Appreciative Inquiry

The Appreciative Inquiry team did a magnificent job leading the class through an AI summit over the last couple of weeks. I began to consider how I might apply appreciative inquiry in every day life, not just at work or in "summit" format. There's a lot to learn from this approach, but to apply to every day life, I think, requires some discipline and retraining.

I have become reflective of the thinking, my commentary, the questioning and conversations I engage in with family and friends. The AI principles that have gripped me are 1)The possibilities that can be created when we shift from problem analysis to celebrating successes, embracing strengths and dreaming the future, and 2) We can choose what we study, and that our energy goes in the direction of that study.

I truly believe that we construct worlds through dialog. When I have a conversation with my son, a sophomore in high school, about the difficulties he is having right now as he is trying to learn who he is and who he wants to be; and in that same process, separating from his parents (and particularly his father, with whom he has been very close); and he is seeing both strengths and weaknesses of his family and deciding what he wants to carry on, what he wants to shun; as we have that conversation, I am in a position to contribute to a created world with my son that makes a difference for both he and I now and in the future. As we have that conversation, I am helping him make meaning of his past (and not just meaning, but also constructing memories of his past). His dad and I are divorced, and as I am currently the parent that my son is talking to (because I WAS parent he was separating from when he was 15-18), I have to be very careful about what I contribute to the conversation. It would be easy for me to use this time to promote my own biases which may not be altogether positive.

And so I listen to what my son is trying to tell me and I ask questions that I hope are appreciative and inquisitive in nature. I try to affirm what my son is experiencing as a natural event in his development (which it is) and have tried to do that with my ex-husband as well. I have tried to take some of the lessons from appreciative inquiry, but I have more to do. Perhaps I can ask him:

1. What do you remember as the highlights of your childhood with your dad?

2. If you were asked to write a short biography of your dad's accomplishments and his attributes for an award he was receiving, what would you write?

3. How has your dad made what you consider to be your accomplishments possible for you?

4. Compared to what you are experiencing now, how do you wish your relationship with your father to be in 5 years from now?

5. What do you see in yourself that your dad helped to nurture and grow?

This is just one of the ways that AI has impacted me. Thank you Rachel, Demetria, April and Ed for sharing it with us.