Leading by listening: learning through connection. Meet Programme Lead, Summer. 🤝
As Programme Lead for the Senior Leader Mentoring Programme at the LEGO Group, I’ve seen how much can change when we create space to listen - not just to respond, but to understand. Through the programme, colleagues from across our global teams share their perspectives and experiences, helping our senior leaders better understand different viewpoints and continue building an inclusive workplace.
It’s important to listen to people whose experiences may differ from our own, and to stay curious and open to learning from colleagues with different nationalities, cultures and backgrounds.
We believe LEGO® play is for everyone - and so is our workplace. As an organisation focused on inspiring and developing the Builders of Tomorrow, creating an environment where people feel welcomed, valued and able to grow is an important part of how we work together. This reflects our People Promise - creating opportunities for everyone to succeed and grow together as one LEGO team.
Research suggests that when people feel included and heard, they can do their best work, and teams can make better decisions up to 87% of the time and do so twice as fast.
That thinking sits behind our global Senior Leader Mentoring Programme.
Turning mentoring on its head
In many organisations, mentoring follows a familiar pattern: senior leaders guide others by sharing their knowledge and perspectives. But we designed this programme to take a different direction.
Senior leaders are the mentees, paired with LEGO colleagues from different backgrounds, cultures and roles who bring their own experiences and perspectives of working at the LEGO Group. Through open, informal conversations, they help senior leaders better understand how inclusion and belonging show up in everyday workplace moments, creating space for meaningful learning.
Creating space for insightful conversations
At the heart of the programme are four mentoring sessions, supported by a shared toolkit and optional themes to guide discussions.
We encourage participants to be brave, curious and focused – behaviours that are central to our Leadership Playground and how we approach leadership and growth at the LEGO Group.
Participants can talk openly about what works, what could be better, and how ideas can help shape the workplace in the future.
Since launching in 2021, the programme has brought together more than 130 mentoring pairs, including over 100 senior leaders and colleagues from teams across Europe, China, the Americas and Australia.
I’ve heard time and again that these conversations create space for openness, honesty and trust.
Two-way learning
While the programme was designed to help senior leaders better understand colleagues’ perspectives, the learning goes both ways.
Mentors gain insight into leadership thinking, business priorities and expected behaviours at senior level. At the same time, they build a deeper understanding of how the LEGO Group operates across geographical and cultural boundaries.
Colleagues tell us the programme gives them the opportunity to share their views in a thoughtful and constructive way.
Hear directly from our awesome LEGO colleagues
To bring these conversations to life, colleagues from the programme are sharing their reflections.
You’ll hear directly from both mentors and mentees about what they’ve learned, what surprised them, and how the experience has shaped the way they think about inclusion and leadership.
Why it matters
For me, this is what inclusion looks like in practice.
It’s not about a single initiative - it’s about the everyday behaviours and choices that shape how people experience our workplace.
When people with different perspectives feel heard and valued, it can lead to stronger collaboration, better ideas and more meaningful experiences for children and adults globally. While we may experience the workplace differently, we’re connected by a shared mission to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.
The Senior Leader Mentoring Programme helps strengthen understanding, trust and connection across our global teams by creating space for open, meaningful conversations.
Inclusion isn’t something we ‘achieve’ - it’s something we practice together as #OneLEGOTeam.
Continuing the conversation
The Senior Leader Mentoring Programme is just one part of how we’re working to strengthen inclusion and belonging at the LEGO Group. But it reflects something bigger about our culture.
We believe everyone has something to learn. And everyone has something to teach.
Sometimes, all it takes is a conversation to start building that bridge.
