Building on Strengths

Several years ago I was in Germany working with a group of high potential employees from around the world.

Their organization had identified these professions as valuable candidates for leadership development. It was quite an event – a week of various topics and speakers with dog sledding as the team-building event the afternoon before my program. (Which was quite a challenge for this Californian who didn’t even own snow boots. But that’s another story.)

During my program on Collaborative Leadership, I mentioned that Appreciative Inquiry (AI) was one of my favorite strategies for finding strengths and building on those positive qualities that already exist in a team.

AI was developed at Case Western Reserve University by David Cooperrider, professor of Organizational Behavior. I used my own version of AI - tailored for this client and focused on collaboration and knowledge sharing. While I also utilize gap analysis and After Action Review, I especially like AI’s shift from identifying problems to looking at strengths.

In a team setting, the leader sets the stage by stating the goal: “Our goal is to create a highly collaborative team experience.” Questions like the following are then posed to the whole team:

• When is it that this team is the most collaborative and engaged?

• What do we agree are our greatest strengths and successes?

• Building on these strengths, what would an ideal future look like?

• What are the principles and behaviors we need to focus on?

• What action can we take right now that will start us toward that ideal future?

AI can also be used in a personal self-inquiry model, with questions such as:

• Think of a time in your career when you were the most engaged and collaborative.

• What kind of leadership made that collaboration so successful?

• What did you learn about collaborative leadership from that incident that could you apply those lessons in your current situation?

• What action can you take that would have the most impact on increasing collaboration?

It's often said that we can learn a lot from recognizing our weaknesses and reviewing our failures. I know this is true, but I also know that there are ways to learn from our successes and build on our strengths, which, believe me, is a lot more fun!