The Construction Challenge Activity

Construction Challenge is an activity to reflect on communication, leadership, conflict and cooperation in a work team. Effective communication is crucial for problem-solving as it facilitates the exchange of ideas, information, and perspectives among team members, leading to a comprehensive understanding of the problem at hand.

Put the group into teams of 5-9 people. Each group sits around a table with a box of LEGO. Ask participants not to touch the LEGO until the activity begins.

Give the instructions: Your task, as a group, is to build a structure with these LEGO bricks. In a moment, each of you will get a piece of paper, where your individual assignment is written.

Important! You may not show or tell your assignment to the rest of the team.

Teams will have 20 minutes to build their structure and will not be able to talk during the building process. They must continue building until time runs out.

Hand out the “assignments,” one per participant. Remind participants that they must not show their assignment to anyone else.

Once everyone has an assignment, begin the time and let participants start.

After 20 minutes, tell participants to stop building. Invite them to guess the “assignments” of the other members of their group.

Participant tasks

To print and cut out the tasks below for the participants

• You are only one allowed to build (put bricks together) in the first 3 layers of the building.
• You must make sure that layers 3 and 4 only consist of yellow bricks. You have to make sure that layers 2 and 6 consist of exactly eight bricks.
• You are the only one allowed to build (put bricks together) in rows 5 and 6 of the building.
• You have to make sure that a maximum of eight bricks are used in the 3rd and 5th layers of the building.
• You are the leader of the group.
• You have to make sure that the building is no higher than a maximum of eight layers. If people stop building when they have reached the eighth layer, you have to make sure they continue building in the layers below.
• You have to make sure that the bricks that are next to each other in layers 1, 6 and 8 do not have the same color.
• You have to make sure that there are, together with you, two others and only two others who build in layers 4 and 8.
• You have to make sure that the first layer (layer 1) of the building consists of exactly 10 bricks.

Moment of Reflection

• What did you notice while the construction was taking place? What were the main difficulties you saw in the development of your task?
• Do you think you were successful? Why or why not?
• Do you think the team was successful? Why or why not?
• Did you identify a person as the leader of the group? Why? What did he do specifically?

The topics of this publication: collaboration, teamwork, non-verbal communication, observation skills, interactions, adaptability skills