Appreciative Inquiry:
Finding the Energy for Change - Workshop
Speaker: Dalton Kehoe,
Birgit Langwisch, Mark
Norman
Appreciative Inquiry is an approach to organizational analysis, learning and change that is uniquely intended for understanding and fostering innovation in organizational relationships and processes. It is essentially an interview process with the unique capacity to discover what gives life to people, relationships, groups and the organizations of which they are a part.
In an Appreciative Inquiry Workshop members of a complete team, working on themselves, or a representative group working on a larger organization, carry out a series of interviews, where they seek to locate, highlight and illuminate the "life-giving" forces behind a group's or an organization's existence by answering "unconditionally positive" questions that:
Then, using the stories and insights that have been collected, the group holds a series of collaborative, creative decision-making discussions where they:
Unlike typical "problem-solving"
approaches to change, AI is more likely to motivate people follow through on
what they have promised to do because they
are motivated by hope for a better future, not fear of blame for past problems.
It affirms the power of their imagination and capacity for conscious choice
for the highest good for the whole.
Potential Uses for AI
Appreciative Inquiry, Self-Managed Communication and Teamwork
Suggested One-Day Agenda
Morning
1. Introduction of Appreciative
Inquiry as an Approach to Learning about your Team
2. Appreciative Inquiry Interview with person you know least about on the team.
3. Development of Inquiry Themes
4. Second round of Interviews
5. Development of Provocative Propositions: Powerful, Engaging Statements about
how Great Teams Talk and Work Together
Afternoon
6. Self-Managed Communication: The Way to Make The PP's Work
Learning Outcomes:
The Appreciative Inquiry interview process is genuinely engaging and fun for people, so the morning will help build positive connections. The group's development of a number of provocative propositions, not only requires co-operation, but also builds public commitment to ideal ways of working together, particularly with regard to talking together.
Finally, their learning and practice of several self-managed communication skills will permit them to "walk the talk" of their ideal propositions.
