appreciating the inquiry

I'm trying to get back into a good reading habit but have been struggling even with all the extra commuting time I now have. My new job has lots of interesting challenges to work on, and I just haven't found one that I really want to deep dive into yet. However, I have managed to focus enough on one book to learn something about appreciative inquiry, which is a way of conversing that adopts a coaching position and focuses on positive questions.

The theory goes that there are four ways of conversing; appreciative and depreciative; and statement based or question based. Depending on your combination of these you change the mental state of everyone involved for better or worse. This can cause people to go from completely shut down to positively energised, and everything in between.

When we're faced with a problem and we need to work towards creating a solution then surely we should want to find ourselves and those around us in the most positive and creative mindset possible. This can be a particularly difficult challenge for those going through an agile adoption when they have previously worked in a highly command and control environment, and now need to work much more collaboratively within an engaged community of workers.

When I think of the times in my life when I've been involved in the most interesting and exciting work with other people, it has been when I have worked with people who ask me questions to explore my thoughts and who have enjoyed answering my curiosity around theirs in return. The questions that we've asked each other haven't been passive aggressive or judgemental; instead they've been supportive, quizzical, and contained genuine interest in seeing the world from a different perspective to their own.

Instead of focusing on one's weaknesses and failings, we can focus on the positives and strengths of those around us. It can often be that within a team two people struggle on different parts of the same process. Instead of beating them up about their separate weaknesses, why not encourage them to come together and find a way to support each other? We could think of these people based challenges as yet another thing to ask the team to work on. The important thing is how leaders frame overcoming these challenges, and I think appreciative inquiry is a great place to start.

The book I'm currently reading on this topic is called Conversations Worth Having by Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres.