“I bought the cards because I saw their potential as a fabulous tool for workshops and as great diagnostic tools when meeting with clients."
Submitted by: Melissa Dinwiddie, Chief Instigator and lead facilitator of Creative Sandbox Solutions™
To reach Melissa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissadinwiddie
"I love using the Superhero/Villain cards to help workshop participants think about strengths and weaknesses. At a presentation skills training where I use LSP to ease participants into storytelling, I start off by having them each select a Superhero or Villain they think is the best or worst public speaker. This gets them thinking about what makes an effective presenter, anyway, and sets a tone of playfulness. These are two threads I weave throughout the rest of the day. (A hat tip to Brian Tang, who shared a similar idea in the Strategic Play Facilitator Network.)
Wouldn’t you love to have your clients sell LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methods to themselves? Well, the diagnostic cards let you do just that! Here’s how:
I brought a deck of Teams (blue) cards with me to a demo at Visa headquarters and laid them out face-up before everyone arrived. I walked the participants through a few LSP activities (the Duck, the Tower, a couple of tower modifications), and then when they were packing up their LEGO®, I asked them to think about how they could envision the activities we just did applying to their work at Visa.
Then I asked them to walk over to the table with the Teams cards and pick a card with a challenge they thought LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® might be useful for. We circled up, and one at a time the participants held up their cards and shared how they thought LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® would be helpful for that particular issue.
It was the perfect closing to my demo: 15 participants all selling themselves and each other on the benefits of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® for their company!
(A hat tip to fellow CERTIFIED LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator Travis Reed who offered up this business development idea).
Along with my passel of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® activities and applied improvisation games, the diagnostic cards are an invaluable tool in my toolbox. They’re versatile, professional, fun, and playful. Plus they make me stand out. I can’t get enough of them!”
Melissa Dinwiddie founder of Creative Sandbox Solutions™, a creative consultancy that helps organizations build thriving creative cultures so they can improve productivity, retain great talent, enhance recruitment, boost profit, increase sales, and deliver exceptional service, all through the power of play! She lives in Silicon Valley with her husband and Siberian cat, Nika, and performs improv and plays ukulele in her not-so-copious spare time.
"I want those cards!" CLICK HERE