A few quick answers up front:
Is mastering the Core Process of the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) method enough to get assignments as a Facilitator?
No. The Core Process, Application Techniques and Skills Building can be learned during the training, giving You a technically sound workshop. But assignments only come when the workshop delivers exactly what the client currently needs: a solution, more convenience or an experience.
What distinguishes a Facilitator who gets repeat assignments from one who does not?
Both things belong together. A technically sound workshop is the foundation, and that is what You learn in the training with the Core Process, Application Techniques and Skills Building. What makes the additional difference is the ability to recognise in advance which of the three buying reasons a client is currently looking for and to design the workshop accordingly, instead of running the same standard process every time.
Why is it important to run a technically sound workshop?
Because it is the foundation for everything else. Without a properly facilitated Core Process, scepticism in the room does not shift, decisions do not hold, and results do not last beyond the workshop. You learn how to design a sound workshop in the four-day training, together with the ability to recognise which of the three reasons a client currently needs.
How do I recognise as a Facilitator which of the three reasons a client currently needs?
In the initial conversation. A team that has already lost results several times primarily needs a secured solution. A team with entrenched hierarchies primarily needs the convenience of making a sustainable decision once. A sceptical team first needs the experience that shifts the doubt.
What exactly do You learn in the four-day Facilitator training?
The main focus of the training is the complete method in version 2.0, the Core Process, Application Techniques and Skills Building, together with the ability to design sound workshops that actually create impact. Real impact requires You to recognise what a client currently needs, and You learn that along the way.
"I have the certification, now I can get started." Technically, that's true. But that alone will not make anyone book You a second time.
The Core Process, the seven Application Techniques and Skills Building can be learned, in the original curriculum of the Association of Master Trainers in four days, not over a weekend. What the method does not automatically provide is the ability to recognise why a client books a workshop in the first place. Every repeat booking depends on that.
In Why do people actually buy LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®?, I described this from the buyer's perspective: People pay for a solution, for more convenience or for an experience they cannot get anywhere else. Here, we are looking at the other side of the table: What You specifically do as a Facilitator so that a workshop genuinely delivers the right reason in each case instead of merely running in a technically sound way.
Deliver a solution, not just build models
Securing the outcome is what matters, not the building
A client does not buy colourful bricks on a table. They buy the assurance that what emerges in the workshop will not end up in a drawer afterwards. That is facilitation work, not magic built into the method itself: the questions You ask, the sequence in which models are built and shared, and above all the final half hour in which individual stories become a shared picture that someone in the room can actually take away.
Anyone who skips this final step because time is running short ultimately delivers nothing more than colourful photos. Securing the outcome, not the building itself, determines whether a client still knows six weeks later what was decided, or calls someone again to reconstruct it.
What that means in practice
In practice, this means planning time to secure the outcome before the workshop even begins, not only when there are fifteen minutes left at the end. If You realise time is getting tight, shorten a building round rather than the securing phase, even if that means not covering one topic completely that day. A client will forgive a slightly shorter programme. They rarely forgive an outcome they can no longer reconstruct three weeks later.
Deliver convenience without controlling the room
The Core Process protects the sequence
Convenience in an LSP workshop does not mean making everything easy for everyone. It comes from the fact that each person builds and shares their own model, and every perspective is allowed to remain as it is. That is not a design decision You make as a Facilitator. It is built into the Core Process itself: Build, share, listen, before anything is jointly reflected on or decided. Nobody contradicts someone else's model; everyone is right about their own perspective. That brings the quiet objection onto the table now, instead of letting it resurface three weeks later in a corridor conversation.
Your task as a Facilitator is not to invent this sequence, it is already built into the Core Process. Your task is to defend it, even when a senior person becomes impatient and would rather impose their own opinion immediately. If You allow that, You end up with the classic picture again: A decision that has to be made two or three times before it finally holds.
The more uncomfortable role
That sometimes means taking on the more uncomfortable role: Asking a leader to wait with their own model until everyone else has shared, almost a small workshop version of Simon Sinek's "Leaders eat last". In that moment, it does not feel convenient for anyone. In the end, however, this sequence ensures that nobody feels overlooked and that the decision holds without being reopened three weeks later.
Deliver an experience when the arms are still crossed
The moment that justifies the workshop
Almost every group starts with at least one person sitting there with their arms crossed. That is not a problem that needs to be solved before the workshop begins. It is the raw material for the moment that later justifies the workshop: The point at which the hands build something the head has not fully grasped yet, and the doubt begins to shift.
Why the first task needs to be easy
Your task as a Facilitator is not to skip this moment. If the first building task is too easy, or there is too little time for the initial doubts, the scepticism remains in the room instead of shifting. If, on the other hand, You deliberately take the first few minutes slowly, the person with crossed arms often becomes the method's loudest advocate later on.
That is also why the first building task should never be the most difficult one. A simple, almost playful first question gives the hands something to do while the head remains sceptical. The shift does not happen because of an argument You make, it happens while the person is building for themselves. Your job is simply to give them enough time and the right first question.
The actual difference
You get the certificate and the complete method, the Core Process, seven Application Techniques and Skills Building, in four days. The second main focus of the training is learning how to turn all of that into sound workshop designs that actually create impact instead of merely running correctly from a technical point of view. Whether that turns into assignments is still up to You afterwards, every single time, depending on whether You recognise what the client in front of You is actually buying. Anyone who only takes away the technique has skipped half the training.
If You want to understand how people experience the three reasons from the buyer's perspective before You start serving them Yourself as a Facilitator: Why do people actually buy LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®?
If You want to learn how to run successful workshops with the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method: You can find dates for the next training programmes at matthias-renner-trainer.com.
By Matthias Renner, AI-assisted research.
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