Appreciative-Leadership

Chapter 5
The Possibilities: Thinking about where you are as an Appreciative Organisation, Appreciative Leadership and Appreciative Inquiry
My Story: Possibilities
Professor Heather Tierney-Moore, CEO of Lancashire Care
Foundation Trust
Reflecting on the possibilities for your organisation for this kind of approach is an important conversation before
you do anything else. In this chapter, I have tried to provide some thinking that may help you to enjoy a greater
chance of success.
Discovering the Best of Now
All systems have goodness in them in terms of people, process and culture. With an appreciative approach to
organisational culture change, this is your starting point.
Coming in as a new CEO, it was important for me to understand what was already working, what people felt about
being part of LCFT, and how they were connected to their work, their teams and their service users. This discovery
process took the majority of 12 months, having conversations and listening to people, understanding that much of
what I wanted was what others also wanted. This resulted in the agreement of our six values, which I introduced
at the beginning of this book. Engagement with people is the key to success.
Lesson 1: Engagement is Everything
As a CEO, you need to have a vision; however, enforcing or cascading this vision will not produce cultural change,
only engagement will accomplish that. Therefore, engaging and listening needs to be consistent, and not a “means
to an end”.
Possibilities and Ideas
Some of the things that helped to make a real difference in LCFT around ongoing engagement with our values
include:
• My commitment to attend staff induction events
• Large-scale “Engage” events for the guiding coalition of 300 clinical and managerial leaders
• Integration of our values into the Personal Development and Review Process
• My willingness to really listen and value diversity of ideas
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