Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry

By Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell

I’m a true believer in the philosophy leaders should focus on people’s strengths and the positive contributions they can make. Working in the rehabilitation field, I have become acquainted with a process called Discovery, which looks at peoples’ strengths, abilities, knowledge, interests and likes to help them find fulfilling employment. Because of my interest in these things, I see how appreciative inquiry can be a very valuable tool.

Dr. Cockell and Dr. McArthur-Blair take the concepts utilized in appreciative inquiry and provide a nice framework for building hope and resilience in personal and business situations.
 

Appreciative inquiry uses questions and telling stories that focus on what is currently working well in order to develop the future. And these questions and stories can be used to create hope when things have not gone as planned, so leaders can work through despair and reach a point of forgiveness where they can move forward.

 

The authors do a great job of explaining the basics of appreciative inquiry and provide real-life examples of how leaders have used these principles in times of despair.

 

Some of the key concepts clearly explained are:

• Hope is a practice and leaders are brokers of hope.
• Practicing hope involves persistence and repetition.
• Despair is the hardest state for leaders and simply defined is the loss of hope.
• Despair is different for each person, so there are no clear definitions.
• Forgiveness is the most difficult element to practice and is a conscious act.
• The appreciative resilience practices are individual. What works for one leader may not work for another.
• Leaders should start every meeting or conversation with the question, “What do we have to celebrate?”

There is one entire chapter devoted to a detailed explanation of an Appreciative Resilience Workshop, which is very thorough. But, of course, you need to understand and have utilized the principles of appreciative inquiry to be effective in conducting the workshop.
 

In short, Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry is a great resource for leaders. 

 

I received a copy of the book for review.