179: Create Conversations Worth Having by Leveraging Appreciative Inquiry with Cheri Torres and Jackie Stavros
/
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is one of the most widely used approaches for fostering positive change in organizations and communities. In their book titled Conversations Worth Having, Cheri Torres and Jackie Stavros synthesize a way to bring AI into our daily conversations at work and at home, and they join me on this episode of The TalentGrow Show to share their unique insights. You’ll learn about the four types of conversations in the model, how to leverage tools like ‘positive framing’ and ‘the flipping technique’ to inspire curiosity and positive interest in others, and how to create conversations that are appreciative, inquisitive, and worth having. Plus, Cheri and Jackie weigh in on the right way to think about balancing positive conversations with necessary critical feedback. Listen and be sure to share this episode with others.
ABOUT CHERI TORRES AND JACKIE STAVROS:
Cheri Torres, Ph.D. partners with organizations to catalyze positive change. Leaders and managers using the simple practices she introduces helps increase retention, engagement, and performance. These practices are grounded in neuroscience, positive psychology, and Appreciative Inquiry, one of the most widely used approaches for systems change. She’s written numerous books and articles; her most recent is a Berrett Koehler bestseller, Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement.
Jacqueline (Jackie) Stavros’ passion is working with others to create meaningful results for positive change. She is recognized for her creation of SOAR, a positive approach to strategic thinking, planning, and leading. She is a professor in the College of Business and Information Technology at Lawrence Technological University and Advisor for David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry. She also co-authored many articles and books with two recent: books, Conversations Worth Having and Thin Book of SOAR: Creating Strategy that Inspires Innovation and Engagement (soar-strategy.com). She has worked across all sectors, in 25 countries, using Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to affect the lives of thousands or people and hundreds of organizations improve capacity to thrive and increase performance.
Their work has been featured in leading media sources including Fast Company, Forbes, HR Magazine, SmartBrief, Training Industry, Training Magazine, SmartBrief, Detroit’s Live in the D, dbusiness Magazine, and leadership and training blogs and podcasts.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
· What is the Appreciative Inquiry approach? (8:31)
Conversations Worth Having quadrants from “The Conversations Worth Having Quick Start Guide” by Cheri Torres and Jackie Stavros. Listen to Cheri and Jackie on episode 179 of the TalentGrow Show with Halelly Azulay to learn how to have more conversations worth having!
· The four types of conversations that the Appreciative Inquiry model defines (9:59)
· To what extent should we strive to make our statements or conversations appreciative or inquisitive? (13:16)
· What is positive framing? How does it inspire curiosity, imagination and positive interest? (14:18)
· How leaders can create more conversations worth having (17:19)
· The value of curiosity, and why it’s important to sometimes suspend judgement in favor of curiosity (19:12)
· Cheri and Jackie weigh in on what the ratio of positive to negative or critical interactions should be (21:45)
· Appreciative Inquiry is not necessarily about being positive; it is about adding value (23:00)
· What’s new and exciting on Cheri and Jackie’s horizon? (25:00)
· One specific action you can take to upgrade your leadership effectiveness (26:00)
RESOURCES:
· Get Cheri and Jackie’s book, Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement
· Check out Cheri and Jackie’s website, and download a free conversation toolkit!
· Connect with Cheri and Jackie on LinkedIn
· Learn more about Appreciative Inquiry here
· Give a listen to Episode 177 of The TalentGrow Show with Kim Scott for more on distinguishing between constructive and destructive feedback
Episode 179 Cheri Torres and Jackie Stavros
TEASER CLIP: Interviewee: People equate appreciative inquiry with being positive. And it is not about being positive. It is about adding value or paying attention to what is of value. It is absolutely of value to point out when there is an issue, when there is something that could cause a problem. It would be highly detrimental and devaluing to not point out something that would cause an organization to explode or fail. It’s how you address that problem that is at the heart of appreciative inquiry.
[MUSIC] Announcer: Welcome to the TalentGrow Show, where you can get actionable results-oriented insight and advice on how to take your leadership, communication and people skills to the next level and become the kind of leader people want to follow. And now, your host and leadership development strategist, Halelly Azulay.
Halelly: Hey there TalentGrowers. Welcome back to another episode of the TalentGrow Show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist here at TalentGrow, the company that sponsors this show so that it stays free for you every Tuesday morning. TalentGrow develops leaders that people actually want to follow and we provide consulting on leadership development strategy as well as speaking and workshops on leadership skills building. Now, our show today is with two guests and they are experts in how to bring the concept of appreciative inquiry into all of your conversations at work, of course, and at home too. I have Cheri and Jackie, I’ll introduce them when we get into the show and you’ll hear more from them about what does appreciative inquiry mean, what are conversations worth having, what are some of the other kind of conversations you should have less? We talk about how to have a positive framing for your conversations and how to, as a leader, bring more of those conversations into your work, as well as what ratio of your interactions should be positive versus critical. I hope that you find this informative and interesting and actionable. Without further ado, let’s listen to my conversation with Cheri and Jackie.
TalentGrowers, this week I have not one but two guests. I have Cheri Torres, PhD, and Jackie Stavros. They are partners on a book that we’re going to be discussing, co-authors, called Conversations Worth Having. Cheri partners with organizations to catalyze positive change. Leaders and managers using the simple practices she introduces help increase retention, engagement and performance. These practices are grounded in neuroscience, positive psychology and appreciative inquiry, one of the most widely used approaches for systems change and one which we will discuss today. She’s written numerous books and articles. Her most recent is a Berrett-Koehler bestseller that we’ll be discussing today, Conversations Worth Having, using appreciative inquiry to fuel productive and meaningful engagement.
Jackie Stavros’ passion is working with others to create meaningful results for positive change. She’s recognized for her creation of SOAR, a positive approach to strategic thinking, planning and leading. She is a professor in the College of Business and Information Technology at Lawrence Technologic University and advisor for David L. Cooperrider Center for appreciative inquiry. She also co-authored many articles and books and her other most recent book is called SOAR: Creating Strategy that Inspires Innovation and Engagement. She’s worked across all sectors in 25 countries, using appreciative inquiry to affect the lives of thousands of people and hundreds of organizations, improving capacity to thrive and increase performance. Welcome Cheri and Jackie to the TalentGrow Show.
Interviewees: Thank you so much.
Halelly: I’m so glad that you’re here. I look forward to our conversation. There’s so much we can cover today, but before we start, I always ask my guests to give us a brief overview of their professional journey. Where did you start and how did you get to where you are today?
Jackie: My career started about 35 years ago in marketing and branding in high tech automotive area, working with small to mid-sized companies to export products overseas. When I was in that middle management position, working my way up to a senior position, my boss suggested that I look at this Doctorate of Management program at Case and he had said, “It’s all about the inside, managing people. Learning and leading is part of managing.” So I checked it out and I met David Cooperrider and learned about AI, appreciative inquiry. It was a qualitative research class and he said to me, as a manager, he said there are no neutral questions. There is power to our questions and how we find them and how we ask questions. And that was the big thing in my life. So as I was working full-time and working on my doctorate, I did research around appreciative inquiry and really learned that organizations are a place to build relationships and people. I ended up leaving private industry. That’s how I landed at Lawrence Technologic University, which our motto is vary in practice, and so I’ve kept one foot in the academic world and one foot in the business world. The second part of my journey was when I met Cheri Torres, we were in Washington, D.C., back in 2002, and we were both on different journeys with appreciative inquiry, but the one passion we talked about is how do we bring this into our daily lives at work, at home and in our communities? That brought us to our first book together on dynamic relationships. To work with organizations that we did, for the realization was, think about this – everything you do is involved in a conversation. That unfolded into Cheri and I working on the second book together, and it would probably be the perfect time to hand it over to Cheri.
Cheri: I had a very circuitous route to where I am today. I think in looking back, my passion has always been to work with individuals, teams and organizations to help them move beyond their self-limiting beliefs, thoughts and ideas so that they can access their full potential. I originally started out of graduate school working for DuPont and quickly realized that working in the corporate world internally was not my pathway. I did a variety of different things and eventually found myself doing leadership and team development through outdoor experiential learning, which I absolutely loved because it was people learning by doing and having fun while they were doing it. What I came to realize was that the leadership and teamwork were inherent to all of us. Every single one of us has that capacity, and what these outdoor experiential activities did was create a structure for that to come out. I eventually shifted my focus to how do we structure our organizations in ways that bring out the natural inherent capacities for people to collaborate, be engaged and thrive? In that process of that journey, I connected with appreciative inquiry, which gave me the specifics, the research, the process for turning what I implicitly did with my facilitation, which was to focus on what was working and focus on the skills people had, but now here was this explicit model that said, “Here’s what this is why everybody should be doing this,” and the research behind it. Here’s why this is the only way we’re going to be able to tap in and access the full potential of who we are as individuals, teams and organizations.
Halelly: So David Cooperrider is the creator of appreciative inquiry theory, is that correct?
Jackie: Yes, David Cooperrider and his colleagues at Case, that’s where it came out in 1985.
Halelly: Let’s talk about that. You discuss it in your book, and basically you say that your book is to help people use appreciative inquiry in their work and the rest of their lives. I think that we should not assume that everybody has heard of it and understands what it is, and of course you could probably get a PhD and never learn enough about it. But in a very short way, can you describe what the method or the theory is?
Jackie: Appreciative inquiry is best known for people working with people, it’s an approach for discovering what is the best in your people and your teams, how do you fuel productive and meaningful engagement in organizations, local, national, global communities, and it’s a way of asking questions called generative questions and framing conversations.
Halelly: Is there a framework or a model that you can share with us briefly?
Jackie: Sure. Let me just add, also, on appreciative inquiry, it’s really if you think about the two words – appreciative and inquiry – to appreciate means to grow in value or to value something. And so appreciative inquiry is about either engaging in conversations that grow value or talk about what is value. And an inquiry is asking questions. So it’s really about asking questions and engaging in conversations which actually move us toward things that add value and where we want to go. And the model that we have from our book is it breaks conversations down basically into four different types of conversations. If you can imagine a grid, and along the X-axis you’d have appreciative at the top and depreciative at the bottom, and our conversations usually fall on that continuum either from adding value or devaluing people or situations. And then on the Y-axis, you would have statements or asking questions, inquiry. All of our conversations fall within then four types of conversations. Destructive conversations are statements that devalue people and situations. An example might be, “Your work is really sloppy. You are never going to get anywhere.” It’s a statement and it devalues the person. A critical conversation is one that is inquiry-based, but it also devalues the person or the situation and an example, it often sounds like a question but it’s got a statement inherent in it. For example, “Why in the world did you do that?” Sometimes those conversations are beneficial, but most of the time if you stay in critical conversations with people, you move into a destructive relationship.
You want to be above the line and above the line you have affirmative conversations – those are statements that are appreciative. Statements that add value and there are two different kinds. One might be an affirmative like, “You host amazing podcasts. They are of such value to your listeners.” That would be an affirmative statement. I also might advocate for something that I think is of value, like, “I prefer option B over option A and here are the reasons why.” Both of those add value and they are appreciative. But if we stay in that area, if all I do is advocate or all I do is give superficial affirmation to people, it doesn’t grow the relationship and it ends up not being supportive to the organization or the team. So moving into the box of appreciative and inquiry, where we can ask questions and deepen our connection, our understand, so if you were to say, “I prefer option A,” I might say, “Can you tell my why you prefer option A?” And you say why, and at the end of that you say, “So which option do you prefer and why?” So now we’re in a conversation that’s adding value and moving us toward a decision.
Halelly: That’s the kind of conversation that you call – I’m going to open my book here that you sent me, thank you – and it’s called conversations worth having.
Jackie: Yes it is. Those are the ones worth having.
Halelly: And that’s the name of your book. Very nice, thank you for that. That’s helpful. Maybe we can add a graphic or something in the show notes to help people visualize that since maybe they’re driving or on a treadmill or something like that, trying to envision a four-box, although it’s not very difficult. I heard in your description that the top two kinds of conversations are good, but you want to have some kind of balance? Or is there some kind of ratio? We can’t make all the conversations inquiry-based, because sometimes as a manager we have feedback to share. There is a right and a wrong way to do something and you’re doing it the way that’s going to end up resolving a mistake or extra costs to the client or is going to get us into trouble. Is that where you use the appreciative statement instead of the inquiry?
Jackie: Yes, and we talk about doing the research. You’re right, not 100 percent. But imagine if you started to strive for 70 to 80 percent of your conversations were appreciative and inquiry, and if you start off on the affirmative basis, or even the critical basis, you want to move into if it’s critical, you want to make sure that it becomes more appreciative in nature. And if there are affirmative statements, you want to make room that questions can be asked.
Halelly: You talk about in the book about positive framing. So, you say that positive framing “draws people in and inspires curiosity, imagination and interest.” Tell us more about that.
Jackie: Sure. Imagine in organizations, things go wrong as you said and you have to address it. We actually counsel leaders, managers, to shift the way they address it by the way they can frame a problem. And we provide what we call a flipping technique and it’s typically easy for employees, customers to name the problem. Then think of the positive opposite that you want to keep going and clarifying that if the positive opposite is true, what would you really want to talk about?
Halelly: Concretize that for me?
Jackie: Sure. Imagine a hospital administrator and the problem she’s experienced is low patient satisfaction. She’s asking her managers to identify what’s going wrong, do something about it, there’s attack and defense and this is a problem, the low patient satisfaction metrics. If you flip it to the positive opposite, they want high patient satisfaction metrics – this is actually a story – in the ER. And if you keep going, if you had high patient satisfaction metrics, what does this place really look like? You begin to frame a conversation that patients are delighted with their care and service. The staff feels like they’re making a difference. And so you begin to ask questions about that environment and what they learned is there was plenty of patients being cared for and serviced, and that began to engage people in conversations of, “This is what we’re doing right. What can we do more of? How do we do more it and how do we pay attention that?” They discovered behaviors and actions that they could replicate and share and come up with more creative solutions. What began to happen is that it built I like to call a positive contagion in the ER, where the satisfaction scores improved because the conversations were around what they were doing right, learning what to do more of and working together.
Halelly: So you’re not ignoring problems, but by using a positive frame you’re focusing on the positive that could be and then engaging people into conversations about what needs to change to create that?
Jackie: Yes, and it inspires. People get more curious, their minds begin to open, and there is a real desirable focus that they’re co-creating just a wonderful ER department together. They’re figuring this out together.
Halelly: In your book you have a lot of different stories and examples, and also there is a chart with examples of how to reframe certain situations in a positive way. So I appreciate that. We’re talking to leaders. They are often in the middle. They’re not completely in control of everything that’s going on, but they’re in control of their teams and how they lead. So, what are some things that they could do to take from your work that can help them create more of these kinds of conversations worth having?
Cheri: I think one of the things to keep in mind, as they’re working with people and they’re working to move toward the goals and objectives, the success in the work that they are doing, is to remember number one that we move in the direction of the questions we ask and the conversations we have. So if they are talking a lot about problems and fixing problems, they’re going to stay spinning around problems. But if they identify the problem and then begin to talk about, “What is it that we want?” they’re going to move toward what they want. So that first piece, talk about what you want, because whatever you’re talking about and whatever you’re inquiring into, that will grow.
The second piece is that people commit to what they help create. And so engaging team members in not just superficial engagement, but real deep engagement in creating department goals, department strategies for moving forward, encouraging the creativity of team members, asking for their feedback, sharing feedback yourself in ways that help everybody keep learning and moving and growing, will make any team more productive and help hold on to the best talent in that team. The other thing I would do is I would suggest that leaders really practice getting curious. Especially when they’re getting either frustrated or upset or defensive about anything. Pause and take a deep breath and get curious. Because curiosity opens the brain and it helps connect us to our capacity, to work with other people, to be creative and see possibilities where we didn’t see them before. It gives us greater access to critical thinking and higher-order thinking, and that’s the mindset that you want everybody in your organization to be having. Our words and the way we engage and talk to one another either triggers that open mindset that’s all prepared to collaborate and work together as a team, or the words close people off and create defense where they are mostly concerned about themselves. Having those conversations worth having as a model really brings people to that place where they’re open and ready to engage and participate to their greatest potential.
Halelly: I often share with people that your brain can’t really hold a mode of curiosity and judgment at the same time, so a lot of times when we’re judging others, we’re moving away from curiosity because we’re creating a statement about who they are or what their intention is or what is wrong with them. But if we’re in curiosity mode, then we’re open to other possibilities, so just shifting from judgment to curiosity, so that you can get more information, it doesn’t mean don’t ever make judgments – of course you should make judgments – but delay or postpone them until you have good information.
Cheri: Yes, and all the information.
Halelly: And other people’s input. I like it. I know in your book you address the idea that, and I asked you a little bit about this earlier, in terms of percentage – I have to say, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with my podcast, but the TalentGrowers know that I’ve got the devil’s advocate hat and I sometimes bring it out and put it on, just to serve those who are listening to this and saying, “Yeah, but.” Just to help address it. I know some people would be like, “Come on, this is kind of Pollyanna-ish. It’s not the real world. It’s really lovely to say that you should have a positive framing or look what’s good but sometimes people are super wrong or it’s just something you have to say and it’s tough and you have to just say it. There is a lot of research out there and some has been called into question about the ratio of positive to negative interactions in the world of positive psychology with Barbara Fredrickson’s work and so on. You wrote about this, so where do you land? I have a number ratio that I tell people that is sort of average. What about you?
Jackie: We did a lot of research, there were 7:1, 6:1, 5:1, 4:1, 3:1 positivity to negativity, and we landed at 4:1.
Halelly: That’s a good place.
Jackie: Cheri, were you there with me when I landed?
Cheri: It’s the 80/20 rule.
Halelly: I like that. So 80 percent of your conversation you should aim to make them positive interactions, and then like every one out of four … if one out of four is an interaction where you’re saying something that’s not so nice to hear but you have to say it, then if it’s buffered by having all those other positive conversations in that relationship, then you override the negative effect of that, whereas if all of your conversations were negative or half of your conversations were negative, it would be a real problem.
Jackie: Yes. And now you have a direction to move into.
Cheri: I think it’s also really important for the skeptics out there, and this happens often with appreciative inquiry. People equate appreciative inquiry with being positive. And it is not about being positive. It is about adding value or paying attention to what is of value. It is absolutely of value to point out when there is an issue, when there is something that could cause a problem. It would be highly detrimental and devaluing to not point out something that would cause an organization to explode or fail. It’s how you address that problem that is at the heart of appreciative inquiry. So that’s where the flipping comes in. It’s like if you’ve got low performance, it’s important to point that out, because what we need is high performance. So you flip it. What happens when we have high performance? How would we know that? And we could start to say, “Oh, we’d have greater productivity and we’d have collaboration and we’d have retention,” and you create this whole list of all those things would happen, and then what appreciative inquiry would say is, “Okay, let’s go study where we have those things in the organization already. When has this team been at its best, at its most productive? When have we held on and retained the best talent?” Instead of diving in and discovering a whole lot about what doesn’t work, you dive in and you find out a whole lot about what does work, and you grow it. You expand it.
Halelly: I love it. That’s so perfect. TalentGrowers, this might remind you a little bit of the episode we did with Kim Scott not long ago about radical candor and how she worked really hard to distinguish between providing constructive feedback to people in a way that helps them perform better and being destructive. So, this has been interesting and I wish we could go on forever, but we’re almost out of time. So Cheri and Jackie, what’s new and exciting on your horizon? What’s energizing you these days?
Cheri: We are about to start in on two different projects. One of them is we are going to start a series on conversations worth having and we’re getting ready to write a book on health care conversations worth having with an MD and someone from pharmaceutical companies. Then we are also working on developing some online, on demand training videos that can really help people take these practices and create new habits for themselves.
Halelly: That’ll be very helpful. How exciting. Congratulations.
Jackie: I would say what makes it exciting is when Cheri and I wanted to bring it to the world, we had no idea that the possibilities, imagine if we could change the conversations on our planet for ones worth having.
Halelly: So you’re thinking big picture! You’re going for full on impact on the world. I love it. We always end with one, before you tell us how to follow up with you, but one specific action. Everything that you’ve shared is actionable, but let’s just really drill it down to something that TalentGrowers can do today, tomorrow, this week, to ratchet up their own effectiveness in their conversations as leaders.
Jackie: One thing, I go back to where we started at the beginning of this podcast is asking people who listen, reflect on your previous conversation and think about the nature of your interaction. Was it appreciate or depreciative? Was it inquiry or statement based? Really start to make a difference by really forcing yourself to go toward and reach the 80 percent and ask more generative questions, questions that are going to engage people on your team, get them curious, get them excited about being there. These types of questions impact your well being, and the well being of the person you’re with as well as the health of the organization.
Halelly: Great. Thank you. People are going to want to stay in touch and learn more from you and about you. They’ll probably be looking forward also to those things you’ve got cooking in the future, so where is the best place to follow up and learn more online, on social, where should they follow you?
Cheri: Our website is ConversationsWorthHaving.today, and on that site you can connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc. You can also discover more about appreciative inquiry as well as Conversations Worth Having.
Halelly: It’s a really comprehensive toolkit, I have to say. It’s very helpful to have if you don’t have time to read the whole book or if you want it as a companion.
Jackie: And if you want to learn more about appreciative inquiry, just type appreciative inquiry commons and it’s a big portal that you’ll get into with all kinds of resources that the community around the world put out there to understand more about appreciative inquiry.
Halelly: I should say I don’t know if your book was in any way sponsored by the community, but it is certainly endorsed by your community. A lot of your endorsements seem to come from people who are practicing with this framework and think that what you’re doing is right.
Cheri: Thank you.
Halelly: Well, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for making time today to speak with the TalentGrowers. I really appreciate you both and all of the insights that you’ve shared.
Jackie: Thank you so much. It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to speak to your listeners.
Cheri: Thank you again.
Halelly: My pleasure. And there you have it TalentGrowers. Another episode of the TalentGrow Show is in the books. I hope you enjoyed it. I’d love to hear what you thought. As always, I welcome your feedback as well as ideas for what you’d like me to cover in future episodes, whether it is a topic, a guest you’d like me to interview or something you’d like me to teach you that is something I speak about or in my training workshops. Also, if you haven’t yet, there is a free downloadable tool on my website for you, TalentGrowers, have you downloaded it yet? It’s called 10 Mistakes that Leaders Make and How to Avoid Them. It is totally free and when you download that you will learn how to avoid those mistakes, plus you will have an opportunity to stay in touch with me and learn about every single new episode, plus a heads up about what’s coming up the next week and actionable tips and learning opportunities from me in your inbox every Tuesday. I would love to stay in touch with you and it means a lot to me that you’re listening to this show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist here at TalentGrow, and this is the TalentGrow Show. Until the next time, make today great.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the TalentGrow Show, where we help you develop your talent to become the kind of leader that people want to follow. For more information, visit TalentGrow.com
Get my free guide, "10 Mistakes Leaders Make and How to Avoid Them" and receive my weekly newsletter full of actionable tips, links and ideas for taking your leadership and communication skills to the next level!
Don't forget to LEAVE A RATING/REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS/iTUNES! It’s easy to do (here’s how to do it in 4 easy steps). Thank you!!
Like the Facebook page of The TalentGrow Show!
Join the Facebook group – The TalentGrowers Community!
Intro/outro music: "Why-Y" by Esta
You Might Also Like These Posts:
177: Radical Candor – How to Give Feedback with Kim Scott
103: Resonate -- How to Use Vocal Intelligence and Body Language as a Leader with Dr. Louise Mahler
The "STS Formula" for giving positive feedback and appreciation
The common mistake we make during critical conversations and how to avoid it