When adults play with Lego, they don't necessarily have to be in kindergarten.

Some people are just excited to recreate movie sets at home.

Others, on the other hand, try to use the colorful stones to develop new ideas for their companies.

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“When we play, we forget everything around us.

We stimulate our imagination, there are no limits,” says Matthias Renner.

He regularly holds seminars for companies where he lets managers play with Lego.

The method he uses is called Lego Serious Play (LSP).

Mostly it is about strategy development.

But LSP can also help with team building, says Renner.

He counts banks as well as family businesses and associations among his customers.

"It's amazing the dynamics that such a workshop can develop," he says, visibly enthusiastic.

It is fantastic to see how the participants arrive at their solutions, how more and more building blocks are put on the table.

At the beginning of this game everyone has the same conditions.

The participants get a bag with exactly the same number and composition of stones.

Then the moderator asks questions that build on each other.

The answers should be made using the Lego bricks.

Developed at Lego in the 1990s

According to Renner, only about 20 percent of the existing knowledge is typically tapped into at conferences, mainly because the same people often have the floor.

In his seminars it is different.

"Everyone is heard," he says.

Because every participant has to talk about his model.

"My job is to go deeper, to ask for meanings." Personal confrontations are avoided, one remains on a factual level: "It's always about the model."

LSP was developed in the late 1990s by Per Kristiansen and Robert Rasmussen, who were then working at Lego.

They have constantly improved the method.

In 2010, the Danish toy manufacturer gave up the LSP business, but continues to produce the sets for the workshops.

Kristiansen and Rasmussen are now concentrating on the training of so-called facilitators, i.e. seminar leaders like Renner.

The trained computer scientist and coach and mediator, who was trained at the Rhein-Main University of Applied Sciences, took part in a four-day training seminar in Odense in 2016.

A year later he became self-employed as a trainer in Frankfurt.

According to the official LSP website, there are 52 such facilitators in Germany, a good third of them in the Rhine-Main area.

There are now other providers who train trainers.

Because the designation LSP facilitator is not legally protected.

Some offer two-day training seminars.

Renner thinks little of it.

In Denmark his training lasted 40 hours and even that was almost too little.

"I don't know how you're going to convey all that content in just two days."

Anyone who takes part in one of Renner's workshops has an inkling that there is more to it than just playing with Lego bricks.

The first task he sets for the almost 20 participants that evening: build a tower.

All got the same 49 stones.

However, it quickly becomes clear that everyone has a different approach.

The ambitious aim high, the more cautious make sure that the tower stands on a stable foundation.

After five minutes, small groups discuss why which stone is in which position.

“We get old because we stop playing”

Then a new question follows, the tower is rebuilt, then destroyed.

With every new question, a new model emerges that is talked about.

Renner warns that everyone really has to have their say, and talks about companies where dissatisfied employees use Lego bricks to express their frustration.

"Since everyone takes part in the seminar on an equal footing, a lot can come up on the table."

The number of participants for a Lego workshop is theoretically unlimited.

In practice, groups of more than twelve people are divided into smaller groups.

Renner then goes from table to table to look at the results.

In very large groups, he also works with colleagues.

For such cases there are larger sets with more than 2500 stones, with which entire company landscapes can be built.

“If possible, I try to spread my workshops over at least two days.

Then the participants can sleep on it for the night and process what they have experienced,” says Renner.

Before Corona, his business was good.

But like many self-employed people, the pandemic hit him hard.

“From one day to the next it was over.” He cannot hold his workshops online.

"The method was developed for people who sit in a room." That's why Renner is happy to be able to give seminars again.

"We don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing."