The SeriousWork Facilitator Standard

Certified Facilitator

Build Levels 1 and 2: individual and shared models. SHU: follow the method.

1. Runs the four-stage core process every time: challenge, build, share, reflect.
2. Runs the skills build before any content, so every participant can build, use metaphor and tell their model’s story.
3. Creates the conditions for enhanced communication: everyone builds, everyone tells, people listen with their eyes and are curious about the models, and there are no wrong answers.
4. Protects the builder’s ownership of meaning: asks about the model, never interprets it.
5. Agrees outcomes with the client, and writes objectives with a clear verb, subject and outcome.
6. Writes build questions in three parts (frame, question, narrative) that explore the objective, knowing that small changes in wording change what people build and mean.
7. Designs reflection questions that achieve the objective, asked one at a time, because reflection is where a session creates most of its value.
8. Tests that the objective, build question and reflection questions line up before facilitating.
9. Guides a group from individual models to one shared model: one conversation at a time, talking through the model, hearing every concern, closing with visible agreement.
10. Keeps time without hurrying people, and hears every model, every round.
11. Uses the LEGO® Serious Play® trademark correctly and respects other trainers’ intellectual property.

Evidence: facilitates skills builds and Build Level 1 and 2 rounds in class, with trainer and peer feedback each time. Designs a session in pairs using the alignment cycle, with feedback. Co-facilitates a two-hour introductory workshop for invited guests they have not met before, then joins a debrief.

How we assess: trainers observe against these competencies throughout. Where a competency is not yet shown, the facilitator gets specific feedback and a further observed practice before certification.

Certified Advanced Facilitator

Build Level 3: system models, with the five-stage SeriousWork Systems Thinking Model©. HA RI: adapt the method, then design your own.

1. Builds an unbroken line from the overarching objective, through every session objective, build question and reflection question, across a whole workshop, so every objective has a session that delivers it.
2. Writes objectives as testable outcomes, not topics or deliverables.
3. Designs each build level to feed the next, and plans what happens to every model.
4. Facilitates a system model through five stages: what the system achieves, agents, organise, connections, insight.
5. Generates agents over several rounds, including forces and factors as well as people, and helps the group see influence running both ways.
6. Teaches connections before asking for them, and keeps placement and connection rounds to clarifying questions.
7. Treats the insight stage as the heart of the workshop: tests the model with scenarios, and turns what it reveals into leverage, simple guiding principles and owned actions.
8. Adapts the method and designs original system applications, combining LEGO® Serious Play® with other tools where that serves the objective.
9. Times a full day realistically, protecting system and insight time.
10. Scales the design to the group: table groups, floor plan, co-facilitators.

Evidence: writes a full workshop plan on the SeriousWork planning template. A Master Trainer reviews it page by page and gives written feedback, and the facilitator revises it to a second version. Co-facilitates Build Level 3 in class.