Black History Month provides a vital opportunity to not only honour and celebrate the contributions of black colleagues in the profession, but also serves as a reminder to strengthen efforts towards creating more inclusive environments, where diverse voices are encouraged, heard, valued and respected.
One key to achieving these outcomes is improved communication. Open, empathetic and culturally aware language and communication allow staff members to better understand and connect with colleagues from different backgrounds. By embracing principles of better communication, practices can then create a work culture where everyone feels empowered to contribute, collaborate and grow.
But sometimes, being open and talking about diversity and inclusivity to people from different backgrounds can be difficult, and even overwhelming at times.
However, one London-based consultant uses an innovative technique via which to get everyone on a level playing field and to use new, fun ways to communicate that, in turn, breaks down barriers and encourages open communication.
What are the innovative ways in which to increase communication?
Dian Small, former Director of RIBA London Region and now of The Cultural Architect, has been facilitating workshops for the region’s team and for some of the capital’s best-known practices for some years.
LEGO® Serious Play is used by some of the world’s biggest commercial organisations as a management tool to improve problem-solving skills and to break down complex problems into manageable pieces through the construction of physical 3D models.
Dian, who is a trained facilitator, says LEGO® Serious Play is also a great way of bringing people together to examine a practice’s management approach to inclusivity and improve collaboration and team building.
“Everyone knows how to how to use and build with LEGO®, so it transcends cultural and linguistic barriers,” Dian says.
Because of these transcendent abilities the exercises put everyone who participates on an equal footing in workshops so no one can dominate the space and everyone can tackle what would be potentially challenging situations or subjects in a different way. In typical team-building or EDI events, one or two people will tend to take over a session, whether this is down to their seniority or just their personality. But with LEGO® Serious Play, people participate as equals regardless of their background or position in the organisation.
“It creates a safe space for expression, a non-threatening environment for sharing thoughts and experiences, especially subjects that some people might feel uncomfortable about expressing,” Dian explains.
Because it empowers diverse voices, Dian sees the LEGO® method as an ideal way to allow members of minoritised groups to express their individual perspectives and their own cultural values.
It’s visual storytelling where complex ideas can be communicated non-verbally, so no one will feel at a disadvantage if they are struggling with traditional verbal expressions, or corporate management speak.
Find out more about how RIBA is celebrating Black History Month
How does ‘Reclaiming the Narrative’ work?
Dian has created a Serious Play workshop called Reclaiming the Narrative, which is specifically about cultural awareness within architectural practices, and the sharing of different perspectives and cultural values.
To the uninitiated, it seems difficult to imagine how complex ideas and abstractions can be communicated through LEGO®, but Dian says participants tend to be surprised at just how powerful the personal models can be.
She says she has led workshops at practices where senior managers have turned up, clearly looking like they have better things to do, and have become the most enthusiastic participants as they discover a new way of engaging with team members. She says participants have told her they still remember their models from years ago.
The classic Serious Play workshop is structured so that the facilitator poses a question, each participant builds a model in response and shares it with the group by explaining how it tells their own personal story. Participants as a group then reflect on what people have built. The workshop can also collectively build a shared model that hopefully synthesises a set of newly-informed shared values.
“The build is kind of the fun thing that gets everyone started and involved, but it’s the reflection and the conversations that come out of this that have the real value,” says Dian.
The subtlety of the model-building process is that a participant is talking about what they have built, and not directly about themselves, she explains. When a person is talking about diversity and inclusion, subjects that people may find challenging, any questioning is about the model you have built to express their story or situation, rather than directed at them. It can open up conversations without individuals feeling personally challenged or put on the spot.
And when participants build a shared model in 3D representing a set of shared values that can improve the workplace, everyone has physically contributed, which gives the model more power than a set of written values stuck on a wall or on a web page. LEGO® or no LEGO®, these are the building blocks of improving communication and inclusion in the workplace.
Thanks to Dian Small, The Cultural Architect
Text by Neal Morris and Paul Hirons. This is a professional feature edited by the RIBA Practice team. Send us your feedback and ideas.
RIBA Core Curriculum topic: Inclusive environments.
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