Equality, Diversity & Inclusion – building creative solutions

What do Lego bricks and personal growth have in common? At first glance – not much. The Network has teamed up with Michel Cloosterman and Jelle de Jong from Brick and Business – Lego® Serious Play for a playful and constructive evening that proved otherwise.

The attendees, who had received their packages of Lego bricks prior to the online event, were presented with several building tasks – a warm-up build of a tower with just two small requirements – the first and the last brick were a defined requirement, all the rest was up to them.

Next, they built their hurdle – what they thought was the problem they needed to overcome to have a more fulfilling private or professional life. Self-doubt; looking back instead of ahead, discrimination, lack of self-confidence, difference in mind-set, bias, being caught in the vicious circle, lack of assertiveness, losing oneself by trying to fit, and cultural and political differences were just a few mentioned.

The following question was: What is your superpower? This discussion, like all the other tasks, was performed in the breakout rooms, and to some, the question was not at all straight forward and obvious. The statement, I am not a super-hero, came up frequently. Eventually, most of the attendees managed to single out their superpower. In the last task, they needed to choose from one of the presented models, build it, and consequently change it into a superpower they wanted to have – one they heard about from other participants, or a completely different one. The idea was to define a superpower of the other participants that would be combined with their own, help them overcome hurdles defined at the beginning of the evening.

The evening was dedicated to starting a process, to make the attendees reach their own solutions through introspection and sharing: We can be stronger; we can build and protect our tower with our superpowers, and we most definitely can make things happen.