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LEGO and the psychological benefits of building with pieces

LEGO and the psychological benefits of building with pieces

March 28, 2024

The LEGO pieces and their construction are a great tool to externalize one's belief system and emotions , because the individual comes into contact with the most implicit knowledge of his person and his present.

The construction of LEGO pieces and emotional intelligence

This process of free construction has a positive effect when developing Emotional Intelligence and is also a tool used in psychotherapy and business coaching.

In the following interview, Mª Teresa Mata, collaborating psychologist of the Mensalus Psychological and Psychological Assistance Institute, presents this tool as one of the new allies of emotional intelligence training.


How has Lego broken into the world of Psychology and Coaching?

Currently, the dynamics based on the representation of ideas through free construction through Lego pieces or similar, has become a fantastic tool of work within the world of business coaching. Recent studies have shown their efficiency in checking the high level of information they generate, information rich in content and highly useful structure for the resolution of all types of conflicts. Specifically, The LEGO® Serious® Play® Method is the method that, in this sense, has gone around the world .

On the other hand, from the training / coaching of emotional intelligence, we have discovered in this method a new work instrument that, like the rest of externalizing techniques, promotes the imagination and gives free rein to creativity, thus becoming the perfect Allied to promote self-knowledge, self-expression, the projection of challenges and objective capacity, as well as certain social skills such as empathy.


What happens when we start building?

With the constructions a connection is established to another level . The release of imagination and creativity is intimately related to the use of hands. When our hands come into play, we set in motion a whole set of mental processes that allow access to deeper knowledge. In this way we succeed in promoting communication at another level (both communication with oneself and with others).

When this technique is transferred to a system (a work team, a family, a workshop group), a lot of information becomes visible: each individual offers a small sample of their perception of the world. This puts different points of view on the table in a quick and visual way, and promotes dialogue and empathetic capacity as we mentioned.

It must be incredible the feedback generated in a session when so much information emerges, is not it?

True. This is one of the great advantages of using techniques that activate messages through creativity and association: the messages that appear are fresh, full of wit and wisdom, details that, from other models of processing, would hardly come to light.


Many times, information that goes unnoticed on a daily basis, can become the propellant of unknown options and unintended solutions. This is a job that, from the training of emotional intelligence, we especially promote:

"What knowledge I have and what knowledge I do not take advantage of" / "What knowledge awakens in me when I see and hear the knowledge of others".

What else can you explain about this methodology and the work that is done from Coaching and Psychotherapy?

Through creation with construction pieces, without realizing it, the unconscious barriers that emerge in social interaction diminish, allowing intelligent conversations to emerge that help people connect with their knowledge and the knowledge of others.

In the workshops we put this into practice, for example, through the formulation of a "mobilizing" question . Once the question is raised, the participants let their resolutive capacity flow. The next step is to convert this information into tangible form from the construction with parts. The results are incredible. The methodology rescues information that is usually "out of use". The fact of exposing, ordering, and validating said information within a framework of skill training generates a high level of insight and insight (awareness of).

In short, what is the relationship between the training of emotional intelligence and construction with LEGO pieces?

From Emotional Intelligence we seek to synthesize the complex, express the abstract, feel the invisible, concretize the volatile.We look for a way to simplify the processes and obtain "powerful" information in order to facilitate its use and increase efficiency in our actions.

The training of emotional intelligence through free construction inspired in response to a mobilizing question, as we explained, accelerates the collection of useful information. This is achieved by fostering processes that connect with the implicit knowledge of the person, a knowledge that has settled throughout its life path.

With the LEGO pieces and the figures that complement the creative scenarios, each user constructs, projects and observes , becomes the spectator of its own creation, a privileged position since it allows to take distance from the possible conflict and make use of the information in a more intelligent way. Likewise, in the workshops, each one is a spectator of the creations of the others, fact that brings a multitude of ideas and options.

And the ideas of each other, even live different conflicts, do they work for everyone?

This is the most interesting point of the work of outsourcing in emotional intelligence . It is very revealing when, at the end of a session of free construction, the participants adopt ways of solving fruit of the knowledge extracted from other experiences of others, not only their own. For this to be possible, the key is in the formulation of the mobilizing question (s).

Our great challenge is always based on raising a common question for everyone, even if the experiences and the life contexts are different; with this we achieve a high level of group connection and emotionally intelligent feedback.


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