Appreciative Inquiry
Building on what's working well...
Our workshop began with the use of Appreciative Inquiry, a conversational method that enables people to focus on the positive in their lives, their work and their communities. The basic foundation of Appreciative Inquiry is storytelling. As people tell their stories, carefully crafted appreciative interview questions enable them to draw out important elements of their experiences that can be built upon to effect positive changes in their lives.
Participants were each given an interview guide featuring a series of appreciative questions.
We split into pairs and spent an hour interviewing each other, starting first with a story which helped us to focus on what was most important and successful in our work as Leaders. As we moved through the interview questions we gradually shifted to a broader focus, discussing the things we valued most about ourselves and our work, and sharing wishes we had for the future.
After lunch, we began moving into small groups to discover the key themes that had come up during the morning's paired interviews. One amazing thing about the Appreciative Inquiry process is that regardless of the diversity of the participants in the group, common ideas and themes always emerge during the post-interview stage as the participants process their conversations.
We wrote our key phrases and words on pieces of coloured paper and, as the entire group came back together, put them on a "sticky wall" as we shared our findings.
Facilitator Christine Whitney Sanchez helped us group the findings together to identify several broad themes that had emerged. From these themes, we crafted questions to use for the following day's World Café discussions.
For more information about Appreciative Inquiry:
Appreciative Inquiry Commons at Case Western Reserve University - the ultimate online AI resource site.
Visit Amazon.com to buy the Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry by Sue Annis Hammond, 2nd edition, Nov. 1998.