Ways To Implement Appreciative Inquiry (1): Appreciative Team Development
Let's take a look at some of the forms that Appreciative Inquiry implementations can take (if you're not familiar with Appreciative Inquiry and what you can use it for yet, you might want to start by reading the first edition of this newsletter, which introduces the method).
Probably the simplest and smallest-scale way to use the full Appreciative Inquiry cycle, if we leave aside one to one coaching, is Appreciative Team Development.
This is where you take a team through a whole 4D cycle, probably over the course of a day (this could be a short day e.g. 10:00 - 16:00). You could just about do it in half a day, but that would be pretty tight.
If you're guiding the event as an external facilitator, you will agree the affirmative topic and the questions for the appreciative interviews with whoever's hired you - which will probably be the team leader or perhaps their line manager.
The affirmative topic might be about addressing a particular performance issue, or something more generic about how best to work together.
The Appreciative Inquiry format is great for team away-days. People will probably get to know each other better than they would through the traditional paintballing or rope-climbing, as the positive questions of appreciative interviews activate their empathetic networks, they see more of the full humanity of their teammates, and they get to enjoy themselves improvising their co-created vision of their desired future.
Occasionally I've been asked to facilitate an Appreciative Inquiry process where the main aim is simply to rebuild morale and help team members to get to know each other better.
In one such case, where the client was a small charity whose employees were spread out across the UK, largely working in isolation, the chief executive of the charity told me that it was fine to omit the Delivery (or Destiny) stage altogether and just focus on reconnecting with each other.
How often, in today's target-driven workplace, do people get the opportunity to just be with their colleagues and have interactions that are more than just transactional? The feedback that I get from Appreciative Inquiry courses and events consistently tells me that one of the things participants value most about them is the opportunity to meet and reconnect with other people in a deeper way.
One of the opportunities for adding value with Appreciative Team Development that's often overlooked is, literally, team-building. Why not do an Appreciative Inquiry process with a topic like "How do we work together effectively as a team?" when you very first bring a new team together.
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You're probably familiar with Bruce Tuckman's stages of team development:
Forming - where team members don't really know each other yet, and aren't sure what the rules will be for how they will work together, or the informal roles that each of them will take in the team. They're feeling pretty positive at this stage, as people generally do when they start a role that they wanted and worked for.
Storming - where people are jockeying for position, where differences in values and working styles come out, and some things about their fellow team members might start to irritate them as they get to know each other better, and people feel confident enough of their place in the team to challenge others and air disagreements.
Norming - where alliances start to form, where they get to know each other better, and they start to appreciate and understand their fellow team members as human beings, so they find ways to work together.
Performing - where the team has finally gelled, and they've found processes and norms that let them work together effectively.
Well - what if you could dispense with the 'Storming' stage altogether? An appreciative team development session would accelerate the understanding, trust, and getting to know and appreciate each other as human beings that normally doesn't happen until the Norming stage.
Many conflicts arise through misunderstandings, because people don't feel confident enough to communicate with each other, and don't have enough reserves of positive emotion to offset the anxiety that often makes people shy away from raising disagreements so that they can be resolved.
As people open up to each other in the Appreciative Inquiry process and collectively activate their 'Default Mode' or Empathic Networks, many of the niggles and clashes that would normally appear during the Storming stage will melt away or become less threatening, so they seem less like threats to one's identity and more like glitches in the system that team members can find solutions to in a calm and creative way.
If you want to find out more about how to use Appreciative Inquiry in practice with teams and small groups, I have a live online course starting on 5th June. Join a small group of explorers from around the world, not just learning about Appreciative Inquiry but experiencing it (essential if you really want to understand the spirit of it).