How to Facilitate the Dream Stage in Appreciative Team Development

This is one possible way to facilitate the Dream stage when you're working with a team or small group. As so often, even if you're not using Appreciative Inquiry, you could probably still adapt this protocol to work within other approaches to team development.

I'll also say a bit about how you can use it with larger groups, and provide some tips for handling some scenarios that may crop up from time to time.

So how do you go about facilitating the Dream stage in appreciative team development? Here's the method I favour, one of many possible ways.

The basic unit here is a group of about 4-8 people sat around a table. For a larger group, you can have multiple tables.

As with any group discussion or brainstorm, we need to guard against the conversation being 'captured' by the most talkative and energetic members of the group.

This protocol incorporates a couple of steps to make sure that introverts and less confident participants also get to have their say.

• Explain what the Dream stage is about, and ask your question or questions to get people thinking about the future as if it was already happening.
• Encourage individuals to take a few minutes to reflect silently on what the future could be like. This is to make sure that introverts and more reflective thinkers get their say as well.
• Get them to share their visions in one-to-one conversations. This will be easier for less confident participants than having to present their thoughts to the whole group straight away.
• Share the visions round the table as a group.

Distribute art materials at this point - any sooner may distract some people. With an 'in the room' facilitated session, I put a box on each table containing marker pens, highlighters, a glue stick, some Post-Its (use branded ones as the glue on cheaper ones tends to fail quickly), and to add a bit of 3D, balloons and coloured pipe-cleaners. With an online group, use a virtual whiteboard (Miro is the most powerful and easiest to use app that I've found, even in the free version).

• Get the group to construct some kind of artwork to depict their Dream - a collage, a ‘living sculpture’, a playlet, a musical work (if instruments are available), a poem, or just a presentation.

Also ask them to come up with a powerful, positive, evocatively worded statement, slogan, or strapline to describe the future?as if it's already true?- this is called a?possibility statement?or?provocative proposition. Give them between 30 and 40 minutes to create a three-minute presentation of their vision and their possibility statement.

• Each group presents their vision, collectively or via a nominated spokesperson, to the rest of the room (or just to the facilitator if you are working with a small team).

Optionally, you can combine the visions into a larger mural, collage, enactment, document or online wiki (if you are working with dispersed teams).

This format works with up to around 8 tables, maybe 70 people. Let's have a look at a couple of fairly common 'what-if' scenarios and how you can tweak the protocol to accommodate them.?

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Modifying the protocol for a larger group

With a larger event, beyond about 8 tables, the event might begin to lose momentum as the presentations drag on and people's hands become sore from applauding.

Here's what you could do instead of each table presenting to the rest of the room: ask each table to nominate two of their members as guides to their artwork, and send the other members off around the room to visit five or six other tables. The guides for those tables can explain the artwork to them.

This activity might last around 20 minutes. Half-way through, the guides could swap roles with two others from their table, so they get to see some of what the other tables are doing.

In this way, participants won't get to see all of the Dreams that other tables have created, but they will get a sense of what others are creating.

What if some people insist that they "aren't creative"?

Very occasionally (I think it's happened to me twice in 12 years) you might get someone who flatly refuses to take part in any kind of creative activity, claiming that they aren't creative.

Rather than trying to argue the person out of this rather limiting view of themselves, because good luck with that, you can say something like "Great! We needed someone like you!" and give them a role.

You could ask them to make sure that the group keeps to time while they are creating, and/or make sure that the group keeps on track and stays positive. This gives them something to do, helps them to stay feeling included, and benefits their group. Very likely, within a few minutes, they'll forget themselves and start participating in the creative activity.

Finally, what if not everyone will be around for the Dream you want them to create?

For example: a few years back I was facilitating a reasonably large event for two probation services that were merging. The topic was around 'How do we carry forward the best of both services?'

I realised that for this group, that comprised all the probation officers and managers in the two services, the standard Dream question along the lines of 'imagine it's 5 years in the future and you have just won the award for best probation service for the third consecutive year' probably wouldn't work as well as usual.

It wouldn't work because as part of the merger, 10% of the staff would be offered voluntary redundancy - so they wouldn't be there in one year's time, let alone five.

Thinking about winning awards five years down the line would not be very motivating for them. In fact, they might feel excluded and written off during the AI event.

So instead I asked them about legacy. "What will the future service be like when it preserves and builds on the best of both current services? What has to be there for that to happen? What will that be like, and what will it feel like to work there?"

That question included everyone present, and honoured the contributions and viewpoints of everyone, including those who would be leaving.

It's important to stay flexible and responsive to the needs of the group you are working with, not least because human beings are unpredictable.

For example, the Appreciative Inquiry literature is full of case studies where the AI practitioner has changed the standard terminology in order to fit with the culture of the client, so 'Provocative Propositions' might become 'Possibility Statements' or 'Aspiration Statements'.

In the next article, we'll look at Provocative Propositions in a bit more depth. What makes a good one, and how does their role change in Inquiries that have a larger scope?

If you'd like to get started using Appreciative Inquiry confidently with teams and small groups, join the next?Practical Appreciative Inquiry course?- wherever you are in the world! Ask me about discounts for multiple attendees.