Belonging Is A Felt Sense – Supervision with Lego Serious Play – Paul Sanbar

In this engaging session, Paul Sanbar, a leadership coach, coaching supervisor, and visual thinking facilitator, demonstrates how Lego Serious Play can be used as a transformative tool in supervision. The session titled “Belonging Is A Felt Sense” highlights how reflective conversations can be turned into embodied practices by utilizing Lego to explore themes of belonging and connection in supervision.

Sanbar opens the session by explaining the unique use of Lego Serious Play to foster self-development and positive change through purposeful play. He emphasizes how the felt sense of belonging can be explored using physical objects like Lego to represent complex systems and emotional experiences. This playful, yet impactful method invites both supervisors and clients to dive into a new way of understanding through visual, tactile, and somatic experiences.

Key Themes Explored in the Session:

                1.           Embodied Cognition & Belonging: Paul Sanbar introduces the idea of belonging as an embodied experience, where participants use Lego bricks to visually represent their sense of belonging and connection. This approach allows participants to reflect deeply on what belonging feels like for them, creating tangible metaphors for their emotions and experiences.

                2.           Lego Serious Play for Supervision: Sanbar demonstrates how Lego Serious Play can be applied in supervision to help clients externalize their thoughts and emotions. By building physical representations of their challenges, clients gain a new perspective on their issues, allowing them to visualize solutions and explore different angles. Throughout the session, the supervisee, Judy, builds a metaphorical representation of her client’s challenges using Lego, which evolves as her thinking develops during the session.

                3.           Systemic Reflection and Collaboration: The session highlights the power of collaboration between supervisor and client. Sanbar, acting as both a guide and a facilitator, encourages Judy to make meaning out of the bricks she selects, helping her delve into the stuckness her client was experiencing. As Judy manipulates the Lego pieces, her insights into the client’s journey grow, symbolizing the process of unlocking mental barriers and fostering growth.

                4.           Somatic and Visual Learning: Judy reflects on how the tactile and visual nature of the session allowed her to embody her reflections. The act of building and adjusting the Lego structure mirrored her cognitive and emotional processing, providing a more profound and lasting sense of understanding.

Reflection and Learning:

Through this unique approach to supervision, Sanbar showcases how Lego Serious Play can create a more dynamic and embodied form of reflection. Clients and supervisors can explore challenges through storytelling, metaphor, and physical representation, which provides new opportunities for growth and insight. By focusing on the felt sense of belonging and the power of visual representation, this method allows for a rich and impactful supervision experience.

Participants left the session with a deeper understanding of how hands-on play can evoke powerful insights into emotional and psychological processes, offering new ways to support clients in supervision and coaching.