his strengths, and where he wanted to go — making a usually stilted HR conversation genuinely revealing. In one-to-ones with his twelve-person IT team, he builds a model alongside each colleague every session, creating a mutual dialogue rather than a manager-led check-in.
And in new employee onboarding at The LEGO Group, he uses a single model to tell the whole story of what his IT support team does, why they do it, and what they need from the people they serve. It's considerably more memorable than a PowerPoint.
The Quiet Person in the Room
Perhaps the most important thing LSP does is give a voice to the people who don't normally speak. In a group of teenagers visiting The LEGO Group's headquarters, one young woman said nothing throughout the entire visit — until the building activity began. She was the first to volunteer to share her story. The brick removed the barrier.
In a business meeting, in a workshop, in an interview — the same principle applies. The person you think has nothing to say might have the best idea in the room. They just need a different way in.
Final Thoughts: Preparation Is a Creative Journey
Luca's closing argument is simple: the preparation of a presentation matters as much as the presentation itself. The moments when you're working out what to say, how to frame it, what story to tell — those are the moments where creativity and imagination make the real difference. LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® makes that phase richer, more honest, and considerably more fun.
Join the Conversation
Have you ever used LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® — or could you imagine using it in your next meeting or workshop? What would you use it for? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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