Using Appreciative Inquiry with Teams: What Happens in the Design Stage?

If you'd like a quick intro to how to use the Appreciative approach in coaching, that's what my presentation for the Coaching Masters Summit is about - you can get access to that and a whole load of other presentations from coaching thought leaders for FREE (at the time of writing, but only today I think) when you sign up for the Coaching Masters Summit that starts tomorrow (Thurs 23 March).

The Design stage of Appreciative Inquiry is sometimes described as "building a bridge from the 'best of what is' (revealed, at least in part, in the Discovery stage ) to the best of 'what could be' (the vision set out in the Dream stage )".

According to David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney in their article?Exploring Appreciative Inquiry?(in 'PERSPECTIVES ON BUSINESS AND GLOBAL CHANGE VOL. 14. NO. 2', 2001), the essential question in this stage is:

“What would our organization look like if it were designed in every way possible to maximize the qualities of the positive core and enable the accelerated realization of our dreams?”?

What this involves in practice depends on the scope of the Inquiry process. If you're using Appreciative Inquiry as a coaching methodology, it's mostly about that team or individual coming up with ideas to make the Dream happen or to get closer to it.

Astute readers with an interest in coaching are probably thinking at this point, "Aha - so it's analogous to the 'Options' stage in the GROW model."

Yes it is - AND it has the added advantage that participants will previously have had their 'Default Mode' or 'empathic' brain networks lit up by the preceding Dream and Discovery stages, so they'll be feeling more creative, trusting, and open to new ideas.

This is a much better state for developing new ideas, especially in collaboration with fellow team members, than if their 'Task Positive' or 'analytical' networks have been activated - always a potential pitfall when exploring the 'Reality' stage of the GROW process (unless the coach is really careful).

One important thing to brief participants in the idea generation process about is that they don't have to commit to any of the ideas they come up with (selecting the options that they're actually going to commit to and carry out comes later, in the Delivery stage).

If they did feel they had to commit to or defend the ideas they offer, that would inhibit their creativity. They'd be reluctant to say out loud whatever their playful creative unconscious comes up with in case there are flaws that they hadn't noticed, in case they were judged for coming up with a 'bad idea'.

But in fact, in the first stage at least of idea generation there are no bad ideas. Creativity works by association, not by logical analysis, so we aren't judging the ideas or subjecting them to quality control at this stage. We just want lots of ideas, so that we have a range to choose from later.

In fact, we welcome 'bad' ideas! Why? Because one idea (that objectively is 'bad') might spark an idea in someone else, that calls to mind a similar-sounding word in the mind of a third participant that leads to a great idea that saves the organisation. There are no bad ideas at this stage.

With larger-scale organisational change, the Design stage goes a bit deeper and is necessarily somewhat more analytical. It involves taking a fresh look at the structures, processes, and culture of the organisation, to help it become whatever it needs to be in order to make the Dream possible - although you could still run idea-generation sessions as part of that process.

If you'd like to get started using Appreciative Inquiry confidently with teams and small groups, take a look at the Practical Appreciative Inquiry live training with me starting soon!