What works well? Appreciative interview

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By Iain Carruthers  IC&CO

Many organisations are obsessed with identifying and then solving problems.   This can create a type of deficit psychology, where your working life feels like a series of unfortunate events in search of solutions. 

One remedy is to uncover what’s going well, and then seek to build on that.

Appreciative interviews are one of the Liberating Structures, a set of simple meeting micro-structures that shift levels of trust and creativity.   They are a great way of uncovering the enablers of success in under an hour. 

We experimented with this structure at the latest LS Scotland meet-up, hosted by Kirsty & Will McLean  from the CHAS (There’s a festive fundraiser if you’d like to help their brilliant work.)

In a nutshell:

-        In pairs,  you’re each invited to tell a story of success related to a theme.  (In this case - a professional high in the last year.)  You listen deeply, not least because you will have to tell the other person’s story in the next phase.

-        Pairs move into fours, where the stories are retold. (It’s always instructive to hear how someone summarizes and re-tells your narrative)

-        In a four, you pull out the common or interesting patterns at play. What are the ingredients behind the success? What’s common to two or more stories? What are the strengths shown here that we can build on? 

-        In plenary, you share the results, using 1-2-4 All or 1-3 All, or a chat box.

It’s so valuable to remind ourselves about what works well, and to re-discover that expertise and solutions are commonly available and easily overlooked.  You could twin this exercise with Troika Consulting or 15% Solutions to help individuals make their next moves. 


About the Author,

IC&CO is Iain Carruthers, a London-based consultant. Iain is typically called in when people need to make rapid progress on key strategy or thought leadership issues.

Iain's domain experience is customer insight across B2C and B2B markets, brand and marketing strategy, learned as Director at Interbrand, Kantar, and Engine. 

Find you more: IC&CO help firms craft closely argued strategy and thought leadership (squarespace.com)


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