How a pile of LEGO can help you ideate about your career
“Innovation is an outcome. Play is a state of mind. Innovation is often what we get when we play.” – Ivy Ross, VP Design for Hardware Products at Google.
It’s time to raid your old toy box! Did you know that CAPD offers workshops and events utilizing LEGO® Serious Play® as a way to help you ideate, prototype, and plan out your career? One way to think about how LSP works is to think about how it is like 3-D printing what is on your mind. You can use LEGO bricks to explore topics through story, metaphor, and symbols. Thinking about how what you build comes together both literally and figuratively can offer you some unique insights into your needs—and is a lot of fun to do while you’re doing it!
CAPD has hosted a variety of workshops to help you reflect on how your values and strengths come together to provide a more holistic idea of what you are looking for in your future career.
Build towards your goal
Where are you now and where do you want to be? And how do you bridge the gap between them? Using your LEGO bricks, create an idea of where you are at this moment. Ask yourself:
- Who am I?
- What is important to me?
- What resources do I have at my disposal?
Next, spend time thinking about a goal you have. Be as elaborate or concise as you need to be, but feel free to reach far out into the future. After all, how do you build a humongous LEGO® Castle? One brick at a time. So, dream big! This process is designed to help you break down your goals into more manageable steps.
As you continue to play with the pieces, think about how you might bridge the divide between where you are now and the distal goal you are hoping to achieve. Ask yourself:
- How can I break this distal goal into smaller, more proximal goals?
- In what ways do I still need to grow or develop on my way towards this goal?
- What are potential barriers I will encounter, and how might I overcome those?
- What resources might I need to rely on as I pursue this goal?
- How will I celebrate achieving my goal?
As you build, note down things that you may need to do. Create a checklist to accompany the wishlist that is your goal. With some effort (along with the play) you should be able to reach any goal you design.
Build to a purposeful career
What makes a career purposeful? This self-reflection activity can be done individually or with other. After finding your top values, we encourage you to build a representation of your values using LEGO bricks.
As you create a representation of each value, here are some questions that you can ask yourself:
- How does my build reflect me?
- What is my favorite part of my build? Why?
- If what I built could talk, what would it say?
- What did I learn about myself from this exercise?
Once you have built representations of your top values, try to integrate them together into a holistic representation of you as an individual. Your build does not have to look anything like you, but through this exercise you will hopefully uncover:
- Your top priorities
- Potential barriers to avoid in your career
- Specific resources or supports you might need
- Some things you can do immediately to make the most out of your career
If you have done this activity with others, be sure to take time to inquire deeper with each other about what you each built. Sometimes it is beneficial to get the perspectives of others to harness deeper meaning into what you have built.
Build your talents into strengths
Claim your strengths! If you have taken the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment (which you can seek access to from CAPD), you can use your top-5 report to play with your talent themes to help you name, claim, and aim your strengths using LEGO pieces. You can take this activity as a solo exercise, or you can start to see how collaborating with others can help you merge your strengths together to get some surprising results!
Building each of your strengths individually, and then merging them together, can help you uncover some of the theme dynamics that make your top-5 a unique approach specific to you. These can become your superpower with the right amount of investment and dedication.
Once you have built your strengths, either as an individual or as participant in a group, try to think about how you might lean on your strengths to:
- Build relationships
- Communicate clearly
- Create accountability
- Develop or inspire others
- And more!
Even after you have built your strengths, spend time ideating how you will continue to use your strengths each and every day.
Not sure if any of these activities are right for you? No worries! A principal component of LSP is to not get stuck in your thoughts—let the bricks and pieces guide you. Develop a bias for action and start building something. As you play you may start to unlock news ways of thinking about a problem or see information in a new way.
Erik Pavesic is the Assistant Director of Career Advising & Training and in addition to being a certified Gallup Strengths coach is also trained as a LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator.