How LEGO Changed its Leadership Model from the Bottom Up

When Niels Christiansen became CEO of LEGO in 2017, he wanted to create a leadership model designed after the company’s core audience base – children. 

In an interview with the BBC, he says: “There are elements of how kids behave that are really beneficial for leadership.”

For LEGO, those traits are being focused, curious and brave – prioritising company values, developing new ideas and creating an environment where people can learn from failure. 

The company has implemented this in its wider leadership strategy, called its ‘Leadership Playground’.

The leadership playground

The company has created its leadership playground – which allows employees of any level to lead groups around innovation and company development – to help develop its pipeline of future leaders. 

The approach allows high potential employees to practice their leadership skills by encouraging them to lead specific initiatives based on their expertise.

Loren I. Shuster, Chief People Officer of LEGO, helped develop the method, saying in an interview with McKinsey: “We developed our ‘Leadership Playground’ model to ensure everyone is heard, contributing, respected, and valued. 

“In the Leadership Playground, anyone can volunteer to lead groups focused on employee health and wellbeing, innovation and creativity.

“We believe that to continuously thrive in the constantly changing world, everyone in an organisation needs to act as a leader, not the executive leadership team alone.”

An employee driven approach 

To develop this approach and reshape its overall culture, LEGO worked closely with employees. 

It partnered with the Institute for Management Development (IMD) and created a group of fifteen employees throughout the company's regions, teams and functions to identify a leadership model that would best benefit people across LEGO’s workforce. 

This group focused on LEGO’s belief in children being role models to guide a new leadership model, moving away from standards that were previously more rigid. 

These previously involved around 28 overlapping leadership frameworks, according to IMD, which muddled directives and made it harder for the business to take decisive action when needed. 

Once this employee group had helped develop LEGO’s new leadership standards of focus, curiosity and bravery, the company scaled it out across the organisation. 

More than a thousand employee volunteers were trained to act as ambassadors, or playground builders, of this model to train up staff and embed the new culture throughout the business.

These volunteers facilitate conversations about the new behaviours in their own teams, adapting them to the specific contexts of their roles.

A culture of play

With this model in place, the company has integrated its core value of play directly into the way its leadership and all employees operate. 

This emphasis on play has been fundamental to the company's identity and its ability to innovate for its customers.

In a BBC interview, Niels says: “We also really play, and that revolves around our Lego campus. It's a very playful environment. 

“I think it's important if you want to create these fantastic play experiences. It must be part of us to also allow play and have that as part of who we are. If we didn't do that, we couldn't serve kids in the right way.  

“Even in our boardroom, there are Lego bricks on the table, so people will be building throughout. Every year we allow every employee two days fully paid when they actually go out and play.”