Image: Leonardo’s ‘Vitruvian Man’ from Wikipedia.org1. Know your outcome Know what you want, why you want it, and make sure the outcome is ‘ecological’ – good for you and for the people you care about (and for your community and the planet) in the widest possible sense. Often people are not sure of what they
Appreciative Inquiry is unrivalled in my experience as a way of engaging people in change. You can feel the atmosphere in a group change within moments of starting a round of appreciative interviews, as if people were waking up from their normal ‘working trance’ and suddenly giving the whole of their attention to the person
Seth’s done an interesting short post about unstated ‘away-from’ goals – here’s an extract: Think about how often your goal at a conference or a meeting or in a project is, “don’t screw up!” or “don’t make a fool of yourself and say the wrong thing.” These are very easy goals to achieve, of course.
We all know that we work better and feel less stressed if we take regular breaks during the working day. However, the stressed individual may feel uncomfortable and guilty about taking breaks, even when they admit that their usual driven work patterns are causing them stress (“but the work just won’t get done”). Research is
Have you ever wondered if there’s a good way to format a talk, presentation or training module that goes beyond the traditional advice (below)? Tell them what you’re going to tell them Tell them Tell them what you’ve told them This article, about the format that I use to expand on that good but rather
Changing the way we work is not easy. It requires us to learn new ways of doing things and new ways of communicating with each other. At the same time, most people find change stressful. The more fundamental the change, the more stressful it potentially feels. The problem is that people cannot learn when they
Organisations (and people) tend to grow in the direction of their positive images of the future, like a sunflower or heliotrope grows towards the sun. Our expectations of the future – and therefore of what we believe is possible – are constantly shaped by our conversations. Repeated studies in sports psychology have shown that athletes
When I was a hypnotherapist I often used to ask my clients how they relaxed. Very often they would say “I can’t relax” – which could have something to do with why they ended up with problems that they had to seek help for. I loved it when they said that, because I knew they
On entry-level NLP courses, students are often taught not to ask “Why?” when helping someone to solve a problem. And rightly so – human thought processes are very different from mechanical processes like production lines, not least because their workings cannot be directly observed. “Why?” doesn’t make it into NLP’s Meta Model toolkit of questions
“It is not so much, “is my question leading to right or wrong answers?” but rather “What effect is my question having on our lives together… Is it strengthening our relationships?” David L Cooperrider, Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change The traditional sequence of activity in organisational change goes: gather information, analyse it, prescribe
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” ~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama Thanks to Sarah for the quote.
1. Strengths-based, inclusive strategic planning. To build a future vision that everyone can feel part of, you need a format that can discover and build on those strengths and generates enthusiasm and energy at the same time. You don’t have to sell the resulting vision or get ‘buy-in’ – the participants already own it because they
