We are pleased to share an article entitled “ Team Building Blocks ~ Is it time to get out the LEGO? ” written by Jonathan Passmore.
This article delves into the transformative potential of team coaching using LEGO Serious Play (LSP). In our recently published scientific study, we demonstrated for the first time the power of team coaching as a tool that can both enhance psychological safety and improve team cohesion. And it’s more powerful than traditional team building.
COACHING & THE MODERN WORKPLACE
The modern workplace has become a place where solo performance is welcome, but it’s positively inefficient when it comes to most tasks. Most tasks — whether related manufacturing or knowledge creation — require individuals to collaborate with others in the production process.
Factory production lines are one example of this collaboration, but the modern workplace is full of product teams and working groups that bring together diverse skills and experiences to deliver products and services. It’s thus not surprising that organizations want to optimize team relationships, team processes and team outcomes.
Coaching has grown significantly since 2000. In its first phase, that growth was in one-to-one coaching. However, the past decade has seen an increased interest in collective coaching for teams and groups, with a growing number of books, courses and even the emergence of team coaching competencies from the professional bodies (Passmore et al., In Press).
The majority of these contributions to team coaching have concentrated on how one-to-one coaching can be adapted for teamwork. The focus has been on models, approaches and tools, but there has been little research into whether team coaching actually makes for better teams.
In a world that increasingly focuses on evidence, blind faith is no longer enough. Clients want evidence of impact if they are to invest hard-earned dollars in a coach or a trainer. This study aimed to test the effect of team coaching and answer the question of whether team coaching is worthwhile, when other choices such as team building are available.
TEAM COACHING & SERIOUS PLAY
While there have been multiple team coaching definitions put forward, we have taken a broad view in our own team coaching work, seeing team coaching as an intra, inter and systemic process that relates to the individual team member, the relationships between team members and the team connection with the wider system.
As a result, we focused on two measures that are most commonly associated with high-performing teams and their relationships: team cohesion and psychological safety.
As part of the design for the team coaching sessions, we included the use of LEGO Serious Play. LEGO Serious Play (LSP) is a facilitator methodology that uses LEGO bricks as a tool for problem-solving, communication and team-building in a business organizational context. It was developed in the late 1990s by Johan Roos and Bart Victor in collaboration with LEGO.
The process is designed to facilitate problem recognition, knowledge creation and shared understanding, enabling participants to think with their hands, creating physical models representing their ideas, insights or solutions. We have found significant qualitative benefits when using it, with positive reactions from participants.
In our study, we wanted to move beyond qualitative research and using the randomized controlled trial method, we recruited multiple teams interested in taking part in a “team development day.” The teams were randomly allocated to two conditions. Some groups had a team facilitator who would run a classroom-based team-building day, with flip charts, Post-it notes and writing materials. This formed the control group.
The second series of teams were allocated to team coaches who used LSP (this was the Intervention Group). Participants were invited to complete the two questionnaires (psychological safety and team cohesion) before starting. At the end of the day, participants were invited to complete the questionnaires for a second time, and the results were compared.
FINDINGS & LONG-TERM RESULTS
The results showed that participants who received team coaching had gained significantly more in their psychological safety and team cohesion scores than the participants who participated in the team-building experience.
This was positive news, but one frequent challenge about all learning interventions is whether the effects will last more than a few days or weeks. As a result, we went back three months later to both teams to collect data in their workplaces. What we found was that while the scores on both measures for participants who attended the team-building day had returned to around their previous levels, those who benefited from the team coaching with LSP remained significantly higher than the starting point.
The fact that these differences were statistically significant means that they did not happen by chance. Moreover, by using a control group, we were able to confirm that team coaching is simply a more effective way to build psychological safety and team cohesion than the traditional methods that team leaders have used.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOUR PRACTICE?
If you are a coach and have not trained yet as a team coach, this article might be the impetus. The research provides good evidence that team coaching is just as useful with teams as it is in one to one conversation. Further team coaching can be enhanced by using tools such as LEGO Serious Play to provide a fun, engaging session that creates lasting results for participants.
In conclusion, team coaching has come of age. This research provides powerful evidence that team coaching can be a useful organizational tool to help address the essential challenge for the modern organisation: How can we create stronger, more effective teams? Maybe now is the time to get out the LEGO and train as a team coach.
You can check out the full article at: doi.org/10.1108/jwam-12-2023-0137.
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