“The inquiry is the intervention”
Because questions direct attention to whatever is being asked about, they affect perceptions, emotions, and sometimes, the beliefs of people answering those questions.
Consequently, change starts as soon as you start asking questions. The way you ask the questions, and the frame within which you ask them, is also important.
0:37 – You can’t investigate a human system (like a team or an organisation) without affecting it
1:26 – It’s not just the person being questioned who is affected by the ‘frames’ set up by the questions
3:25 – The way that we ask the questions also has an effect
5:14 – The intervention starts as soon as you start asking questions
5:42 – Some questions to ask yourself
Research mentioned in the video: Thinking about money makes you more selfish
Book mentioned in the video: Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution In Change by David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney
Can you learn how to facilitate Appreciative Inquiry processes from an online course?
It turns out you can, as long as the course is live and interactive!
I know this because I’ve run five Practical Appreciative Inquiry courses online with great feedback from participants. The next training starts soon – find out more and book your place here.
Video Transcript – The Simultaneity Principle
I’d like to start with a quote from the founder of Appreciative Inquiry, David Cooperrider (correction: this is a quote from the book Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution In Change by David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney, so really the quote is by both of them).
He says:
“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 and Diana Whitney, Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change
The traditional sequence of activity in organisational change goes: gather information, analyse it, prescribe an intervention, and implement it.
Underlying this process is the assumption that we can observe a system without affecting it.
But – if patterns of human organisation are not dictated by our genes or determined by the physical world, but instead are socially constructed in the context of relationships and communication, the questions we ask become another input into the socially constructed system.
They have effects on the listener, putting certain ideas and images in their mind and excluding others, and directing their attention along certain avenues of inquiry while closing off others.
The inquirer or ‘analyst’ is also influenced by the ‘frames’ set up by the questions.
This is not just a conscious-mind process. Through the psychological effect known as ‘priming’, the associations evoked at an unconscious level by words, images, or concepts influence our thought patterns, our behaviour, and even our abilities.
So, for example, being asked or reminded about money tends to make people act more selfishly.
It’s not just person being questioned who is affected by the ‘frames’ set up by the questions. The inquirer or ‘analyst’ is also influenced, particularly if they have not reflected on the assumptions that shape their inquiry.
For example, a director might decide to gather information about problematic stress levels in her company by commissioning a stress audit.
Everyone in the company fills out a questionnaire, and some are interviewed, about sources of stress, bringing the subject to the forefront of their attention. “Actually”, they think, “this is quite a stressful place to work!”
Stress levels actually rise as a result of the survey, particularly as the workforce are suspicious of the management’s intentions (based on their past experience).
Is the survey really anonymous? Will my comments about the stressors in my department enable the response to be traced back to me?
The stress audit naturally raises expectations among the staff that the employer will do something about stress levels. If the employer chooses not to, the intervention now gives them another problem as well.
Under UK health and safety law, employers have a duty of care which requires them to not expose their employees to undue stress levels. The company cannot claim that they were unaware of the stress levels, because they have conducted the stress audit.
The way that we ask the questions also has an effect, because the interviewees interpret the meaning of the questions in the context of the non-verbal information or ‘paralanguage’ that they can pick up.
This would include the manner of the interviewer in face-to-face interviews – is it brusque, sympathetic, apparently just ‘ticking boxes’, or (ideally) interested and ‘fully present’?
It also includes the metaphorical ‘tone of voice’ of both live interviews and written questionnaires – how the questions are phrased, and how the interview process is introduced to the workforce.
Inevitably, the people being interviewed will evaluate the real meaning of the information-gathering process against the backdrop of these factors.
They will also try to divine the ‘real’ intention of the diagnostic process. Are the interviews designed to help us? Are we being checked up on? Is it a prelude to deciding which of us to let go? How much can we trust the interviewers?
How the interviews are framed will make a tremendous difference to how they are perceived, how cooperative the interviewees will be, and the quality of the information that you get back.
The final piece in the jigsaw of how people judge the interviewing process will be the conversations they have with their fellow workers about it.
This will tend to consolidate first impressions. If expectations have been badly managed, so that people are anticipating a hostile interview, it will be an uphill struggle to overturn that perception.
Even if the actual interviews turn out to be pleasant, useful and sympathetic, they will be evaluated and discussed in the light of prior expectations.
So in human relationships, as in science, the observer is not separate from the system being observed. As soon as you ask a question it has an effect – big or small and often unpredictable – on the system being studied. The inquiry is already the intervention.
Therefore, as Professor Cooperrider points out, we need to think about not just the relevance and accuracy of the answers we get, but also the effect of the questioning process itself on the way the interviewees see the world, and on our relationships with them.
Some questions to ask yourself (in a way that strengthens your relationship with yourself, of course):
- What questions am I asking? How am I asking them?
- What is the effect of the questions on our relationship?
- In what directions are they directing people’s attention? How useful is this?
- Bearing in mind that any inquiry is already an intervention, what is the most useful question I could ask at this time?