2.4.c Appreciative Inquiry: A Strategy to Know your Team

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The multi-professional teams in both Mee and Geeta’s cases appear to have built good working relationships by creating a culture of dialogue. Talking with teammates regularly help people to get to know each other better, find common ground, and generate interesting dialogue.

Appreciative inquiry is based on the idea that what we enquire about drives people in that direction (15). So if we seek information solely about problems and conflicts, then we often inadvertently magnify the very problems they had hoped to resolve. In health care the questions we ask can be shifted towards more positive questions about achievements, best practices, peak performances, and worthy accomplishments. By practicing appreciative inquiry, we can maintain constructive dialogue and inspire action within organizations. Positive stories motivate people to work towards a future grounded in the best of the past. Discovery is used to uncover how a system is most effective and capable at overcoming obstacles.

This involves the practice of asking questions that strengthens a team’s capacity. There are a variety of Appreciative Inquiry models, and all of them are based on the following (15):

1. Choose the positive as the focus of inquiry

2. Inquire into stories of life-giving forces

3. Locate themes that appear in the stories and select topics for further inquiry

4. Create shared images of a preferred future

5. Find innovative ways to create that future

When practicing appreciative inquiry use a conversational, friendly tone to phrase your questions. Ask open questions and expect to learn something interesting and important. Good questions invite thinking; they stretch the imagination and inspire new thoughts without evoking defensiveness or hostility. Here are a few examples of how to construct appreciative inquiry questions:

  • Ask about ultimate concerns. “What do you value most in your professional work?”
  • Use positive questions that build on positive assumptions. “What about this unit makes you especially glad you work here?”
  • Present questions as an invitation using positive, feeling, experiential words. “What has inspired you to get engaged? What do you most hope to contribute?”
  • Enhance the possibilities of storytelling by asking questions about personal experience. “Thinking back on your year, please share a high point when….”