Links to research evidence, books, and further resources mentioned in the Practical Appreciative Inquiry book
Chapter 2 – What is Appreciative Inquiry, and How Can It Help You?
p8 – David Cooperrider’s dissertation, Appreciative inquiry: Toward a methodology for understanding and enhancing organizational innovation
p10 – in ‘What is Appreciative Inquiry Really?’, the definition of Appreciative Inquiry is from David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney, Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change
Chapter 3 – The Neuroscience of Appreciative Inquiry
p12-13 – Task Positive and Default Mode Networks: Richard Boyatzis and Anthony Jack, The neuroscience of coaching. Consulting Psychology Journal Practice and Research 70(1):11-27 · March 2018
p12 – Richard Boyatzis, Melvin L Smith, and Ellen Van Oosten, Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth
p16 – Negative Information Weighs More Heavily on the Brain
Ito, T. A., Larsen, J. T., Smith, N. K., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1998). Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: The negativity bias in evaluative categorizations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(4), 887–900.
p16 – Negative Bias In Decision Making (Kahnemann and Tversky’s Prospect Theory)
p16 – We believe bad news more
Baumeister, Roy F.; Finkenauer, Catrin; Vohs, Kathleen D. (2001). “Bad is stronger than good” (PDF). Review of General Psychology. 5 (4): 323–370.
p16 – More weight given to risks than opportunities in decision-making:
Ledgerwood, A., & Boydstun, A. E. (2013, March 25). Sticky Prospects: Loss Frames Are Cognitively Stickier Than Gain Frames. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
p16: Negatives outweigh positives in forming an impression of a person: multiple studies
Links to more negative bias research and examples here: Why Your Brain Is Hardwired For Negativity, And What You Can Do About It
p18-20 – Why Do Things Go Right? (article by Sidney Dekker)
Chapter 4: Five Principles of Appreciative Inquiry
The Constructionist Principle
p22 – Social Constructionism (a one-page brief description and overview)
Being Open to Multiple Perspectives Enriches Relationships, With Ken Gergen – interview on the Positivity Strategist podcast
Kenneth Gergen, An Invitation to Social Construction (4th Edition)
p.25 – The Cooperrider quote is from David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney, Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change
The Anticipatory Principle
p27 – The Expectation Effect: King, Albert S. “Expectation Effects in Organizational Change.” Administrative Science Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1974): 221–30 (unfortunately hidden behind an academic publisher’s paywall).
p27 – The Placebo Effect
p27 – Self-fulfilling prophesies: Dr Richard Wiseman, The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind
p28 – Visualisation in Sports Psychology
p33 – Deming on targets: more on the pernicious effect of targets in the Deming Institute’s website article Eliminate Slogans, Exhortations and Targets
The Positive Principle
p34 – Barbara Fredrickson, The Value of Positive Emotions (downloadable PDF)
p35 – The effect of a positive emotional climate, described in Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, Primal Leadership
(published in UK as The New Leaders)
The Simultaneity Principle
p39 – UK Health and Safety Executive, Employer’s Responsibilities
Chapter 5: Three ‘Emergent’ Principles of Appreciative Inquiry
The Wholeness Principle
p43 – Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom, The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change
p45 – Polly Toynbee and David Walker, Unjust Rewards: Exposing Greed and Inequality in Britain Today
The Enactment Principle
p48 – Robert Cialdini’s Consistency Principle
The Free Choice Principle
p50 – Interview with Rebecca Solnit by Astra Taylor, bombmagazine.org
p51 – Why Semco Doesn’t Want Your Company To Be Like Semco, article by Pim de Morree
Chapter 6: The 5-D Format
p53 – The 4-I model from Jane Magruder Watkins, Bernard J Mohr, and Ralph Kelly, Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination
Chapter 7: The Definition Stage
p70 – Mac Odell’s Problem to Opportunity Exercise (downloadable PDF)
Chapter 8: The Discovery Stage
p81 – Emotional resonance: see Carolina Herrando and Efthymios Constantinides, Emotional Contagion: A Brief Overview and Future Directions, Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 12 (2021)
p98 – ‘Normalising’ from Dion Sing’s Solution Focused Leader website – which unfortunately seems to have been deleted and isn’t even on the Wayback Machine internet archive
Chapter 9: The Dream Stage
What Happens in the Dream Stage?
p105 – SMART Goals (a widely-known idea in business and personal development – this article from the Mind Tools website has a good overview)
How to Facilitate the Dream Stage in Appreciative Team Development
p109 – Miro is a fine online whiteboard tool – the free version works fine for small groups and one-off uses. Ideally I’d use the built-in whiteboard facility in Zoom (my preferred app for online group calls), but so far I haven’t found that it makes its most useful features (e.g. the ability to upload images from your computer) reliably available to all participants.
Using Provocative Propositions in Large-Scale Organisational Change
p115 – David Cooperrider, Diana Whitney, and Jacqueline Stavros, Appreciative Inquiry Handbook For Leaders Of Change – a big, comprehensive reference book
Chapter 10: The Design Stage
p120 – David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney, Exploring Appreciative Inquiry, Perspectives On Business And Global Change Vol. 14. No. 2, 2001.
p121 – The GROW model of coaching and mentoring (article from the Mind Tools website)
Practical Considerations for Facilitating the Design Stage with a Team or Small Group
p126 – Six Thinking Hats (article from the Mind Tools website)
Using the NLP ‘Logical Levels’ Model with Appreciative Inquiry
p132 – More about Dilts’ Logical Levels model (with additional questions for each level) here: How To Tune Up Your Team’s Performance Using Levels Of Change
Chapter 11: The Delivery Stage
“Delivery” or “Destiny”?
p138 – Gervase Bushe and Aniq F Kassam, When Is Appreciative Inquiry Transformational? A Meta-Case Analysis (I highly recommend all of Bushe’s writing)
A Quick, Participative Process for Getting to a High-Level Plan
p142 – Ishikawa Diagram (from Wikipedia)
p145 – Swim Lanes Diagrams can be a lot more elaborate than how I’ve used them in the book, especially in their normal use as ‘cross-functional flowcharts’ – see for example this introduction on the Office Timeline website.
Chapter 12: Implementing Appreciative Inquiry
When to Use Appreciative Inquiry – and When Not to Use It
P151 – When attempted fixes make things worse: the ‘Cobra Effect’ and other examples are described in this Wikipedia entry on ‘Perverse Incentives‘
When You Shouldn’t Use Appreciative Inquiry
p153 – The distinction between ‘complicated’ and ‘complex’ problems is derived from Gervase Bushe’s excellent article Generative Leadership (downloadable PDF)
Appreciative Team Development
p155 – Tuckman’s stages of group development (Wikipedia article)
Appreciative Inquiry Summit
p160 – Graphic facilitators’ websites: Anna Geyer newpossibilities.co.uk
Jackie Forbes drawntolearn.co.uk
p161 – Nutrimental Foods case study from David Cooperrider’s website
Chapter 13: How to Use Appreciative Inquiry Informally
Ask for Best Practice Stories
p169 – Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres, Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement
Conversational Appreciative Inquiry
p171 – Gavin Ingham, sales expert and great motivational speaker, gaviningham.com
Appreciative Team Meetings
p174, Ashley Goodall and Marcus Buckingham, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World
p174 – The distinction between ‘managers’ and ‘makers’ attitudes to meetings is derived from Paul Graham’s article Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
Chapter 14: How to Talk to Skeptics About Appreciative Inquiry
p180 – Dealing with people who think they know it all – I learned a lot from Shelle Rose Charvet’s article The Macho Test, and an earlier article which I think now forms part of her Presenting Ideas to Skeptical People online course. Both highly recommended!
Chapter 16: The Benefits of Appreciative Living
How to Live More Appreciatively
p192 – A summary of Dr Robert Emmons’ research on the benefits of gratitude journalling
p193 – A summary of the ideas in Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile
p193 – Richard G. Tedeschi, PhD and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, Posttraumatic Growth: A New Perspective on Psychotraumatology (downloadable PDF)
p194 – Stress Can Be a Good Thing If You Know How to Use It – HBR article by Alia Crum and Thomas Crum.
The original research paper by Alia Crum, Peter Salovey and Shawn Achor is available as a downloadable PDF here:
‘Rethinking Stress: The Role of Mindsets in Determining the Stress Response‘, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2013, Vol. 104, No. 4, 716 –733
p194 – An overview of Carol Dweck’s research on ‘growth’ and ‘fixed’ mindsets, with links to more in-depth articles
Chapter 17: What Next?
p198 – Join the Positive Change Methods Group on Facebook or its sister group on LinkedIn for lots of curated tips, articles, and research about Appreciative Inquiry and related approaches including positive psychology and solution-focused practice.
An Appreciative Inquiry booklist
Appreciative Inquiry resources (including videos, articles, podcasts, and research findings)
Subscribe to the Coaching Leaders Secrets newsletter
Train with me in Practical Appreciative Inquiry (there’s also a lower priced self-paced version)