If you feel like you are bombarded with challenges, barriers, problems, and other energy-draining negatives, you’re probably in just the right head space to learn more about appreciative inquiry.
David Cooperrider and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University developed appreciative inquiry (AI) in the early 1980s as a result of interviewing managers and participants in a program evaluation/review. They were struck by the stories and energy generated when people talked about the successes of the program. Michelle Chambers, CHRP, CTDP, is an organization learning and development consultant who works with the AI approach, particularly in the nonprofit context. Chambers says, “Instead of focusing on problems and changing people, AI invites people to engage in a collaborative discovery of what makes their organization effective.”
The practice of AI is grounded in an intense exploration of unconditional positive questions that can uncover an organization’s best practices and innovations, as well as the conditions that allow it to thrive, and then translating these findings into the daily processes and practices of the organization. Chambers illustrates the AI difference using the example of strategic planning. In strategic planning, organizations typically conduct a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), whereas with AI you use a SOAR analysis, which focuses on strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results.
In addition to strategic planning, appreciative inquiry can be used for:
- Change management
- Performance improvement
- Teambuilding
- Partnering
- Coaching
- Program evaluation
Bracket out the problems
“For us it was a relief,” recalls Stacy Ashton, executive director at Community Volunteer Connections in Coquitlam, British Columbia. “When you talk about the problems, you get stuck. AI gave us a way to get out of that space.” Ashton points out that it wasn’t that the problems were ignored, but that AI helps “bracket out” the problems. In other words, the problems get put to the side so the focus can be on what is working and what solutions are out there. “The way I look at it, any problem has been partially solved somewhere so it is a matter of finding where that is and building on that!” says Ashton.
Ashton has used appreciative inquiry in a number of ways at her volunteer centre, including the Culturally Welcoming Volunteer Program Training Initiative. With immigrant volunteerism, a lot of the research is about barriers to volunteering – systemic and otherwise – for new Canadians. And while that’s interesting, says Ashton, it doesn’t come packaged with a solution. “That was a part of why the AI approach was interesting to me. I wasn’t interested in identifying all the barriers; I was more interested in seeing how people get around the barriers.”
We do it for our clients; we should do it for our agency
Bobbye Goldenberg, executive director of the Family Counselling Centre – Cambridge and North Dumfries was drawn to AI because it was very much like the core of their business: “We help clients understand the good things they do and help them build on those good things. We’re always looking at positive things in our clients to help their self-esteem. But we weren’t doing it for our own agency.”
That changed recently during a major organizational planning exercise. Goldenberg put up lots of chart paper in the lunch room with instructions to volunteers, staff and clients that for the next two weeks the organization would focus only on the positive, and everyone could use the chart paper to write down what they thought the organization did well. In addition, there were coloured dots so people could add emphasis to points already written down. Goldenberg collated and circulated the information and planning committees were built around the ideas generated on the chart paper. In hindsight, one of the additional benefits was how the exercise made it easier to line activities up with budgets and funding criteria. Goldenberg cites, in particular, their work with violence against women programs. “We were struggling with some of the services we were providing to women because we couldn’t always define how it fit within our funding for violence against women,” says Goldenberg. However, after the organization started using a positive-focused AI approach they were able to match up their activities with the positive outcomes funders wanted. AI made it clearer how the positive outcomes were connected to what funders were looking for.
Additional reasons to focus on the positive
According to Lorna Heidenheim, executive director of the Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition, another beneficial outcome of appreciative inquiry has to do with productivity levels when you tap into people’s energy, enthusiasm and commitment. Through appreciative inquiry, she found her staff was more willing to look at different ways of doing things and “at the end of our first two day session, people weren’t drained, they were raring to go!”
The coalition has since gone on to incorporate AI into their own training and strategic planning with clients. Two staff members are now certified in the AI approach. Heidenheim would like to see appreciative inquiry available to more people in the nonprofit sector, however, training is generally quite expensive. Her organization would like to develop an accessibly priced and adapted course for nonprofits.
The challenges of AI
Appreciative inquiry is about deliberately focusing on the positive rather than dwelling on negatives, so there is some irony in discussing the challenges of AI. The most obvious challenge has to do with helping people move from looking at what’s not working, to looking at what is working. “The problems are real. The challenges are real,” admits Ashton. “So when people talk about the problems, they need to be heard. The AI approach can feel like you don’t want to hear about the problems, that you just want to be in this happy land where there are none. It’s a paradigm shift, a new way of thinking. You need a facilitator who really gets it and understands the AI process.” A well-trained facilitator with an organizational development background, as well as an understanding of systems and positive psychology is important. While appreciative inquiry may sound like a simple approach, it is grounded in a lot of theory.
When Goldenberg first brought AI to her organization, she fully anticipated doing a mini presentation on the theory behind AI but then decided not to, to just go ahead and do it. Hence, the chart paper. “Once they got into that, they experienced appreciative inquiry firsthand, then we sat down to talk about it and we started to use the term ‘appreciative inquiry’,” explains Goldenberg. “The best advice I can give is don’t start out with a presentation about what AI is all about – just get them into the mindset of looking for the positive.” Goldenberg recalls that it was really easy for her clinicians to make the mind shift to look for the positive because they do it with clients. However, it was much harder for her managers because their role is to look for things to fix. They needed time and encouragement to do some visioning.
Appreciative inquiry lends itself very well to the nonprofit sector because we’re already looking for solutions to social issues. It may take a concentrated effort to make the mind shift, but once that is underway, AI is a powerful vehicle for setting in motion a wave of positive organizational change.
The Five Phases of Appreciative Inquiry
1. Definition: Reframing a business challenge into a positive topic of inquiry and customizing a strategy for including the “whole system” in subsequent phases of the change process.
2. Discovery: Identifying the organization’s best practices, life-giving forces or root causes of success. Participants interview others to gain new insights into what drives the organization, what its capabilities are and what contributions its members can make to the world.
3. Dreaming: Building on the learning developed during the discovery phase by envisioning the organization’s future. People create images of what life in the organization and with its key constituents would look like if the organization’s best practices became the norm rather than the exception. This approach differs greatly from other visioning processes, because the dreams are grounded in what participants know to be their own and the system’s capabilities.
4. Design: Identifying the high-leverage changes the organization would have to make in its systems, processes, roles and metrics to support the vision described in the dream phase. This phase is more than just breaking down the dream into short-term actions; it’s translating the dream into the language of the organization’s social architecture – all of the formal and informal structures that sustain it.
5. Deliver: Fleshing out and experimenting with the innovations identified during the design phase.
Louise Chatterton Luchuk is a freelance writer and consultant who combines her love of writing with experience at the local, provincial and national levels of volunteer-involving organizations. For more information, visit www.luchuk.com.
