Appreciative interviews are the heart of Appreciative Inquiry, and they come in many different formats. This format is the best I’ve found for business use. As well as looking for stories of success, these 4 questions look for what people…
Appreciative Inquiry: Why We Do Appreciative Interviews (video + transcript)
The appreciative interview has been described as ‘the heart of Appreciative Inquiry’. It really is the key activity of the Discovery stage. So why are appreciative interviews so useful for gathering rich qualitative information? Here are 6 good reasons you…
How To Do Appreciative Interviews With People Who Are Feeling Negative
Recently one of my Practical Appreciative Inquiry graduates emailed me an interesting question. She is using an appreciative interview format in her research working with maternity staff (doctors, midwives and maternity support workers) who have worked through the Covid crisis…
How To Build Your Self-Belief
If you suffer from ‘impostor syndrome’, or your friends sometimes ask why you don’t have as much self-belief as you should have when you are so good at what you do, this article is for you. Belief in yourself comes…
What Appreciative Inquiry Can Learn From NLP: How To Be A Better Appreciative Interviewer
Recently I was interviewed by Robyn Stratton-Berkessel for her ‘Positivity Strategist’ podcast about the relationship between Appreciative Inquiry and NLP. During the conversation a couple of connections occurred to me that I hadn’t thought of before. Firstly, let’s look at…
How To Solve Intractable Problems
If you’ve run out of ideas for solving a complex, intractable problem, try this exercise, drawn from the Appreciative Inquiry approach. It works by finding what’s already working well and building on it, rather than trying to analyse the causes…
How McKinsey Discovered Strategies For Peak Performance At Work
We know what it feels like when we are performing at our peak – when we’re fully employing our core strengths to overcome challenges, time flies by, and we lose ourselves in what we are doing. Not only does this…
Business-friendly Appreciative Interview Format
If you’ve looked at the ‘traditional’ appreciative interview format set out in most books about Appreciative Inquiry, you might have decided it wasn’t quite something you could use in a work context. Too touchy-feely, you may have thought, or too…
An activity to celebrate team success
In response to a question on a trainers’ forum asking for an hour-long activity to celebrate a team’s accomplishments, this is what I came up with off the top of my head. I hope you find it useful. First off,…
How to use Appreciative Inquiry to tackle ‘dull’ topics
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…