Transcript
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Welcome to Scale Tales – the business storytelling podcast where entrepreneurs, executives and experts share firsthand accounts of those magical moments when they achieved something bigger than even they could have imagined.
I’m Alicia Butler Pierre and I must admit, I’m a visual learner. You may be one too. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of digital technology but I love my analog tools as well. In fact, I can remember my last job as an engineer. We had weekly team meetings. My boss started each of those meetings showcasing the latest thing his young son had built with Legos. It was his way of showing us what was possible when we unleashed our imagination and creativity to solve problems. And that’s what we’re going to learn about today except this won’t be about playing with Legos for recreation. This is about playing with a purpose.
This is Ep.30: How César Suárez Uribe Helped Over 12,000 Professionals Solve Problems Using LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®
Hola. My name is César Suarez Uribe. I’m an employment speaker. We’ll talk about that later and the director of Juego y Estrategia. I am currently in Bogota, Colombia. And this is my scale tale that started on January 2008, when I went to the doctor.
In that moment I was an important executive director in a company of the insurance sector in Colombia. And I had a lot of stress and I had spontaneous nosebleeds. I went to the doctor after one specific moment. It happened Sunday in the morning when I woke up. I saw my white cover pillow entirely in blood. Imagine you see your cover pillow covered in blood.
It was difficult situation for me. I went to the doctor. Then after tests, the conclusion of the doctor was you have a risk of stroke. And that changed everything in my life. I decided to change my executive, director position to pursue my dreams. I was happy as employee, but I had bigger dreams. And when I had to think about my nosebleeds and the stroke, I decided to made it 180 degree change
My dreams were to inspire a lot of people to achieve their dreams. So, I changed from wanting to be a CEO of the major company, to manage myself, to manage my emotions, to manage what I really feel. And after that, help people to achieve their dreams. And I change a character that I have created until that moment to create a new character. But now I can understand that what really happened was that I left that character not to create a new one, but to get closer to my real being. That’s the main change. And in that path happened a lot of things.
For example, I encounter my talent to speak, to give a speech, in a scenario or in a big stage, to inspire people. And I create something that it was named standard management, that it was a mix between a lot of things. Like I mixed humor, I mix music, I mix theatrical situations and with the concepts of the real conference or lecture. And it was a great thing because I was very successful with that. But after that I discovered LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a methodology that I want to talk about more later. Because I have to let my friend Alicia ask me some question, because I talk a lot.
Okay, since César put me on the spot…Mi primero pregunta (my first question) is, how did your experiences as a professional speaker lead to you discovering LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®?
I think that when you are focused on something, the universe conspire to help you to achieve that. And I was focused on that, to inspire people, mixing a lot of things to be a different speaker. I don’t want to be a traditional speaker. Then I tried to create a new way to deliver and to lead people to achieve their dreams. When I was working on that kind of things, one of my coaches in 2008 mentioned to me, that LEGO created something to play with in companies.
And from that moment I thought, Wow! I thought that it would be amazing. So I started to investigate, to search about and to make this story short, after almost one year and a half, I could have the training to be a facilitator of this method. At the end of 2009, I became a facilitator of this methodology.
I was the second one in Latin America and I think in America, including the United States, and the first one in Colombia, because Denmark, you know that LEGO is from Denmark. Denmark, maybe at that moment, didn’t think a lot about South America or people in South America.
So, it was very difficult. But I discovered LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® in that year and in that way. But this is the thing that I want to add when you activate your reticular system, because you want something, you really want something, your brain filter to help you to achieve that kind of thing. So you have to focus on what you really want to do, what you really want to achieve. And sometimes it looks like magic.
Some kind of things would happen to help to achieve that. But the universe gives you some opportunities and you have to be prepared. You have to work hard to be prepared when the universe or the most beautiful energy, or if you want to think about some God that you believe. I believe in the universe and the cosmic universe energy when the universe gives you that opportunity, you have to be prepared.
And to be prepared, you have to work hard, focus on what you really want to do. And in that moment, I really focus on create a new thing to inspire people using that kind of resources. LEGO the toy, applies a lot of things. It was like a perfect match – what I was thinking about, the resources that you can use to inspire and to help people to discover a lot of things to achieve their dreams.
Mi segunda pregunta. My second question. César, as you mentioned, Legos are toys that people of all ages can use to unleash their creativity and build things like airplanes and houses. But I know from our previous conversations,
that the framework you’re talking about leverages Legos, but not for building or prototyping things. So, what exactly is LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is an amazing and powerful method that helps people to solving problems, to promote creativity and imagination, to promote good communication, to made a real time strategy to unlock knowledge.
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a method created around 2000. It began from the grandson founder of Lego in 1995. But the first version of the methodology was about around 2001, 2002. It has more than 20 years. So it’s not anything new it’s not a methodology that is fashion. No, esunamola is not a fashion. It’s a methodology with powerful resources and with a profound investigation in the backstage. When you use the LEGO pieces, LEGO bricks that almost everybody knows.
But there are a method to help people to using that bricks to discover and to unlock the knowledge that we had in our brain. But what happened is that most of the people usually live with the rational mind in control. Everybody has the. What I call crazy voice in our mind. That is the voice of our rational mind. That is a voice that always is talking to us and telling us a lot of things.
Most of the times helping us to remain in a comfort zone in a secure place. And, when you play with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® in this case, you can turn off that rational voice, that rational mind and transcend that and you give power to our limbic and our reptilian brains where the intuition, emotion, subconscious are and all that resources help us to discover a lot of things that the rational mind usually can’t see. But the emotional, intuition and the subconscious can understand. The rational mind usually understand this one like a square.
But the emotional, the intuition, the limbic and reptilian brain has a 360 degrees view and open our mind to discover things that you that maybe you’re surprised or that
maybe you have forgotten. For the rational mind or for the rational voice that cover that to protect us. But it’s not true and there’s a process for this method. The core process has just four steps. The first one is the facilitator make a question to the participants. The second step is that participants build or construct something or the Answer of that question with LEGO pieces.
So, when people are constructing or building are discovering in their minds new ideas. Because it’s demonstrated that our hands are connected with around 70 and 75% of the neurons or brain cells. Literally we are thinking our with our hands. So when we are constructing with LEGO pieces in that second step, we are discovering answers to that question that maybe at the beginning we didn’t think.
So, the third step is sharing. People share what they built and share that story about what they built in the LEGO model. What concepts are. That’s the reason that we said that LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is not about prototype. Because we construct not prototypes. We construct ideas, we construct emotions, we construct abstract concepts with LEGO pieces.
Then we bring abstract concepts or emotions or feelings or something like that to 3D language and is easier to understand. You create an emotional connection what you build. And it’s powerful to open your mind and open your heart to new knowledge, to construct new knowledge. And at the same time you have to hear everybody or the other participants.
The fourth step is reflection. When you share your story, you have conscience that you create new things that you didn’t think that you can create. You reflect about it and you learn a lot your appropriate information. And you can discover solutions creatively creativamente. And that’s the power of the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method.
You can make the complexity simple because when you are playing you have to do simply. You have to do not as complicated. We can say that the facilitators of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® when we play in the workshop, we make the complexity simple.
So, César, if you encounter a team that is in chaos and has a lot of problems, are you saying that after going through a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® workshop, that same team can come together and, if nothing else, come up with solutions to those problems? Solutions that they otherwise may not have come up with if they relied solely on their rational minds, as you described it.
When you play with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, you can help that team to left the complexity out of the room. You can make that people think simple. When you put your ideas in 3D language, I mean constructions in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, you clarify. It depends the number of the hours of the time of your workshop, because you can design a short workshop, two hours, but you can design workshops of four hours, eight hours, 12 hours, or the most complex or the most profound workshop that we design is two days, almost 16 or 18 hours playing with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. Imagine what can happen when you have a team playing two days around the strategy, around the problem, around the chaos, to solve, to understand and to go to different solutions in a creative way.
Hi, yes, I’m talking to you. The person who is listening to this right now. Are you as fascinated by LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® as I am? Are you also wondering, are there ever moments when a team is unable to think of a solution during a workshop? Well, César has led hundreds of these workshops and his answer to that question may shock you! But, if you want to find out, you’ll have to join us after this commercial break.
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Welcome back! Before the break we heard from César Suarez Uribe, a professional speaker and one of the few certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® trainers in the world. Now that we know more about the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology, let’s find out if there are ever any times when teams are not able to come up with solutions to a problem during a workshop. So, César, has there ever been a time when a team could not think of a solution?
In my experience, no, or we always found a solution or at least the first steps to go to the solution. Sometimes one of the bigger solutions could be understand the problem. So many times teams don’t really know what is the problem. And that’s the main problem. When you play, you start to understand what is the real problem? Or, understand what is really happening to us or to our company or to our partners or whatever?
And that’s the first big step that you achieve with the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® workshop. You can think creatively, you can think using your imagination, you can think out of the box. I have led around 700 workshops in 13 countries. I have had around 12,000 people playing seriously with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® in those 13 countries. So I’ve never had a workshop without solution, without a team understanding better what is the problem and what are the first steps to encounter the main solution.
So maybe sometimes we go to the solution faster, sometimes it’s more complex and it just understand and advance a few steps. But I have never had the situation that we finished a workshop without a solution or without understanding the real problem and without advance in a good way to find the answers.
César, you mentioned facilitating over 700 workshops in 13 countries where around 12,000 people participated. Wow! Now I understand why it’s so difficult to get in touch with you. I am curious though, how many companies have you helped?
Let me think in these 15 years we attend around 20 companies in a normal year. Sometimes more, sometimes less. So maybe around 300 companies.
Right after the break I mentioned that you are in fact one of the few people in the world authorized to actually train other people who want to become facilitators in the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology. César, do you know how many facilitators you’ve trained?
It was until 2014, almost five years after I became a facilitator, I asked Robert Rasmussen, the main architecture of the methodology, a Danish man work in LEGO and created with Erik Christiansen the methodology as we know now. I asked him about my desire to become a trainer of facilitators. And in 2014 he said,
“Okay, I accept you in the path to become a trainer.”
And to make the story short, I spent four more years to become a trainer. Almost like a PhD degree. And I had to accomplish papers. I had to do a lot of types of workshops in hours, in themes, in topics, a lot of things. And finally in 2018, I became a trainer of facilitators. And since 2018 to now, remember that we lost almost two years in 2020, because this is in person, this is presencial not online.
I have to use LEGO pieces so I can do that online. So this certification is in presence four days intensive. The maximum people in that group of certification of facilitators is 12. So, the groups are really small. But despite every kind of thing that I mentioned, I have formed 512 people.
I have certificate more than 500 facilitators in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and Spain. And that’s another level. Obviously, when you have to teach something, you learn twice. So, it’s a spectacular experience because I continue doing workshops, but at the same times form certificate and new facilitators. So I have to use two roles, one as a facilitator, one as a trainer.
César, you mentioned the maximum number of people that you can train at one time to become facilitators is 12. Is there a minimum and a maximum number of people in terms of the size of teams that can participate in an actual LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® workshop?
Yeah, there are some. I don’t know if it’s correct to say variables. Some things that you have to think when you design a workshop in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. One, what is the real problem or what is the problem that you understand that you have to solve, how many people, and how many hours or how much time do you have to solve that problem?
I have had workshop so different, but I can say for example, if I have to do something where we are going to think deeply about a strategy of the company. in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® we name a real time strategy. When you have a deep workshop maybe one day, 10 hours, 8 hours. We recommend that the maximum people in the room playing is 12, maybe 14.
Because it’s so difficult if the group is bigger than that. If you want to make a workshop with medium complexity you can do a four hours workshop. I have had workshops with 100 people. For example, I remember I made almost like a tour in eight countries doing 24 workshops for 100 people, four hours. To appropriate the leadership model of that company.
Obviously less people is better. But that’s the difference with the most hours workshop and the recommended people is around 12 as a certification and the minimum is two people. Because this is a play you have to play with another one. Not as playing with yourself but I have played with teams of four people and it’s perfect. It’s fantastic.
Well, César, knowing all these amazing things that you have going on, what’s next for you?
Well, I have talked about a lot about LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, but at the same time I’m an international speaker and I’m a passionate to help people and to inspire people. To go to their biggest dreams. I have been a speaker more than a facilitator of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® because my first conference was in 1996, almost 30 years ago. I have been delivering my conferences since that date. Even when I was an employee, I sometimes gave some conferences.
And since 2008 I dedicate my whole time doing LEGOS workshops and delivering conferences about high performance, about inspired people. The next thing that I achieved at the end of last year in October was to challenge myself to go to places that I some years ago thought that I couldn’t go.
I said I have to challenge myself to go to another level. That level at the end of the last year was to give my first conference in English. And the people who will see this podcast note that or see that English is not my strong talent. So that was the first time in my life that I gave some conference in English and not any conference, a TEDx Talk in Helsinki in Finland. And that broke many limiting beliefs.
And that’s the reason that now I’m having an interview in English that years ago I never thought, I can do it. So when I broke that limiting belief in my mind I can do it. I demonstrate myself. I really show people who follow me or who listen to me that we can break any limitation that we thought we have. Obviously there are some limits.
For example like in this moment I could not be the best futbol player in the world, obviously, but there are a lot of limitations that I can think that I have and I come broke. So, the next step, level for me, is to go to so many people. I have worked so many years, almost 30 years, and I think that few people know me or know about what I really want to express or to tell or to teach and I want to go to that level in impact not only thousands but millions of people that help them to break their limitations to create or eliminate the characters that are limiting their desires and work toward the real being that they want to be and to achieve their dreams.
To achieve scale to a million of people and to go more than those 13 countries that I have delivered my conferences and my workshops and in English I know that I can or I could do that so there are two, oh and the third, the next level is to publish another book but that book I have to work different to achieve the impact that I want to go to million of people with information that is really valuable because in this artificial
intelligence time human being needs more emotional intelligence than artificial intelligence.
I don’t fight against the artificial, artificial intelligence no. But I really believe that we need more human, emotional intelligence before apply in a good way the artificial intelligence. That’s my desire.
I’m inspired every time I listen to you speak, César and I’m fully confident that if you set a goal to impact at least 1 million people, then I know you will achieve it! How can someone who is listening to you right now connect with you online?
My website is CésarSuarezUribe.com. My name César Suarez Uribe.com I want to recommend my TEDx talk that is in YouTube. Instagram is. How do you say in English? Aroba. The profile? The letter before the profile.
At. At. Yes. Si. At
My God, I didn’t know it! @CésarSuarezUribe in Instagram. In TikTok, warning I don’t dance in TikTok. You can find good information in TikTok and it’s another place that you can find content of about what I think about where I want to teach. Instagram: @CésarSuarezUribe. LinkedIn: César Suarez Uribe from Colombia.
Mi hermano. Muchas gracias.
It was a big pleasure to me. And you know that I really appreciate you. I really want to do a lot of things with you. I have so many mistakes in my English, but my health is good. I’m a good person. And I really want to help people. And if I can work with you to do that, it would be great.
Yes, that would be great, César! And, it will happen soon. For now, let’s focus
on some key lessons learned during this episode.
- Get out of your head! If you’re managing a project and you and your
team are looking for a new approach to problem solving, then consider
learning more about the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology.
Remember what Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing
expecting a different result.” If you’ve reached a block or a bottleneck
in your project’s progress it might be time to consider something new.
- Practice using emotion rather than pure logic when problem solving. I
know that might go completely against what you’ve been taught as a
leader, but there’s plenty of research that supports the benefits of
having a more balanced approach when problem solving. As an
example, think about César’s recommendation to not just use Artificial
Intelligence, but Emotional Intelligence as well.
- Don’t be afraid to unleash your inner child and use your imagination
and Creativity as you brainstorm solutions that are plaguing you and
your team.
- Teaching is rewarding and when you teach, you learn twice which helps
you sharpen your mental saw even more.
- Dare yourself to do something you’ve never done before. Then, do it!
- Get rid of self-limiting beliefs. Which, I know, is easier to say rather than
do. But keep César’s message in mind. English is his second language,
and he never thought he’d give a speech in English, but he did and it
wasn’t just any speech. It was a TEDx Talk!
You can learn more about César, the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology, and where his next speaking engagements will be in this episode’s show notes. Visit ScaleTalesPodcast.com. Again, that’s ScaleTalesPodcast.com.
If you’re a PMP interested in earning PDUs for listening to this episode, then once you’re on the website, click the button that says, “Get CEUs/PDUs Credits,” sign up for a monthly membership and we’ll make sure we submit your earned credits to PMI.
Thank you for listening! If you learned something valuable from this episode, please leave us a five-star rating and review wherever you’re listening.
I’m Alicia Butler Pierre and I produced and narrated this episode. Audio editing by Olanrewaju Adeyemo. Music production and original score by Sabor! Music Enterprises. Video editing by Gladiola Films. Show notes by Hashim Tale.
You’ve been listening to Scale Tales, a podcast by Equilibria, Inc.
A special thank you to Laurent Notin for sharing his scale tale with us. Take him up on his offer for a free one-hour coaching call. You can sign up for that, as well as access other resources mentioned in this episode’s show notes. Visit ScaleTalesPodcast.com. Again, that’s ScaleTalesPodcast.com.
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