How to Begin: Some Introductory Resources

Those who are seriously interested in using appreciative inquiry would do well to obtain one of the new textbooks addressing the subject systematically: Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination by Jane Magruder Watkins and Bernard J. Mohr or The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change by Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom.

Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination is a mine of information, summarizing the emerging field of appreciative inquiry and its origins. The authors’ analysis of the discipline’s "DNA" of interweaving principles and processes is particularly helpful. Identifying the "positive core," reframing situations, drafting appreciative questions, and all sorts of interactive processes relating to different aspects of the discipline are included, along with ten case studies and a six-page bibliography that add to its value.

A more recent book, The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change, gets my vote for best treatment to date. This book surveys the same arena found in Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination but also charts new territory. Whitney and Trosten-Bloom’s case studies come from all sorts of communities and make their book a page-turner. The weaving together of history, philosophical underpinning, and practitioner wisdom is remarkably well done.

Whitney and Trosten-Bloom’s most important contribution comes in their last chapter, where they ask people richly experienced in appreciative inquiry what makes it valuable. From the answers, the authors identify and discuss six freedoms.⁶ They suggest these freedoms are "unleashed" in an appreciative approach to community:

• the freedom to be known in relationship
• the freedom to be heard
• the freedom to dream in community
• the freedom to choose to contribute
• the freedom to act with support
• the freedom to be positive

This evaluation of why the process is so helpful rings true to me, and I believe the six freedoms are a wonderful introduction to the whole field. However, I would not give up Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination for The Power of Appreciative Inquiry. Having read each of these books at least twice, I’ll return to both regularly.

6. Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom, The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003), 238ff.