Case Study:


Strengthening Team Ownership and Agility in a Small Distributed Business with

Lego Serious Play

People gathered around a table playing with LEGO bricks, creating various structures.

Client Background

The client was the founder and manager of a small business with teams distributed across two locations. The intervention took place in person with the smaller, co-located team, while the broader business continued to operate across both sites.

Challenges

There was a need to better understand how the team functioned as a whole, and to create more shared ownership of both challenges and solutions, specifically:

Delegation of responsibilities

Decision-making processes

Structuring the working day to ensure team effectiveness

The Approach


We agreed on a full-day, in-person team coaching session.

The session was intentionally designed in advance to move beyond a purely operational focus on delegation and working structures, and instead enable the team to:

generate their own insights, take ownership of challenges, and co-create sustainable ways of working.

A woman examining LEGO pieces at a work table, with various containers of LEGO bits laid out in front of her in a workspace.

Lego® Serious Play® was selected as the core methodology for its ability to unlock deeper reflection, equal participation, and collective sense-making.

The client was particularly drawn to its creative and engaging approach.

The session followed a structured flow, outlined below:

Exploring Strengths and Team Identity

Lego figures arranged on colorful Lego blocks, some standing on top and others sitting, with a Lego plant on the right side.

Each team member built an individual model representing their strengths and passions within the team. The team then combined their models into a shared model.

Outcome:

Shared understanding of their collective strengths

Team starts to see themselves as a cohesive unit rather than individuals working in parallel

Surfacing Challenges

Colorful LEGO creation resembling a multi-tiered structure with LEGO minifigure heads and skulls, featuring various blocks and accessories.

Participants created individual models to express what they saw as the team’s biggest challenges, allowing every voice to be heard in a balanced way.

The team combined their models to a shared model, representing a joint understanding of these challenges.

Outcome:

Shared understanding of all challenges (not just that of the leader)

Ownership begins to shift from “Leader Only” to Team

Team are fostering openness and trust - foundations for psychological safety

Co-Creating Solutions

LEGO figures participating in a mock fishing scene with a green bowl and fishing rods on a colorful LEGO baseplate.

Using their understanding of both strengths and challenges, team members built models showing how they would improve the situation.

These ideas were integrated into a shared future model, forming a collective vision of more effective ways of working.

Outcome:

Co-created practical, relevant solutions grounded in their reality

Strong buy-in and shared accountability for implementation

Commitment & Action

Lego minifigure with yellow skin, white shirt, red pants, holding a telescope, standing next to a open treasure chest on a multicolored Lego baseplate.

Finally, each participant built a model representing their personal commitments and key takeaways.

This step reinforced accountability, reflection, and the transition from insight to action.

Outcome:

Clear individual commitments established

Commitment to embed the session’s insights into day-to-day behaviour.

The Results


By the end of the session, the team had:

Created clear, shared agreements on how to better structure their working day

Developed a stronger understanding of workload distribution and how to manage it collaboratively

Built a sense of shared ownership over both challenges and solutions

Strengthened trust and openness within the team

Follow Up

In the 6 week follow up call, the manager reported that the changes had been sustained, with visible improvements in commitment, collaboration, and overall effectiveness.

Notably, the new ways of working were also adopted by the second team in the other location.

Client Testimonial

Smiling woman with shoulder-length brown hair wearing a white top, indoors

Moya Sands

Founder

“I had the pleasure of working with Yeshim during a LEGO® Serious Play® session she facilitated with our team, and it was a genuinely insightful experience. She has a rare ability to help people surface ideas and perspectives they didn’t even realise they were holding, using colour, shape and metaphor to express both challenges and opportunities.

Yeshim guided us skilfully from individual reflection into shared understanding, helping us see our challenges more clearly and align as a team around practical ways forward. She is perceptive, thoughtful and highly engaging as a coach, and I would highly recommend her to any team looking to unlock fresh thinking and move towards their goals with clarity and confidence”