APPENDIX 2

Appreciative Resilience
Workshop Agenda

What follows is the appreciative resilience workshop agenda without commentary about ways to use it. The agenda with commentary is in chapter 7.

Appreciative Climate

1. Clarifying the purpose

2. Reviewing the agenda

3. Creating agreements for working together

4. Engaging in an activity that helps people see one another for who they are

Appreciative Resilience Model

1. Defining appreciative resilience

2. Exploring the outer circle of appreciative inquiry

3. Examining the interlocking circles of hope, despair, and forgiveness

Exercise: Hope—The Generative Force

Part 1

Work with a partner (or triad).

Instructions for interviewee: Think for a few moments about your leadership life. Tell a story of a time when you experienced or fostered hope. Tell it in detail—What were you doing? What was the context? Who was enabling you? What was the outcome(s)?

Instructions for interviewer: As you listen, ask any questions that arise for you, probe for details, and deeply listen.

Part 2

Join another pair. As interviewer, tell the group what moved you the most in the story you heard. Why did that aspect of the story move you?

Part 3

Reflect on the following questions. You may want to write down your answers or just sit quietly to reflect.

1. What struck you about hope?

2. How do you practice hope as a generative force in your leadership?

3. What have you done today to practice hope?

4. If you practiced hope as a tenet in your leadership what best things in your leadership would grow?

5. How would this growth foster your resilience?

6. What enables and supports you to practice hope?

7. How has recognizing and fostering hope allowed you to persist in leadership and live through challenging times?

Part 4

Engage in large-group reflections and insights.

Exercise: Despair—Bowed but Not Defeated

Part 1

Think of a challenging time either at work or at home. Pick something safe and small for the purposes of this exercise, but you may want to do it again with more complex issues in a safe place. From the list here, answer the first question and any others that draw you.

1. What was your greatest strength in a dark moment of your leadership?

2. How did you exercise that strength? What was the outcome?

3. Who enabled you to stand up again in the hardest moment of your leadership?

4. How did you/will you foster the power of that relationship?

5. What did you value about the situation, yourself, and others?

6. What were you fully aware of? What did you choose to focus on?

7. How did you seek and recognize allies and supporters?

8. What questions did you ask?

9. How did you reframe the situation to see possibilities?

10. How did you strive to understand the outcomes outside your control?

11. How did you brave the storm?

12. How did you develop, unfold yourself into your future?

13. What allowed you to expand and be open to opportunities?

14. How have you incorporated the new and different you into your life, as you are both the same and forever changed by despair?

Part 2

If you are comfortable doing so, share reflections, comments, and ideas with others.

Exercise: Forgiveness—The Heart of Resilience

Part 1

Form two circles of chairs facing each other—inside/outside circles. Think for a few moments about the role forgiveness has played in your leadership practice. It can take many forms: forgiveness of self, forgiveness of others, deeply understanding that things are as they are (a state of grace), offering forgiveness even when the “right” is on your side. Tell a story to the person sitting across from you about how forgiveness has allowed you to persist in your role as a leader. The following are some prompts: What were you doing? What was the context? Who was enabling you? What was the outcome(s)? What opened your heart to forgiveness? How did forgiveness change your leadership?

Part 2

Reflection: I believe that I can increase and foster forgiveness in my leadership practice by . . .

Exercise: Appreciative Resilience Plan

Topic: Being My Best Resilient Self

Part 1: Discovery Interview Pairs

Fold your paper in half to make a booklet; give it to your interviewer. As interviewer, write key highlights and themes from the interview on the back of your partner’s booklet.

Interview questions: Tell a story that illustrates you “being my best resilient self.” What do you value about yourself and others in that story? What three wishes do you have for “being my best resilient self”?

Share highlights from the interviews: What did you hear from your interviewee that struck you? What are the key themes?

Give the booklet to your interviewee.

Option: if time allows, share highlights in a group of two pairs.

Part 2: Dream—Visual Image

As individuals, choose your key theme(s).

On the front of your booklet, create a visual image of your future “best resilient self” that illustrates your key theme(s).

Part 3: Dream—Provocative Proposition

On the left inside page of the booklet, write a provocative proposition—a full sentence written in the present tense that represents your future “best resilient self,” is bold, and provokes action. Other options: write as a newspaper headline, a slogan . . .

Part 4: Design—How Will You Make Your Future Happen?

How will you practice being your best resilient self? What steps, what actions are you going to take as you experience hope, despair, and forgiveness? How will you use appreciative inquiry in your leadership work? Write key steps and actions on the right inside page of your booklet.

Share your booklet with others. Some options: share with your original partner or in small groups.

Part 5: Destiny/Delivery—Sustaining Your Future

Take your booklet and DO IT! Then celebrate, rediscover, redream, and redesign.

Exercise: Uplifting the Resilience of Others

Reflect on what you are already doing to uplift the resilience of others.

1. How are you currently uplifting what others are best at? What more might you do?

2. How are you building and using appreciative questions in your leadership work? What more might you do?

3. How are you reflecting, in the day to day, on the idea that powerful questions can change a life?

4. How are you exploring, understanding, and nurturing what sustains those around you? What more might you do?

5. What else . . . ?

Create two or three ideas in response to this question: What things will you do as a leader to uplift the resilience of others?