Career Development Blog

The Power of Appreciative Inqiury - I recently read an article about Appreciatve Inquiry and it took me back to my days consulting a hosptials.

 

I immediately thought of my experiences in teaching and training in hospitals. Hospitals are constantly going through changes and many employees feel very frustrated and negative when these changes occur. (e.g., the hospital is building and expanding into new buildings, the hospital is growing rapidly and hiring hundreds of new employees, the hospital is being bought by a larger organization, or new policies and procedures are being implemented).

When these types of changes occur, many employees come to the training sessions I give with an overwhelming sense of frustration, negativity and rigidity to the changes. I spend a lot of time helping them work through the changes that are occurring a focusing the positive aspects of these changes and their jobs.

In a brief review of your questions, I stumbled upon The Power of Appreciate Inquiry – A Practical Guide to Positive Change. Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom, Berrett-Koehler, 2003. I had heard of AI prior to this exercise.

The Power of Appreciate Inquire describes an approach to organizational change that can help improve performance by encouraging people to study, discuss, learn from and build on what’s working, rather than simply trying to fix what’s not working. AI emphasizes the positive things of the job, the unit, the people and the organization and what is successful, rather than what is not successful.

There are 8 principles for AI; 1) Constructionist Principle - Words create worlds, 2) Simultaneity Principle – Inquiry creates change, 3) Poetic Principle – We can change what we study, 4) Anticipatory Principle – Image inspires action – 5) Positive Principle – Positive questions lead to positive change, 6) Wholeness Principle – Wholeness brings out the best, 7) Enactment Principle – Acting “as if” is self-fulfilling, 8) Free Choice Principle – Free choice liberates power.

The principle I liked best for this exercise was the Positive Principle where again – positive questions can lead to positive changes. When focusing on large scale change, this requires that leaders focus on the positive affects of an organization and social bonding with in the organization. Here, leaders allow for positive questions that reflect the positive core of what is happening in the organization and to not focusing on the negative. They also need to “listen” to these questions!

I believe that leaders are critical in the AI process and must set the positive tone for AI and begin to lead by example in their actions. They must not only promote these principles, but they must exhibit them, so that staff can see that they are committed to focusing on the positive and not the negative.

So in closing, AI might be one way to help organizations “unlearn negatives” and help them focus on the positive for the future.