Appreciative Inquiry is a collaborative and constructive inquiry process that searches for everything that gives life to organizations, communities, and larger human systems when they are most alive, effective, creative and healthy in their interconnected ecology of relationships. To appreciate, quite simply, means to value and to recognize that which has value—it is a way of knowing and valuing the best in life. In the language of Positive Organizational Scholarship it means a research focus—a positive bias—seeking fresh understanding of dynamics described by words like excellence, thriving, abundance, resilience, or exceptional and life-giving. In this context the word appreciate means to value those things of value—it is a mode of knowing often connected to the idea of esthetic appreciation in the arts. To appreciate also means to be grateful or thankful for—it is a way of being and maintaining a positive stance along the path of life's journey. And not incidentally, to appreciate is to increase in value too. Combining the three—appreciation as a way of knowing, as a way of being and as an increase in value– suggests that Appreciative Inquiry is simultaneously a life-centric form of study and a constructive mode of practice. As a form of study, Appreciative Inquiry focuses on searching systematically for those capacities and processes that give life and strength and possibility to a living system; and as a constructive mode of practice, it aims at designing and crafting human organizations through a process in which valuing and creating are viewed as one, and where inquiry and change are powerfully related and understood as a seamless and integral whole Leading Positive Change through Appreciative Inquiry is a course dedicated to advancing our understanding and skill in leading strength-based change and on how to create, foster and manage organizations in which people thrive and perform at their best.
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From the course by Case Western Reserve University
Leading Positive Change through Appreciative Inquiry
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From the lesson
Week 2
Week Two underscores the “power of the positive question” and story-telling as effective ways to engage stakeholders in change efforts. Participants in the course are guided to conduct an “appreciative interview” in order to experience the impact of “best past” questions and sharing stories that evidence strengths in action. The fatefulness of the questions leaders ask is demonstrated as a foundational principle in AI.
Meet the Instructors
Ronald FryProfessor
Organizational Behavior
[MUSIC]
Welcome back.
Now that you've all tried on the very beginning part of appreciative inquiry
by doing these discovery interviews using the AI type of question,
I want to talk a little bit more about that experience.
If you were engaged in using the method, that would be a first step.
You would have a collection of people on your team or in your workplace
that you brought together to inquire on a particular topic and
you would shape the questions toward that topic.
So instead of that first question about an overall high point of being a leader,
maybe it would be an overall high point in customer service if that was your focus.
The second question might not be about examples of highest engagement, but
maybe it would be examples of long-lasting customer relations or something like that.
So, you would taper and cater your question to the topic.
We'll give many more examples of that as we move forward in the course,
but what I want to talk about for a moment is the experience of doing the interview.
This is a photograph of a flip chart in workshop I did where everybody
had done the interview just like we described in the last session and
I asked them the questions, what did you notice about your state while
you were actually engaged in the conversation?
What words or phrases would you use to describe how you felt?
And this chart just demonstrates what they were telling me in the room,
words like energized connected to the other.
Pride, I felt listened to.
I felt excitement or enthusiasm.
I've done this many, many times with many, many different groups.
And I can tell you that when you use the intentionally positive,
story-based questions like you did in the interview.
You create these kinds of feelings in the moment and what are all these?
When you take all these together, what are they?
They're positive emotions, positive affect.
So what we're saying is that when you do an appreciative inquiry and
you begin with this conversation to discover what helped us do things best in
the past, and what are the initial images we have about possibilities in the future.
When you use these kinds of questions, you can guarantee that
you will generate increased positive affect in that moment,
in that meeting or in that work setting.
Now, this is not the end of the game.
This is not the purpose of appreciative inquiry
to create positive feelings, but this is a means to an end.
Without positive emotions, without positive affect dominating the discussion,
the dialog, we can not get the generative connection.
We can't get the ownership to the new ideas that are being surfaced.
We can't get a commitment and a desire to act on the new
ideas unless we have a dominant environment right there
in the workspace of positive affect and I can tell you,
90, 95, 100% of what people put up when I ask
this question are indicators of positive affect.
Occasionally, somebody says, well, I was a little anxious,
because I wasn't sure my story was good enough and fine.
That's honest, but it's always just one or two or none.
That go up that are anything other than, indicators of positive emotional affect.
So if you want to create that kind of workspace,
work context for your people to engage in.
Again, go back to the type of question.
Best past stories related to the issue that you want to work on and
then at least one question about the future image, but
you ask that one last after people have reconnected with their strengths and
reconnected with positive memories from the past.
The other thing I want to point is again, the type of question.
The first two questions in your interview are story-based,
they're not what we call list questions.
You're not asking what are the key success factors around here,
which invokes a list of thoughts or ideas.
You start with soliciting a story and then from the story,
then you dig deeper into what do you think made that happen?
Or what helped that to happen?
Or why do you think it happened that way?
But that comes after the exposure of a story and
it's like we're rediscovering age old wisdom.
We all know that storytelling helps create quality connections with our children,
in our homes, that's why we read stories.
We were all read stories when we were children.
For some reason, storytelling like that doesn't seem to
belong in management or in leadership.
But in fact, I think it's just well covered or we don't look for it enough.
In fact, good leaders are great storytellers.
They don't just give you the sound bites of the goals, they give you the narrative.
What's happened in the past that leads us up to where we are today,
that provides the opportunity for us to accomplish such and such in the future.
There's a story, there's a narrative.
And if that narrative connects with us intrinsically, then we follow willingly.
I don't mean passively.
I mean, we join.
We support, we engage with that agenda.
Most of us are not motivated by the end sound bytes that provide nice slides for
you know 20% growth by 20-20, that kind of thing.
What excites us is the narrative, because it explains where the possibility
comes from what we've done in the past that's helped up to get to here.
Now, we're ready to become something else.
This slide represents what other people have taught us about storytelling.
When we saw the power of stories in using appreciative inquiry in
the work context, we got interested.
We looked elsewhere where who else writes about stories and questions, and so forth.
So stories first of all and foremost,
they stick in our memory much better Than lists.
You'll remember the headline of the high point story of whoever
you talk to in your interview experience months and months from now.
But if I had to ask you what are the five characteristics of AI,
can you name three of them?
Recall is going to be much less effective.
Maybe remember two.
Maybe you remember three, but
you absolutely remember the headline of the high point story.
The reason is because we store them differently in the brain.
The part of the brain that helps us see pictures,
see images or see in imagery is where stories go.
It's a different part of their brain from where facts, data, lists, sound bytes go.
And we remember the images much, much better.
So, as an obvious implication for leaders.
[LAUGH] If you want people to really remember your vision or
the mission or the purpose of the enterprise creates stories,
because those will reside in people as images.
It's a medium for conveying what really matters to us.
The way we tell a story, what we emphasize in a story.
The arch of the story.
The way we choose to tell it evokes and
shows what it is that we value, what it is that we prioritize.
I love the one here in the middle of the list, this is a recent discovery for me.
When you listen to a good story, the brain
triggers the manufacture release of a hormone oxytocin.
In lay terms, this is known as the relationship hormone.
It's the hormone that breastfeeding mothers exhibit or
produce in high, high quantities.
It's the hormone that orients us with compassion toward another.
So, it orients us towards collaboration.
Think of that.
Listening to a good story actually produces
an orientation toward compassion and
focus on the other.
So the power of storytelling is a really key part of this whole method.
And again, we like to ask for list.
We love our what, why, who, when type questions.
But if you can preempt those with a request for a story first and
then use those questions to inquire deeper into the story,
then we produce the positive affect in the relationship right then and
there and we begin to build this shared commitment toward
eventually acting on new ideas, new possibilities that get generated.
[MUSIC]
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