Appreciative Practice

An astonishing proliferation of appreciative applications taking advantage of these eight principles grows daily, most of them utilizing one-on-one, small group, and large group activities. Group process, of course, is an industry today in the church, as elsewhere. An appreciative approach, though, offers some special tools for any group facilitator. Watkins and Mohr call them "generic processes."¹⁶ One might call them pedagogic priorities, winners in the contest to identify what is most important to learn, to know, no matter what you are studying.

Considering these processes in terms of appreciative questions dramatizes their usefulness, especially if we set them in context. Let us imagine, say, that at our church we’ve decided to do a three-day appreciative inquiry into the kind of community we’d most like to become over the next five years. Inquiries can be broad gauge or narrow, as long as the positive core is clear and the questions truly appreciative. The initial process, the "positive framing," actually precedes the inquiry, beginning with planning, and continues until the end.¹⁷

Positive Framing. As a person of faith, what is most important to you about the Church? And what do you most value about our particular congregation? What does it do when it’s at its best? What are its most important, inspiring achievements as far as you are concerned?¹⁸

Identifying Sources of Vitality. Would you tell me a story or two about when the congregation has been most alive and effective? What was the source of the vitality, as far as you could tell? What made it compelling? Where and how is God active in this congregation? What kind of involvement has been most valuable to you—and are there ways you’d like to be engaged but haven’t yet tried?

Discovering Themes. As we listen to the stories in our group about how we really love and value our church, as we hear about the mountaintop experiences we each have had, what are the common threads, the themes that emerge? As we consider these themes connecting us at the heart level, and as we think about our church’s next five years, what are two or three of the topics you think should be explored as we consider our future?

Developing Images of the Future. If our congregation exceeds our best expectations for growth, development, and ministry over the next five years, what could it look like in 60 months? As we set our sights on the kind of congregation we would like to become, what images would you choose to convey your own best vision of our future?

Creating the Future. Staying focused on our sources of vitality, remembering the themes that emerged from our stories and the issues they evoked, looking again at images that draw us in the direction we wish to go, what kind of planning does our vision ask for, and how would each of us like to address the task? What will I do, what will we do together, in these coming weeks, toward becoming the vital, effective congregation we want to become?

The linear progression of these processes is obvious, but as a formal inquiry moves forward, the processes keep getting used in different ways. Appreciative projects usually begin with one-on-one extended conversations, experiences so popular that people mistakenly assume that "appreciative interview" is the same thing as "appreciative inquiry." Indeed, the questions, answers, images, and stories from the first interviews inform and resonate through the whole process.

After the interviews, the pairs usually join in working groups of eight, tell each other’s stories, and report back to the full group, which can range from a few dozen to thousands. The group then works with these stories, identifies themes, and is encouraged to dream and imagine outside of the box, with individuals being given opportunities to consider different ways to be engaged.

Following this discovery process, various funneling processes are used to take the most engaging, compelling images and "provocative propositions" and begin designing strategies for the future. The provocative propositions turn out to be as compelling and important as the initial interviews. Grounded in the values, history, and best experiences of the community, the propositions stretch and challenge the status quo, set affirmative goals on the horizon, and call for involvement from everyone in the community. At the end people are given the time to start taking the first steps in creating the future.

In learning the methodological aspects of AI, remember that the discipline emerged from a graduate school of management preparing consultants for corporate America. Hundreds of AI practitioners are concerned with engaging CEOs adequately to wean them away from problem solving. They have designed sophisticated project models for taking advantage of the principles and processes. Almost all of this interaction involves pairs of people developing into small, interactive working groups who eventually align with the whole community, energized and working on a shared vision. Many of the projects focus on appreciative strategic planning, though strategic planning is only one of many different kinds of inquiry.

The most popular AI model is called the 4-D process. It emerged in Zimbabwe from an appreciative project building relationships between nonprofits taking care of children in various parts of Africa. Typically, a full-blown 4-D appreciative inquiry takes two to five days and guides a community of learners from discovery to dreaming to design to destiny, or, as some say, delivery. Becoming a practitioner means mastering the group dynamics and processes attending this approach as well as other models that map the movement from appreciating to envisioning to co-constructing to sustaining.

16. Watkins and Mohr, 39. Their summary language defining "generic processes" is plain and instructive: choose the positive as the focus of inquiry; inquire into stories of life-giving forces; locate themes that appear in the stories and select topics for further inquiry; create shared images for a preferred future; find innovative ways to create that future. As they themselves say, though, using these learning categories or procedures without appreciating the principles compromises the inquiry and its power.
17. The following questions are not a protocol for a proposed interview. If they were, however, they would be preceded by several paragraphs that would set a more specific context for the interview, preparing the ground for the questions.
18. Most people have difficulty at first expressing what they appreciate without dragging in what they do not appreciate. Facilitators learn to keep setting aside the problematic by focusing on what is valuable.