Seeing for ourselves
In a meeting the other day, someone made an often heard comment about the unrealistic expectation that we could or should be “appreciative all the time.”
The focus on what we want and what’s working and why is a challenge to culturally normative beliefs that “the only way to make things better is to focus on what we don’t want and what’s not working and why.” For people who don’t have experience otherwise, the appreciative model is totally not realistic.
The good news is that the transition to an appreciative approach isn’t about trying to believe something different. It’s only possible when we see for ourselves. We do not become more appreciative by simply taking on someone else’s beliefs, no matter how compelling.
September 8th, 2005 11:55
Interesting to note that there are folks out there who practice extreme appreciation - I, for example, have once been called “optimistic to the point of uselessness!”
There is something to the practice of appreciating that which is not positive as well, for what it offers us. For example, a client I was working with decided to use a “What would you most like to change…?” question in her appreciative inquiry. When we worked through the implications of that we looked at an appreciative conversation on how it was that the community DID change. This was to create a container in which calls for change drew on the best ways this community knew about how to change. So it involved looking back at a variety of ways the community had coped in the past in order to draw on the potential resources for future change.
September 8th, 2005 22:14
That is the most appreciative of all - the wholeness relaimed through re-membering parts of us we need to take withus into the future. Thanks Chris.
September 8th, 2005 23:13
You’re on something of a tear, old boy. The last four or five posts have been sparkling in their evocative language and stunning in their concise insights. Thanks for the gift of these well-formed thoughts.