Appreciative-Leadership

Chapter 3
The Practitioner’s Story: Appreciative Organisation, Appreciative Leadership and Appreciative Inquiry
If I look back on which elements of my Appreciative Leadership journey were the most important, I believe it was
the message of collective and individual responsibility; what it is we are doing and trying to achieve coupled with
the Appreciative Inquiry model were the biggest and most significant tools in the box.
Thus, refuelled with my new-found enthusiasm and insight, I trialled the 4D Appreciative Inquiry approach amongst
the team in a “team away day”. We celebrated the here and now and our successes, looked to the future, and
dreamt of what this may look like. For me, the most telling of all produced 18 personal commitments toward a
violence- and restraint-free future – one commitment for each team member. As a team, this was the blueprint
and dry run for our “new” education programme. We knew that in order to change a culture, we had to capture the
hearts, minds and personal commitment of the majority of staff within the service, and what better way to do so
than via the organisation’s violence education programme.
And so we started our new education programme based on the 4D Appreciative Inquiry model, underpinned by the
philosophy and ethos of Appreciative Leadership. The results were astounding! People actually “got” what it was
we were trying to achieve and bought into this ethos of personal responsibility and personal commitment. By the
end of the first 12 months, we had approximately 450 “values statements” based on the organisation’s 6 values but
told through individual stories around these values. We also created approximately 450 personal commitments to
violence and restraint reduction – all personal to that particular person and just as important, and all “doable” by
each person. No big and unrealistic commitments were made, only small and realistic ones.
Whilst we were running this 4D education programme, I personally had my own Action Research programme
to complete. Those leaders who had completed the Appreciative Leadership course asked the question of our
education programme, “You’ll be doing this for your Action Research Project then” to which my reply was “No”.
You see, we were adopting the 4D Appreciative Inquiry approach in our education programme for one simple
reason: it works; it engaged people in a way that we had not previously witnessed, and engaged employees is a
vital factor for a successful service.
My Action Research Project focussed on violent incident debriefs. You see, I was and am very much still interested
in how as an organisation and service, we often play “whack-a-mole” with employees who dare make an error, or
be involved in a violent incident. I believed that our mechanistic approach to violent incident debriefs prevented any
real learning from taking place and was simply an organisational tick box. Thus, I wanted to shake up this process,
make it more “human”, and more importantly, allow for learning and commitment to prevent the circumstances that
led to the incident from reoccurring. To accomplish this, I followed the very simple process that had already yielded
such learning – the 4D Appreciative Inquiry, underpinned by the use of powerful questions.
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