CHAPTER 2

Leveraging the Force of
Appreciative Inquiry

Leveraging the force of appreciative inquiry is essential to appreciative resilience. This book focuses on using appreciative inquiry concepts to practice hope, to sustain oneself in despair, and to foster forgiveness. In this chapter, we examine the concepts of appreciative inquiry that we draw into the work of appreciative resilience.

Appreciative inquiry colleagues, researchers, practitioners, and leaders have all influenced our thinking and work. Before we go on, we want to acknowledge them and their contributions—their ideas, theories, stories, and experiences. We stand on their shoulders as we work with the appreciative inquiry components in the outer ring of the appreciative resilience model. Our own leadership experiences and the stories of other leaders have influenced how we look at resilience and why we think leaders benefit from building resilience with appreciative inquiry as they journey through hope, despair, and forgiveness.

The components in the outer circle of the appreciative resilience model and the related concepts which support that outer circle are the bedrock of building resilience with appreciative inquiry. As we examine this outer circle, we weave in examples that speak to the core states or elements of appreciative resilience—hope, despair, and forgiveness. In later chapters, we delve into hope, despair, and forgiveness in more depth.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

All the concepts around the outer circle are components of appreciative inquiry. As we noted in chapter 1, appreciative inquiry engages people and organizations in exploring, through asking questions and telling stories, what is currently working well, in order to manifest their future. “Appreciative inquiry is, essentially, a collaborative and highly participative, system wide approach to seeking, identifying and enhancing the ‘life-giving forces’ that are present when a system is performing optimally in human, economic and organizational terms. It is a journey during which profound knowledge of a human system at its moments of wonder is uncovered and used to co-construct the best and highest future of that system” (Watkins, Mohr, and Kelly 2011, 22).

Over the years, we have used the incredible gift of appreciative inquiry to assist organizations in building future plans, to conduct executive coaching, to develop teams, and to work with organizations through complex times. Also as leaders, we have brought appreciative inquiry into our daily work by reflecting on our strengths as leaders and always asking what more we can do. This chapter is not intended as a full exploration of appreciative inquiry, and we refer you to the many other books that have been written on how to use appreciative inquiry in various settings. In particular, if you are new to appreciative inquiry, we recommend you explore many of the works cited throughout the book (which are listed in the references section).

We were first introduced to appreciative inquiry in 2001, and since that time it has profoundly influenced how we work and how we see the world. When we began to focus more on resilience, we recognized that we could not do so without coupling it closely with appreciative inquiry, because to be resilient, one must both appreciate the current state and seek the possibilities for the future. In choosing to align our resilience work with appreciative inquiry, we are clear that even in the darkest of times, it is possible to seek the answer to the questions, What is working well? and How can we build on that? The incredible power in appreciative inquiry is that it seeks to uplift, motivate, and move organizations and people forward. Being a resilient leader is not about lingering in a particular state of being but rather always attempting to find the questions, the actions, or the reflections that promote forward movement. In the Appreciative Inquiry Handbook, the authors state that appreciative inquiry “refers to two things: a search for knowledge and a theory of collective action designed to evolve the vision and will of a group, an organization, or a society as a whole” (Cooperrider, Whitney, and Stavros 2003, 3–4). They also state that appreciative inquiry is about asking powerful and positive questions. It is for these reasons that we think resilience work must be linked with the work of appreciative inquiry, because being a resilient leader is about asking questions and inquiring into the current and future state in powerfully positive ways.

The leaders who participated in this book use appreciative inquiry and are committed to the notion of positive and powerful questions. We asked them, “If you could talk to other leaders about fostering resilience, what would you say to them about practicing appreciative inquiry?”

The following were two of the responses:

Appreciative inquiry, with its focus on strengths, draws out resilience and encourages and invites people to look at how we want things to be and how you actually can get there. So it’s not just focused on ideas but is action oriented and builds on the best of what is there and what people already know.

Appreciative inquiry is the most direct path to getting where you want to go. It is the easiest path to success.

As we listened to leaders talk about their advice around appreciative inquiry, many noted that they weren’t just talking about the AI processes, such as the 4-D process (explained in the next section) and other tools of appreciative inquiry, although they noted that these processes are very important for organizational change. They were talking about living the principles, engaging in practices such as asking powerfully appreciative questions, and approaching their worlds through the lens of appreciative inquiry. One leader noted:

Appreciative inquiry is much more than a facilitation process; it is a way of being. It offers a method of selfdiscovery that creates a reciprocal process between my personal and professional selves. Appreciative inquiry pushes this envelope to a new level with an invitation to inquire into both “who I was” and “who I wish to be.”

Over the next sections, we continue around the outer circle of the appreciative resilience model. As we move around the outer circle through AI processes, AI principles, being AI, and AI leadership, you will begin to see how these components create the foundation and processes for our resilience work.

AI Processes

AI processes can be used to build resilience. Through these processes, individuals, groups, and organizations can generate pathways to positive futures. These are hopeful pathways that can help people move along through the despair due to challenges, often applying forgiveness as they do so.

We begin with the 4-D process of discovery, dream, design, and destiny (Cooperrider, Whitney, and Stavros 2003). The 4-D process involves inquiring into an affirmative topic: what is wanted by the person, group, or organization. Examples of topics are “being at my best” (to create a personal plan), “our highly effective team” (to transform conflict), “being a vibrant organization” (to create employee engagement), “our organization at its best” (to devise a strategic plan).

The 4-Ds are phases of a process that engages people to create a positive future. The first phase is discovery of the best of what is, regarding the affirmative topic. The second phase is dream, envisioning a preferred future based on the themes that have been discovered. The third phase is design, coconstructing the actions needed to actualize that future. The fourth phase is destiny, also referred to as delivery, which is enacting the design and rediscovering, redreaming, and redesigning along the way. We use the 4-D process in chapter 7 and appendix 2 as part of the appreciative resilience workshop, in the section on building a resilience plan. This basic template for the 4-D process can easily be applied to other situations and purposes, such as planning; personal, team, and organization development; and research and valuation.

Jeanie illustrates how the 4-D process can be used with teams in despair:

One time I was asked to facilitate a day with a team who were in despair because of their interpersonal conflicts. I framed the day with the appreciative inquiry 4-D process. I also acknowledged that sometimes in teams there are “elephants in the room,” things that are happening that are not said to the whole group.
They engaged fully in the discovery and dream phases, and when they moved into designing next steps, one brave member said, “We need to surface our elephants.” The others agreed, and so the discussions moved into something they had not done before—telling each other clearly how certain behaviors created animosity and how that animosity increased as the issues were never stated and clarified. They used this opportunity to move through the challenges of stating and clarifying the issues. As they did so, I could see forgiveness happening as people began to understand the misinterpretations and the need to clarify intentions behind the behaviors. The AI process of shared discovery and dreaming helped them see the best in each other and their passion for doing their work. This allowed them to design a hopeful pathway for their destiny, by surfacing the conflicts and moving forward from the despair through forgiveness.

This story illustrates the use of the 4-D model of appreciative inquiry in resilience work. Some examples of other AI models that can be used are the 5-Ds, the 5-Is, and SOAR. The five generic processes model, or the 5-D model, adds define as the first phase, preceding the 4-D phases of discover, dream, design, and destiny, in order to emphasize the importance of determining the affirmative topic (Watkins and Mohr 2001). The 5-Is approach to using SOAR has the phases of initiating, inquiring, imagining, innovating, and inspiring to implement (Stavros and Hinrichs 2009). SOAR engages people in questions to identify their strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results in order to build a plan for the future. SOARing into their future energizes people. In resilience work, a focus on strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results can increase hope and assist leaders in identifying a path forward. Any of these models can be applied to appreciative resilience work. AI processes all follow a similar pattern: (1) determining the affirmative topic of inquiry; (2) exploring what is working well with this topic; (3) envisioning the future; (4) creating the steps to get to that future; and (5) deciding how those steps will be implemented, how successes will be celebrated, and how modifications will be made.

The key to using AI processes is to ground them in an understanding of AI principles and ways of being, which we examine in the next sections.

AI Principles

The AI principles are the home place for those who practice appreciative inquiry; they are the basis for all AI tools and processes. In building resilience with appreciative inquiry, the principles are again the home place. They are the foundation for using appreciative inquiry in resilience work. The principles guide appreciating what is and inquiring into what might be. We explore the wholeness principle and the five basic AI principles—constructionist, simultaneity, poetic, anticipatory, and positive—because they are fundamental to building resilience with appreciative inquiry.

Wholeness Principle

We begin the discussion of the principles with the wholeness principle because of its powerful notion that “the experience of wholeness is one of understanding the whole story. It comes about when people are able to hear, witness, and make sense of each other’s differing views, perspectives, and interpretations of shared events” (Whitney and Trosten-Bloom 2003, 69). One leader returned again and again during the interview to the importance of the wholeness principle when working through very traumatic events in an organization.

We get everyone in the room and do a whole system process . . . think about what you did and what they did and how that all fits together in a bigger jigsaw. . . . Something happens with the timing, which is the magical bit with appreciative inquiry, which is when you get the wholeness thing going and people understand that it actually wasn’t just them, wasn’t just their team, wasn’t just the three other services they were talking to. It was this whole universe of influences that came to bear on this . . . then something happens to the timing, as well as forgiveness and all the emotions that people see. . . . There’s two things that happen simultaneously—a block of weight of emotional stuff which has got stuck, suddenly lifts, and a whole lot of new insights flood in. Time having stood still for months, or years even sometimes, when we go to review these situations after the event, suddenly, the timing of things becomes very fast and change happens very fast.

In states of despair, leaders often linger in a solely blaming place that profoundly impacts their ability to reside with the events that have happened. As illustrated in the example here, bringing everyone together helps people see the complexity of what has happened, so they can move beyond blame. Moving beyond blame—for self and/or others—is a form of forgiveness and allows people to work together to be resilient as a system. Bringing together the whole is very important when working with teams, organizations, and groups of all kinds to build resilience. The power of deeply listening to stories of the same event from different perspectives cannot be underestimated. When organizations, teams, and groups come together in wholeness, there is the opportunity to abide together in the stories being told. Individuals and groups can recognize their responsibilities in events and at the same time let go of events and stories that are limiting them.

Constructionist Principle

When groups come together to inquire, they move along the journey of socially constructing their understanding of their world together, both as individuals and as a whole. The constructionist principle is grounded in the theories of social construction, as Gergen (2009) states: “meaning lies not within the private mind, but in the process of relating” (98). Social construction involves people building together a collective shared understanding of events and their worlds, through relational experiences. Social construction is core to resilience work. Building shared understanding in relation to one another and through constructed stories of events and actions brings into the light the core idea that events and actions in leadership are neither static nor created from a single view of reality. Rather, they are constructed and deconstructed by norms, common understandings, gender, race experiences, privilege and power, and other interactions in a leader’s work and life. One begins to recognize that leaders, especially in times of despair, can get caught in assuming that their understanding of an event is the only “truth.” When leaders begin to apply and practice social construction, this notion of a single individual experience begins to fall away, and a more nuanced view begins to form in its place.

Wulff (2017) puts forward the idea that social constructionism is about holding tension rather than resolving it. In resilience work, this notion of holding tensions becomes very important. Often in leadership, work experiences do not come to a tidy conclusion. Leaders are often left with having to powerfully hold on to and work with the tensions as they are, without resolution and without tidy endings. Wulff writes:

Looking at the ways in which tension can be a friend or a muse invites us to embrace difference as not only desirable, but also generative in our lives. Tension as a “resistor of resolution” provides the interactive relational space for communication, initiative, and diversity of thought. Holding tension between viewpoints/perspectives (not to freeze it, but to make and keep room for it) can become a sort of crucible of thinking—a place and space for innovation and creativity (2017).

Inviting tension as a muse can be a form of social constructionism that opens the door to different ways of looking at an issue, a problem, or leadership.

Simultaneity Principle

The wholeness principle is about bringing out the best as a whole system. The constructionist principle acknowledges the act of cocreating a shared understanding of events and the world. Both are principles related to being fully in the presence of others and understanding the ebb and flow of different perspectives and how those perspectives and locations create our understanding of events and actions. Simultaneity “recognizes that inquiry and change are not separate, but are simultaneous. Inquiry is intervention” (Watkins and Mohr 2001, 38). As soon as a question is asked, change will begin to happen. Change begins because the question being asked ignites ideas and possibilities. As one travels through hope, despair, and forgiveness, the kinds of questions asked are significant. When talking about appreciative inquiry, Watkins and Mohr (61) say that the “first question we ask is fateful.” One of the leaders in an interview put it this way:

The questions you ask each other can change your life if you listen for that. . . . I could give leaders examples of questions I’ve asked and answers I’ve heard that changed my life. . . . I’ll never forget them.

Powerfully crafted inquiries center around powerful questions, and those questions have a haunting impact on how leaders might view the world around them. Joan tells the story of the impact of jokingly being asked by a former university president, “Are you doing anything that matters in your leadership?”

The question “Are you doing anything that matters in your leadership?” was one of those questions that had a profound impact on the way I viewed my leadership. I would say that it changed my leadership life because it became for me a mantra that helped me rise above the day to day of leadership and ask myself, was my leadership making a difference in ways that mattered? I had always been a leader who cared deeply about the impact of leadership actions on those around me, but in asking if my work mattered, I began to ask what in my work mattered most for those experiencing my leadership decisions. Although the question had been asked in jest, it had the simultaneous effect of shifting my leadership practice and the kinds of questions about my leadership I wanted to understand. Simply put, I was changed by the power of a question.

The questions asked in times of hope, despair, or forgiveness can open new avenues, move one to a different viewpoint, and create change for self and others. The journey of abiding in hope, standing in despair, and being humbled with forgiveness is influenced by the questions we ask and the change that those questions can bring about.

Anticipatory Principle

So much of leadership is about working with others to see and articulate the future for teams and organizations. The anticipatory principle in appreciative inquiry posits that a vision of the future both draws people toward that vision and influences the actions in the present (Cooperrider, Whitney, and Stavros 2003). For any leader working with others to take on the task of creating the conditions for future success, a compelling vision and the ability to see the horizon are essential. Without the ability to be anticipatory and to see how the future might unfold from the present, it is difficult to hold on to hope. Seligman (2011), a key leader in positive psychology, writes extensively about the role of hope and optimism in people’s capacity to flourish, which is needed for resilience. The following is an example of applying the anticipatory principle to our personal resilience:

Both of us are ocean swimmers, and we reach our goals by using the anticipatory principle of visualizing the final stretch as the ocean gets shallower and the beach is coming closer and closer. For us, resilience is keeping on going, immersed in the coldness of the ocean. Holding in our minds the anticipation of the shoreline and the vision of a successful swim keeps us from the fear that the cold, deep, and wild ocean can engender.

Appreciative inquiry engages people in visualizing preferred futures, using the anticipatory principle, in order to cocreate that future together. The anticipatory principle is the calling card of hope that pivots a leader toward the future and what might be possible, a critical element of being resilient.

Poetic Principle

In leadership resilience, the ability to see a possible future interlocks with the poetic principle, which proposes that we can choose what we examine. What we inquire into matters, and there are vast numbers of interpretations within a single experience or event (Watkins and Mohr 2001). The focus of inquiry is important. What we choose to look at can change the entire experience in the leadership journey. In making those choices, we can uplift hope, endure the journey of despair, and deeply focus on the possibilities that forgiveness offers.

Joan is a poet, and the poetic principle is her favorite. Like poetry, leadership is a vast interpretative space where different meanings can be found, understood, and brought into the foreground for examination. We have seen organizations that are in despair focusing only on what is going wrong. Their shift to choosing a focus on successes through appreciative inquiry uplifts and opens pathways to build into the future with a hopeful view. For example, one leader we interviewed gave this advice to other leaders: “Focus on the places of strengths; if you only look on the negatives, that is all you’ll get. . . . Have a vision about what you want to move toward, what you imagine the world to look like.” Her advice is grounded in both the poetic (choosing the focus) and the anticipatory (vision) principles.

Positive Principle

In appreciative inquiry work with organizations, the positive principle is critical. It interlocks with all the other principles and grounds appreciative inquiry. The concept is simple: “Positive questions lead to positive change” (Whitney and Trosten-Bloom 2003, 54). Appreciative inquiry is all about inquiring into the best of what is—asking positive questions in order to create positive change. Positive change is influenced by many factors, and the more positive the approach, the more likely the change will be positive.

The research of positive psychologists (Fredrickson 2009; Seligman 2011) supports the practice of this principle. “Positivity doesn’t just change the contents of your mind, trading bad thoughts for good ones: it also changes the scope or boundaries of your mind. It widens the span of possibilities that you see” (Fredrickson 2009, 9). Watkins and Mohr (2001, 38), leaders in appreciative inquiry, write about the importance of the positive principle, as “momentum for change requires large amounts of both positive affect and social bonding—things like hope, inspiration, and sheer joy.” When we began to apply this principle to the work of resilience, we came to understand the power of well-crafted positive questions and how those questions could open the horizons of exploration in times of hope, despair, and forgiveness. Over and over again in our interviews with leaders, they talked about choosing the positive consciously and about how in the choosing, they were able to get in touch with their resilience. For example, one leader we interviewed talked about how she had to totally let go of a project that had been very important to her in order to make way for the project’s success and to move on herself. She chose to see the letting go as a positive for herself and for the project.

The positive principle grounds all the other principles of appreciative inquiry. Through the wholeness and constructionist principles, people come together to coconstruct their preferred future. That future is more likely to happen if they have asked positive questions, searching out the positive core. When people apply the principle of simultaneity through using positive questions, the simultaneous change that occurs will more likely be positive. When they use the poetic principle, their choosing the focus of the inquiry to be on what is working well (positive) is more likely to lead to a positive future; and holding positive visions of the future—the anticipatory principle—will lead to actions that create that future.

Resilience can be drawn from using each of these principles. This set of guiding principles for appreciative inquiry helps people bring the whole system together (wholeness); cocreate futures in relation with others (constructionist); think through the impact of questions (simultaneity) on generating change; choose to focus on what is working (poetic); envision the ideal future (anticipatory); and ask positive questions (positive). The practice of attention to the principles of appreciative inquiry is part of “being AI,” which we explore in the next section.

Being AI

Being AI is the practice of applying appreciative inquiry both to daily leadership work and to the practice of resilience. It is the integration of AI into a way of being and seeing in the world. It is how leaders are in the world as they do what they do, integrating appreciative inquiry into their daily leadership. The notion of being AI appears in many ways in the works of Cooperrider (1986), Kelm (2005), Watkins and Mohr (2001), Cockell and McArthur-Blair (2012), Bushe (2001), and others. Being AI is about the ways of living appreciative inquiry that foster and sustain a resilient leadership life. We have already touched on the practice of the AI principles, which is essential to appreciative resilience. In this section, we want to build on those ideas by examining appreciative beliefs, appreciative intelligence, and appreciative practices. Each of these is a part of being AI. In chapter 6, we further explore personal practices of resilient leadership.

Appreciative beliefs impact how we lead. Appreciative beliefs focus on seeing the best of what is, and from that, seeing what is possible. As one leader stated, “I carry an innate belief that all people are good people.” This leader demonstrates being AI by leading through this appreciative belief. It is much easier to build positive futures with people in an organization if those people are seen as good. Believing in appreciative inquiry as a way of being and doing influences people to focus on what is working well in order to build their futures on that. Another leader gave this advice about appreciative inquiry to other leaders:

Believe in it, that’s the first thing—believe that it works, believe in the process and commit to it fully. I don’t think it’s something you can wear lightly and expect that you can fake it or wear insincerely. If you don’t believe in it, try something else, but believe in it, know that it can work. That’s how others around you can believe in it and know that it works. If you’re sincere with it, if you don’t have reservations about it . . . It has to be something you embrace sincerely, believe in, know that it works and are consistently supportive of it.

Appreciative intelligence is fundamental to being AI. Thatchenkery and Metzker (2006) define appreciative intelligence as “the ability to perceive the positive inherent generative potential within the present” (5). Through their research, they found that appreciative intelligence has three components: reframing, appreciating the positive, and seeing how the future unfolds from the present. They found that consistently using these three components leads to the following qualities: persistence, conviction that one’s actions matter, tolerance for uncertainty, and irrepressible resilience. Here we focus on two of these qualities, persistence and irrepressible resilience, which are particularly relevant to appreciative resilience. Later in the chapter in the section on appreciative practices, we explore the appreciative intelligence component of reframing.

Persistence is the quality of continuing to pursue a goal even when there is no forward movement or when the path forward is blocked and difficult (Thatchenkery and Metzker 2006). One of the leaders we interviewed told this amazing story of being a footballer against all odds:

When I was a freshman in high school, I went out for football as a good way to make friends and be popular. Of the 120 kids trying out, I was one of the shortest, slowest, and most inexperienced with football, so I was on the fourth string. At the end of that painful year, I had two choices: quit or stay on the bench and never play. Then I realized there was a third option, which was to make the team. So I worked hard every day that summer, physically and mentally preparing myself to play, and so the sophomore year was a little bit better. One trait I did have was that people saw me as a leader. The next summer, I continued to work hard, and by the beginning of my junior year I made the varsity team; I was a lineman. Out of the 120 kids that started, I was one of only seven who got letters by their junior year. I worked through failure after failure to get to where I wanted to go, to my ultimate goal.

This leader goes on to emphasize in the story that although he got stronger and faster, he was never the classic football player. What he found was that he could bring his leadership and life skills to the field. It was those skills combined with his determination to be faster and stronger that let him thrive on the team. He persisted and, powerfully in the story, found paths forward to his goals, paths that were not at first obvious. We are clear in our work on resilience that being a resilient leader is not just about persistence, because at times, leaders can persist and still not be able to reach their goal. However, a critical part of appreciative resilience is this notion of being appreciatively intelligent enough to persist.

The quality of irrepressible resilience is “the ability to bounce back from difficult situations” (Thatchenkery and Metzker 2006, 29). We love the expression “irrepressible resilience” in leadership, as though we can always have it right at our fingertips when needed. Leaders know it is not like that. They know that being irrepressible is a practice, and a profound belief that although the path forward is not clear, there is a path forward. One leader we interviewed told this story of resilience:

I quit my job and took on organizing a national gathering of four hundred young, energetic feminists to create a document for action to move forward. The process itself was put into question. People didn’t want to do it, so it didn’t go forward. My vision was not manifesting. My resilience was to let go of my hopes, dreams, and visions—not let go of them but let what needed to unfold, unfold.

In this story, the irrepressible resilience is not in achieving the goal but in letting a different future unfold.

Appreciative practices build resilience for leaders and their organizations and are an intrinsic part of being AI. There are many leadership practices that can be built out of appreciative inquiry, and here we highlight three: questions, reframing, and tracking and fanning.

One leader gave this example of how she has integrated being AI into her work through the power of a simple question:

The question “What’s working well?” is becoming common in my work life and personal life. It really makes a shift in how we look at and interpret our lives. For example, as far as in my day-to-day work, I now build into evaluations “What is working well, and what else can we do? I allow space for process, have faith in people, and trust in the process that it will unfold and allow things to emerge.

For this leader, the idea of the practice of appreciative inquiry becoming common is at the heart of being AI. The questions leaders are asking in their daily work matter for themselves and for others.

Earlier in this chapter, we touched on the power of questions and how they influence leaders’ perspective and the experience of those around them. As a practice, developing and using appreciative questions not only changes the resulting conversations but also begins to cultivate a practice of seeking the appreciative within a situation; deeply residing with what is, no matter how hard; and reframing. In our interviews, leaders talked about how questions can change lives and organizational direction. Questions seem simple, yet the crafting of a powerful question can open the door to new directions, innovation, and thought in ways nothing else can. When leaders seek the appreciative within a situation, the focus automatically shifts from looking down into the chasm to lifting up one’s eyes to the horizon. We also believe that to appreciate a leadership situation, sometimes we just need to reside with what is. The question becomes simply, Can we just stand in this place for a time and reside with all that is?

Reframing is about intentionally offering up a different frame to the leadership situation (Thatchenkery and Metzker 2006). The ability to reframe or reinterpret a given situation enables leaders to see that positive consequences could be built from even the direst circumstances. Reframing is asking what is possible even in the darkest of times—even if that possible future is only a tiny flash of light in the dark. Reframing is also asking what is really wanted in a situation rather than just focusing on the problem. Beneath every problem is a powerful yearning to be uncovered that can lead people forward.

Tracking and fanning is a leadership practice that leads to being an appreciative self (Bushe 2001)—being AI. Simply put, leaders track what they want more of from themselves and others and fan the flames of bringing it into being. Tracking is looking for and paying attention to what’s working, what strengths are at play; it involves asking questions such as What am I doing well? What are others doing well? What strengths am I demonstrating? What strengths are others demonstrating? Fanning, as in fanning the flames of a fire, involves acknowledging, through various ways—praise, thanks, acknowledgment of contributions, specific appreciative feedback, and the like—that what has been tracked has been truly seen. Both of us have used tracking and fanning as a leadership practice for years because of its simple power to bring forth and encourage more of people’s effective contributions. Tracking and fanning enhances relationships. It encourages people to do more of what they are doing well.

There are many influences and practices that contribute to being AI, and we have touched on a few here. Throughout this book, we weave others into the leadership journeys of appreciative resilience through states of hope, despair, and forgiveness. Being AI is a practice that Joan illustrates with this story:

I wish I could say as a leader that I am being AI all the time. In my role as copresident of our boutique consulting practice, I undertake the practice of appreciative inquiry every day to uplift both myself as a leader and also the work of my clients. And yet there are days that I find myself being combative, looking at what is missing and not at what is working well. It is in those days that the practice of appreciative inquiry in daily life becomes the most important. I find myself anchoring back to being appreciative of what is at this moment in my leadership life and pulling that thread of seeing forward into the future I want to create. This anchoring back to the practice of appreciative inquiry in daily leadership life offers a door to resilience. Through this door, I can find my strengths that allow me to move forward.

Leadership Grounded in Appreciative Inquiry

The last concept in the outer circle of the appreciative resilience model is leadership grounded in appreciative inquiry—AI leadership. This kind of leadership is about using appreciative inquiry, AI processes, AI principles, and the practice of being AI in the day to day of leading. It is about trusting appreciative inquiry as an avenue to leading in a way that uplifts and pushes forward what might be possible. As one leader noted, “It is about believing in the process.” It is about leaders being who they are as they undertake what they do. This kind of embodiment is not simple. AI leadership is about working with the daily practice of appreciative inquiry. It is about having the courage to invite others to engage and cocreate in the everyday and in the complex times. Through residing in and practicing the principles, leaders recognize that events are socially constructed; that the wholeness principle matters; that one can use the poetic principle to decide what to focus on; that the questions asked matter; and that envisioning the future in anticipation of positive change is powerful. Whitney, Trosten-Bloom, and Rader (2010) use and define the term appreciative leadership as “the relational capacity to mobilize creative potential and turn it into positive power—to set in motion positive ripples of confidence, energy, enthusiasm, and performance—to make a positive difference” (3). AI leadership is about using appreciative inquiry to build this powerful relational capacity in order to lead in ways that uplift and enable. As one leader stated:

I am amazed at watching how creating the space to dream about and aspire toward what could be and then designing a practical plan to move toward measureable outcomes turn a group of tired and disheartened professionals into eager and energetic change makers.

We illustrate the notion of leadership grounded in appreciative inquiry by offering two reflections. These reflections are about applying appreciative inquiry in the leadership undertaken. It does not matter the context or purpose; rather, what matters is to “set in motion the positive ripples” (Whitney, Trosten-Bloom, and Rader 2010). In Jeanie’s reflection, her AI leadership commitment is to trust the appreciative inquiry process even when it needs to be done with stealth because not everybody is ready to embrace it, and her resilience is to believe they will find generative and positive outcomes.

  Jeanie’s Reflection

I practice AI leadership by bringing appreciative inquiry to organizations to help shift them into a generative place, creating their positive futures. As I facilitate appreciative inquiry with clients, I trust that appreciative inquiry will inspire and engage them. For example, I was facilitating a business-planning two-day retreat with a government department. The planning committee that hired me told me not to mention that I was using appreciative inquiry, as they thought that would not be received well by the people in the department. They were very enthusiastically interested in using AI for this business-planning retreat, but not so sure about the rest of the department’s response to AI.

So I did what we call “stealth AI,” using AI but not naming it. Doing stealth AI requires me as facilitator to be a leader who trusts the appreciative inquiry processes with which I engage my clients.

In this two-day business-planning example, I engaged the participants in the 4-D processes of discovering what was working well in the department, dreaming what more they could be and do (their preferred future), designing how to get to that future (business plan), and, after this retreat, going out and delivering on that plan. The design outcome was the draft business plan. They were all excited about how quickly they came to a plan that they would move into the future. . . . Then they wanted to know about the processes, so I explained some of the basics of appreciative inquiry and how it is used worldwide for planning and beyond. Planning using appreciative inquiry inspires hope and engenders resilience through this hopeful view.

The next reflection focuses on two key practices of AI leadership—inclusion and the art of questions—which Joan has embodied over the years. For her, these are two profound places of AI leadership.

  Joan’s Reflection

Leadership grounded in appreciative inquiry for me has always pivoted around two key practices. The first is including people in the process, project, or outcome. The power of inclusion has always been important to my work, both including people in decision making and planning and including people across power, difference, and privilege. How were people invited, what happened when they participated, how deeply were they listened to? These questions are of deep importance to my leadership. As I work with clients to design interactions that can uplift their teams and their organizations, I always ask who is invited, can we invite everyone, is there anyone missing?

The second key practice is paying attention to the questions I ask as a leader. Are those questions filled with the integrity and creativity of the work I am doing, whether leading an organization or guiding a client? One of the CEOs we interviewed for this book talked a lot about how questions can change one’s life. This is something I hold in my mind as I craft and work with questions. What if the question I was about to ask actually changed another’s life? Have I brought to it the power of appreciative inquiry to uplift, to open the door to alternative creative paths, and to leave room for wonder?

In my leadership life, there are many other practices drawn from appreciative inquiry that have influenced and uplifted my work, but these are the two that for me form the core of my practice of AI leadership.

The idea of leadership grounded in appreciative inquiry is core to the practice of appreciative resilience. The practice of appreciative resilience sustains ways of being that inquire into what might be possible, that include others in both responsibility and in forward thinking, and that are built from a place of integrity of action. By sustaining the focus on appreciative inquiry, leaders can create space for resilience to reside. If leaders are willing to find hope in the most complex of times, they uplift others and sustain themselves—they promote resilience.

Final Notes on the Outer Circle

When we think about the outer circle of the appreciative resilience model, we see it in three dimensions spinning and moving in rhythm to a leader’s journey through hope, despair, and forgiveness. Appreciative inquiry is the catalytic force within the resilience model. It is both a way of being and a set of processes that leaders can use as they traverse their work and the experiences of hope, despair, and forgiveness. Most powerfully, AI is built from narrative, dialogue, engagement, and the seeking of a future that is generated from appreciating the present—all aspects that seed resilience.