Effective Communication Styles Part Three: Appreciative Inquiry

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sagash** (0:17)
Hello and welcome back to the show. We are continuing our dive into communication techniques today, covering the concept of appreciative inquiry. I'm Stephen Sagash here with Tulio, Syragusa, and Ashmar. Hey, guys. How's it going? Great. All right. Let's do this. So this is both, I think, a communication approach and kind of a change management approach that helps engage and involve your teams and staff. Ash and Tulio, let's dive in here. Ash, kick us off. Give us a little background on appreciative inquiry.

**Ashmar** (0:55)
Yes. So appreciative inquiry was developed in the mid-1980s by David Cooper-Rider. It is mentor Suresh Srivastava at Case Western University. They introduced it as a revolutionary approach to organizational development and change management. Now, what appreciative inquiry, why it was developed was that it was trying to combat the traditional problem-solving method, focusing on only identifying issues and deficiencies within an organization. Cooper-Rider and Srivastava believe that this deficit-based approach often limited creativity and reinforced negative perceptions of people within themselves. So they proposed appreciative inquiry as a way to shift focus to what works well, thereby unlocking positive potential.

**Stephen Sagash** (1:41)
All right, Tulio, let's define appreciative inquiry now. So kind of got a little context there.

**Tulio Syragusa** (1:47)
I really love this because it reminds me of when you're trying to grow a lawn and you want to make it really plush and thick, you just plant a lot more seeds. You overseed over and over until all the weeds get choked out and all you have is great, great grass. So if you guys are trying to figure out how to have a good lawn, there's your little secret. So at its core, appreciative inquiry is really a strengths-based, collaborative approach that seeks to identify and build upon the best of what is and also to envision what could be. So it's like, where are we now? What's the best of that right now? And then where could we be? What can we envision ourselves to be? And it's really about exploring and amplifying the positive core of an organization. It's achievements, the assets of the organization, and also looking at unexplored potentials, innovation, strengths, and vital tradition. It really reminds me actually of the first phase of a force field analysis, where we look at all the driving forces that are working in favor of an organization towards a goal. So it's, and similarly in a force field analysis, you engage all the stakeholders at all levels because you're trying to foster collective learning and co-creation of the shared future. So it's a very effective way to understand the driving forces you want to amplify.
And being appreciative is really about valuing or recognizing the best in people. And the world around us. So it's a reaffirming positive way to acknowledge the past and present strengths, successes, and the potential of individuals in the organization. The inquiry part is really the act of exploring, discovery, being curious, asking questions, being open to new possibility. And that rings similar to a stage of design thinking, which is part of the empathizing, which is really about understanding what's going on. So it's a combination of gratitude and empathy that brings together this effective communication style of appreciative inquiry.

**Stephen Sagash** (4:16)
So this is often guided by this, what they call a 4D cycle, which consists of four phases, and it's discover, dream, design, destiny.
And so discover it's, you know, identify and appreciate the best of what exists, dream. Envision what could be, like Tulio mentioned, imagine the organization's greatest potential, design, co-construct how the organization can work to achieve the dream. I think the key word there is co-construct. And destiny, implement and sustain the proposed design, empower collective action toward the vision. Tulio, let's get into those a little bit more. Let's start with that discovery.

**Tulio Syragusa** (4:57)
Yeah, I really love these. These are so simple and effective. So let's talk about the discovery phase. So that's where participants share stories of peak experiences and successes. So often we go into what's not working. This is the opposite. This is really about highlighting what is working. Let's discover what's working very well. And it's really about uncovering the organization's strengths and what gives life to it. Then once you've identified those things, like, what are we good at? Let's celebrate that, right? Then what can we do with this? How do we dream with this foundation? And then you move into the dream phase. And that's really about building on those strengths, those strengths that have been identified. And then being able to envision all the stakeholders, being able to envision a future where all those strengths were amplified. So this phase encourages bold, creative thinking without constraints. So it's kind of like asking the question, if I had no constraints or no limitation, what could I do with these strengths? So it's about dreaming the possibilities. And you see there's a phase approach to this. Then after you can envision the future, then of course you're like, okay, let's design it. What do we do now? We identify our strengths. We can see moving forward how these strengths could give us the ability to accomplish what we thought was impossible. Now there's the design phase. And this is where the participants collaboratively design the structures, the processes, and all the strategies that will support the envisioned future. It's kind of like, okay, we see ourselves there with all these strengths. Let's work backwards to figure out what we need to do to make that possible.