Appreciative Inquiry

What really stays with me is that this book – and “book” seems like such an impoverished word for this treasure – is really a love letter to all women everywhere. It is uplifting, inspiring, empowering, and energizing. It speaks of hope and possibility and the creation of a wonderful future for everyone through the recognition and appreciation of women.

Conversations worth having are those that add value through appreciative questions and dialogue. They are meaningful and engaging. They increase the mutual pie of knowledge and understanding. They are strengths-based and productive. They are conversations that increase our energy, enhance our connections with others, improve collaboration and problem-solving, and make us feel valued, even loved.

The International Positive Education Network, known to friends as IPEN, held its second annual festival in Ft. Worth Texas from June 25 to June 28. The conference was jointly sponsored by the David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry, so you won’t be surprised that the conference title was .

“If you could do only one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?” This question, posed by Greg McKeown stopped me in my tracks. Applying it specifically to work, I wondered what one thing I could happily do for the rest of my life. The answer, strangely enough, arrived in my head as a diagram.

Yesterday I sketched the 3 main topics highlighted in the Appreciative Education conference in early January. Today I want to talk the ways appreciative education relates to positive psychology, appreciative mindsets, and ways appreciative education can contribute to my own goals around creating positive universities and university experiences.

The Appreciative Education (AE) Conference took place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in early January 2015. According to conference organizer, Jennifer Bloom, AE aims to improve education in K-12 through higher education by providing “an intentional and positive approach to bettering educational enterprises by focusing on the strengths and potential of individuals and organizations to accomplish co-created goals.”

The period between Christmas and New Year is for many a pot of unstructured time that can lapse into a wasteland of mindless eating and slumping in front of the TV. The days are short and energy levels are low. But this time is perfect for reflecting on the year that’s gone and planning the year ahead. Take a life audit of 2014 as a basis to plan for 2015.

The United Nations declared that March 20, 2014 will be the second International Day of Happiness. In honor of this event, the graduates of the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program at Penn are offering a free mini conference about various applications of positive psychology at work, at home, and in the community. Find out more about this free event.

Many people dread strategic planning sessions. But with a different mindset and framework, strategic planning can be energizing, interesting, and engaging. It could even be joyful. SOAR stands for Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results. It is a strengths-based approach to strategic thinking that has many positive impacts. SOAR capacities can also be measured.

In Kim Cameron’s Deviance Continuum, designed for use in businesses and other organizations, normality or healthy performance is a mid-point between positively deviant and negatively deviant performance. Negative and positive deviance are aberrations from normal functioning, problematic at one end and virtuous at the other.

As my plane landed at the Toronto Pearson International Airport on Thursday, I looked out the window and saw large letters spelling “HAPPY” on the main terminal wall. The sign struck me as a foreshadowing of the days ahead.

It’s not unusual for me to hear from my coaching clients that one of their problems is that they need to speak up more and to think on their feet. Using a strengths mindset, I ask my clients how they benefit from being quiet in meetings and the advantage of not being so outgoing. When they reply easily and with energy (and usually with a look of relief on their faces) it reveals that their quietness is their strength.

This is Part Two of the coverage of the CoreChange AI Summit in Cincinnati covering the 4 D stages. Read comments by local activist Peter Block. See how Cincinnati (home of the VIA Institute) may well make history with plans to create the first ever Strengths-Based City.

Over 500 attendees participated in Cincinnati’s CoreChange Appreciative Inquiry Summit. The task? “Invent the New American City to Bring Peace, Prosperity and Health to our Core Neighborhoods.”

Read about David Cooperrider’s leadership and how he was persuaded to facilitate by Dr. Victor Garcia, a Cincinnati surgeon. Then come back Monday for more stories about a city-wide summit with a powerful agenda.

I recently gave a series of workshops to supervisors who all work together within the same organization. This was an interesting study for me, as I’d never before delivered the exact same material four days in a row to different audiences. The overall topic of the session was leadership, and the entire day was built on a framework of positive psychology.

This week marks the third annual Sustainable Cleveland 2019, an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) summit led by David Cooperrider for the city of Cleveland. I had the opportunity to interview one of the participants, Louis Alloro, who is also involved in SOMO Leadership, a business that emerged from the first Sustainable Cleveland conference held in 2009.

Leaders and managers often face the task of implementing organizational change, a complex process which is frequently experienced as difficult to get right. What insights can leaders gain from Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry to help them lead successful change? This question is addressed in two chapters in the Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology and Work. Here are some of the key points from these chapters.