Solution
Turn resistance into engaged participation with LEGO® Serious Play®.
In the previous articles we have shown that the rejection of change is a completely natural reaction: an evolutionarily tested danger or stress avoidance strategy.
But how can we succeed not only in overcoming these resistances, but also in transforming them into active and committed participation?
enthusiastically support change.
We gave some hints on which strategic approaches can be used to manage stress in general and that procrastination can also be successfully combated. And we promised to show that there is also a method to dissolve our employees' natural defensive reaction against innovations and to convince our team to embrace change - or better still, to enthusiastically go along with it.
We can achieve this by turning the unknown and dangerous unknown into a familiar "we". To do this, we first have to create a common information base and a common understanding of the change process at management and staff level. Only when our employees understand the necessity of change and have a vision of where the journey is going and what benefits the changes will bring, will they be willing to embrace the new. It is even better to actively involve affected employees in the process. This is because the employees will trust the result they have developed themselves and can engage with it much more easily.
Proven a thousand times over: LEGO® Serious Play®
A workshop with LEGO® Serious Play® can support us exactly in developing this common understanding and the will to change. The LEGO® Serious Play® method has proven itself thousands of times over the past years and is anything but a gimmick. Rather, this agile method facilitated by a trained coach is based on scientific research and is also based on the experiences of numerous practitioners involved in its development.
Here is a concrete example:
You are planning to use digitalisation to make work processes more efficient in order to achieve better results and save time and money. By using the LEGO® Serious Play® method, which may be unusual in your company, you as the initiator first signal that you are serious about change and do not just want to hold one of many meetings. In this way, traditional patterns of thinking and communication are broken down from the outset.
A LEGO® Serious Play® workshop gives you the opportunity to involve all key employees from the affected areas in the process. In a relaxed atmosphere without hierarchies, employees can develop ideas individually and later also as a team with playful ease and very high personal commitment, thus forming a common understanding of the project.
LEGO® Serious Play® makes the complex negotiable.
Thoughts and ideas become tangible in the truest sense of the word. Even highly complex ideas and abstract value systems can be easily communicated through LEGO® models. Complex questions become negotiable in dialogue and exchange of ideas. Many things that were previously invisible become visible, e.g. the close interaction between the transformation of the framework conditions and the attitude and personality of the employees. Both condition and influence each other and can be changed positively much more easily through joint construction.
The biggest advantage, however, is that everyone is involved to an almost equal extent and results are thus really worked out by everyone together. This is why the resulting changes and innovations are later also jointly supported by all participants and actively supported in the company.
Would you like to know more?
As a certified LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator, I am happy to offer advice and support.
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Workshops
Develop, learn together.
Workshops serve to enable a group to deal more intensively with a specific topic. The aim is to jointly develop measures for the future, which are then implemented in everyday work.