From Crossed Arms to Creativity: Using Appreciative Inquiry

Blog by Eastside People consultant Ann Nkune  on using Appreciative Inquiry techniques at charity awaydays, workshops and team development days.

Introduction

It’s natural to focus on problems: if I asked for your most memorable team awayday moments, chances are it will be the ones that made you cringe or made your blood boil or sent you into a light snooze which would come to mind.  Once you’d got those off your chest, could you identify the best, most generative awayday moments (they might even have happened at the same event).  What made those moments special, what did they change for you and your organisation?

Before I knew that David Cooperider had coined a term for it, I knew that even when things were at their most difficult and divisive the most productive away days I ever went to took my colleagues and I on a journey from “crossed arms to creativity” by appreciating what was best in me and the organisation I was part of.  The facilitators didn’t avoid the glaring challenges we faced but they gave us a fresh mindset to tackle them differently.  Appreciative Inquiry, originally developed by David Cooperrider is premised on having a “positive core” – shifting from the usual focus on the “problem to be solved” to an ‘agenda for change’ and the discovery of strengths as a foundation for creating and working towards a shared dream or vision.

Here is Appreciative Inquiry in a nutshell (credit: Paula Hansen, Chart Magic).

So how does a great appreciative inquiry for a team development day work in practice? Here is a quick step by step guide – ideally co-facilitated by people with different experiences of privilege, discrimination and background.  Keeping co-design at the centre of the process means that there are also plenty of variations of this model in practice.

Preparing the Ground

There are nearly always some insecurities and tensions between participants, and sometimes much stronger feelings of hostility or resentment. There will be structural power imbalances, discrimination and varying levels of knowledge and confidence.

Bringing appreciative inquiry principles into the preparation stage can help overcome obstacles and make sure that everyone feels as safe, ready and positive as possible.

Even if the room is full of enthusiastic participants with high levels of trust and a common, clearly defined goal in mind (reviewing our values and purpose; planning our 2 year strategy; developing a new product or service) this preparation time is as important as delivery on the day.

1. Give the commissioner/leader time to think. Establishing the right conditions for them to explore the topic they’d like to set for the day is critical. (See The Thinking Environment for more on this powerful method of supporting independent thinking).

Making time for “what’s on top” and not expecting them to have a fully formed brief gives them space to bring what’s important and set aside anything they need to let go of or pause to make the group work process a success. It helps build crucial trust and warmth between client and facilitator.

Asking about their past experiences of working with an external facilitator is gold dust in terms of understanding what they want more or less of; and helping them to remember what they appreciated and achieved most from previous similar processes helps them feel confident about the outcome of this process too. This is the ‘discovery phase’ of appreciative inquiry in miniature.

2. The next question to ask is what their best hope for the day is. This generates a positive, optimistic vision (‘Dream’ phase during the day itself). The ultimate goal here will be to come up with a really perfectly worded dream question which will form the centrepiece of the day. It also opens the route to talking about what might stand in the way of that hope if it hasn’t come out of the “what’s on top” part of the conversation.

Thinking about the widest possible set of options for making that hope a reality (Design phase) and overcoming barriers can then help inform the design of the day itself (sometimes adding some steps that they may have been tempted to short cut). This is the destiny phase – the commitment to what will actually happen on the day.

3. Pre-brief each participant separately, using the same framework of what’s on top, previous experiences, hopes for the day and adjustments that will help them to fully participate is a great investment if there’s time.

This only needs to take 15 minutes per person by phone or online, and really helps people feel reassured about what to expect and properly heard by the facilitator. Sometime these conversations can inform adjustments to the programme for the day. This might include a re-wording of the dream question. Getting sign up to this wording in advance of the day is really helpful.

On the Day

There are some essentials for getting ready on the day – setting the room up in a way that makes people feel welcome and able to work constructively (cafe style tables and break out spaces are usually great); making sure the IT is functioning and finally of course making sure that there are tasty refreshments that meet everyone’s dietary requirements. 

menting. There will also be “Major Projects” which require follow up discussions to refine and validate – these too should have a lead and regular dates for review and progress.

The Session

1. Set the scene: This is delivered by the most senior person present – usually the CEO, chair of trustees or founder. It needs to be really concise – 8 minutes maximum, covering the housekeeping essentials, the topic to be addressed, introducing the facilitator and setting a positive and authentic tone for the day ahead.
2. Mental readiness: For teams who are used to using mindfulness this is a great investment of 5 minutes to help people mentally process and clear distractions. If it’s not already accepted, I don’t try it ‘cold.’
3. Identify hopes for the day: Before setting ground rules, ask participants to pick an image (for example At My Best’s brilliant card pack) to represent their hope for the day. Ask each person to introduce their card and tell them it will be revisited at the end of the day. It keeps everyone concise but immediately opens up imaginative creative thinking in a very safe way.
4. Agree ground rules: There are many ways to run this (just don’t skip it, however well everyone knows each other) A two stage process is good talking in pairs about what they will commit to and ask of each other and then negotiating as a whole group.

 Investing time in this is hugely valuable, in self regulating people’s behaviour during the session but also in setting longer term norms for team values and behaviours. It needs to be a live document, up on the wall and revisited, gently for the odd ‘slip’ or more fully if breaches of it are threatening to derail the process of the day.

5. Discovery: The timeline is a fantastic way to approach this. At its most succinct (in small teams where there’s a high level of trust and knowledge of each other, and time is short) this can be a series of post-its of the team’s proudest moments – each dated and agreed as a group.

 A richer version of the exercise asks people first to come up with their individual ‘proud moments’ including personal achievements, along with ones in their professional roles over time and finally their best memories of the team/service’s achievements. They need to be dated and labelled with their names.  After a short time of individual thought and writing, ask them to get into pairs and tell each other about their examples. While one person is speaking, the other listens intently, identifying the skills and qualities that the speaker demonstrated in each of their proud moments, followed by the team strengths demonstrated by the collective proud moments.

Each of these is then agreed (or changed) and written on individual post-its. This might spark other memories to generate a few more post-its as well. When this is completed, everyone sticks their timeline post its on a wall mounted timeline (very, very long roll of paper) in chronological order. The team achievements are read out.

The personal moments make for excellent conversation starters over break or lunch (probably for many weeks to come). Each pair then presents the skills and qualities demonstrated by their partner & the team to the whole group. The post its are put up on a flip chart and the facilitator clusters them during a break to show where there are particular team strengths, and perhaps where there may be gaps to fill in future recruitment.

This stage can also be done before the main event through paired interviews, allowing more time to think deeply about skills and qualities.  A final step is to find the most deeply held ‘positive core’ at the heart of the organisation using the clustered post-its.  There is often a strong and quick consensus around this.

6. Dream: this is the centrepiece of the day, and the feelings and memories that it creates will last longer and generate more change than any of the design and delivery phases that come afterwards.

So, taking time to craft a really exciting, powerful, incisive “dream” question is an incredibly good investment up front.  It might be:

• • “What will we be like as an organisation if we are at our boldest and best in two years?”
  • “How will it feel to work here in a year if we are all able to be at our most productive and creative?” or
  • “How will our happiest customer feel if our new product reaches it’s true potential?”

The brief is to work in small teams to come up with answers using creative tools (absolutely no laptops and PowerPoints allowed!). Provide play doh, Lego, post-its, flipcharts, image cards, and/or dressing up props and encourage poems, sculptures, headlines, role play or dance.

Participants invariably get out of their comfort zones and take some risks, buoyed by the confidence of the discovery phase. People spend some time thinking and creating individually and then share their ideas, often finding common ground and adding some collaborative art or performance to the mix.

Cynicism and sabotage fall away, and each team shows off the product of this element of their appreciative journey. With permission this is the part of the process to capture on film, because it will be something to come back to on the messy road of reality in the days and months ahead.

7. Break: During a well-deserved break after the dream phase work with the team leader to identify 2-3 themes that have emerged from the discussion so far: it might be:
   • Internal (generative team communication, a great work environment, a balanced budget etc) or
   • External (consistent brand reputation, client outcomes to be proud of etc), and forms the basis for the design phase which happens next
8. Design: this phase is all about the widest exploration of ways to reach their ‘dream’ state.
   • What has worked before, either for the team or in other settings?
   • What research or information can we draw on?
   • What other questions would we need to answer?
   • What are the most exciting possible options for action?

It’s important here to stay imaginative and open, hearing everyone’s ideas does not mean agreeing to action them. It offers a well of possibilities to draw on.

Once everyone has really had an opportunity to think and contribute (probably again in small teams of 3 or 4 members who pick the theme that most interests them), it’s time to identify someone to feedback on behalf of the team to the whole group, with a summary of options and priorities.

9. Delivery: While the magic of a good appreciative inquiry process is the foundation of optimism and trust it engenders, it’s also good to have some firm commitments to action while the momentum is at its peak.

 Divide these into “Quick Wins” which can be done within a month or so, and have an obvious outcome with a lead individual taking responsibility for implementing.

There will also be “Major Projects” which require follow up discussions to refine and validate – these too should have a lead and regular dates for review and progress.

10. Review: The final action for the day is to revisit the images shared during ‘hopes for the day’ – everyone takes turns to assess how their expectations matched the reality of the day. It provides for individual reflection and often generates the kind of testimonials Amazon can only dream of 🙂.

Feedback and Evaluation

1. Create a presentation of all the day’s findings – using photos and film from the day to provide a permanent record of the steps that the team took during the day, along with the commitments to action from the delivery phase.
2. An evaluation survey a few days after the event to allow participants time to reflect more fully on the process and give considered answers about the outcomes from their experience
3. A final debrief with the commissioner can offer some time to reflect on outcomes and the embedding of this approach in the day to day operation of the team.

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