It was one of those moments where I couldn’t have been happier we just let the story eventually reveal its meaning and significance.
We hadn’t set a goal or agenda for this conversation. We hadn’t seen each other in over a month, and as we’re checking in, she tells me about this LEGO typewriter she spent 3 days building over the holidays. It had been an unfinished project by her son, which in itself offered room for curiosity, but as I sat and listened I became much more intrigued with her relationship to the act of building.
My mind loves drawing links and spotting patterns, and so I naturally held her current professional journey (building something new in her career) in my mind. I’m unsure whether she was aware of these links at the time she told me her LEGO story. Perhaps it was unconscious. Whatever it was, it was incredibly rich as a metaphor.
So how do you build things, structures, careers, meals, art, people?
With LEGO, fresh out of the box, there’s a clear vision, an image, a well-defined goal, all the relevant pieces in one place, and an instruction manual that leaves nothing to the imagination and guarantees success.
When I was about 12 years old, I spent the better part of my days over the course of about 3 months in our basement re-assembling all my LEGO collection from childhood in order to sell it on a flea market and finance my first HiFi system. That situation was a lot more messy. Huge bags of mixed bricks, pages missing in the manuals. Creativity and improvising solutions due to missing bricks was a constant requirement. Yet, I usually had images and clear goals, and at least a good idea where I was heading.
When I play with LEGO (or currently its larger derivatives) with my toddler, it’s an entirely different journey. The plan changes constantly. The vision isn’t clear (to me). The leader doesn’t communicate particularly well. The strategies are inconsistent. And there are lots of constraints and roadblocks along the way that nobody could have anticipated.
Seems much more like real life, if you ask me. Especially if you’re building a business or new career path.
And most careers aren’t built from scratch, especially not when you work with coaches, who usually transition into coaching from a previous career.
So what do you do when you’ve got an existing structure that looks good but doesn’t seem to work (anymore)? Do you take it all apart and start from scratch? Do you investigate and check for broken parts? Do you leave it behind and start something completely different?
Which parts might you be able to transfer? Can some of it stay assembled? Perhaps it’s important you dismantle the entire thing so that you can create a sense of real ownership and you understand and appreciate the foundations of what you’re working with.
In this session we never touched a piece of LEGO. And yet I sat reminded of what we had witnessed in the Coaching Lab back in September, when Victoria Bradley’s client built a structure that represented her transition and achievements.
The session ended. My supervisee sat with a renewed energy and new perspectives on what and how she was building, and clarity around her next steps, and I found myself smiling, thinking of Bruce Lee once again and thought to myself:
The art of coaching with LEGO, without LEGO.
With Love
Yannick
PS:
Curious to learn more about Coaching with LEGO?
- You can watch the recording of our Coaching Lab by signing up for VIP membership at https://gocoachinglab.com/
- And my colleague and former supervisee, Theresa Quinn, has recently published a paper introducing the concept: https://www.isfcp.info/cpi-volume-18-article-4/
- And then there’s this ebook on working with LEGO from a positive psychology perspective by my colleagues and fellow positive psychology coaches Ilona Boniwell and Mads Bab: https://www.bu.edu/disability/files/2023/04/Exploring-Positive-Psychology-with-Lego-Serious-Play.pdf
