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It's Not About The Bricks

101 myths about LEGO® Serious Play® and how to bust them!

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® isn’t what most people think it is. This book explores 101 common myths, through LEGO® inspired archetypes, to reveal what really happens when thinking becomes visible.

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About

About

About the Book

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is often misunderstood.

At first glance, it can look like a creative exercise, a team-building activity, or something designed simply to 'engage the room'. But beneath the bricks sits a structured method for thinking, communication, and shared understanding, one that is increasingly used to explore complex challenges across organisations.

This book explores the gap between perception and practice.

Rather than explaining LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® as a method, it focuses on the myths, assumptions, and preconceptions that often shape how it is received. These myths are not random. They reflect common patterns of thinking that appear when individuals and organisations encounter something unfamiliar.

To bring these patterns to life, the book is structured around ten recognisable archetypes. Each archetype reflects a different way of interpreting the method and the world around it.

Within each section, ten myths are explored in depth, with each myth being unpacked as to:

  • Why the belief exists
  • What actually happens in practice
  • How to respond as a facilitator
  • What it reveals about how people think

This is not a manual or a step-by-step guide.

It is a practical exploration of how thinking happens in organisations, and what becomes possible when that thinking is made visible.

Whether you are a facilitator, coach, leader, or simply curious about LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, this book is designed to help you navigate the conversations, resistance, and opportunities that come with introducing a different way of thinking.

Author

About the Author

Robin Hackshall

I'm Robin Hackshall, a facilitator, coach, and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® practitioner who works with individuals, teams, and organisations navigating complexity, change, and the often messy reality of thinking together.

My work sits at the intersection of coaching, facilitation, and experiential learning, with a particular focus on how people make meaning in group settings and how that meaning shapes decisions, behaviour, and culture.

Over the years, I have worked with a wide range of organisations to support leadership development, team alignment, and organisational exploration. Much of this work has involved helping groups move beyond surface-level conversation into deeper forms of shared understanding, particularly in environments where traditional dialogue alone is not enough to surface what is really going on.

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® became a natural extension of this work. Not as a departure from facilitation, but as a refinement of it. A way to make thinking visible, to equalise participation, and to create structured environments where complexity can be explored without being oversimplified.

Alongside this, I continue to design and deliver workshops, coaching sessions, and learning experiences that focus on practical, human-centred approaches to organisational development. His work often explores themes such as psychological safety, leadership behaviour, communication patterns, and the conditions that enable better thinking within teams.

I am also the creator of learning experiences that use LEGO-based approaches to explore agile ways of working, leadership development, and team dynamics in ways that are both structured and highly participatory.

At the heart of his practice is a simple but persistent question - how do we create the conditions where people can think better together?

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