Extract from
"Appreciative Inquiry in the Praxis of Reconciliation" by William A.
Nordenbrock, C.PP.S.
(Pages 17-20)
The Importance of Appreciation
When you bring together the Anticipatory Principle and the Positive Principle,
you have the foundational theorem of AI; that is, positive images lead to positive action.
There is solid research to support this theorem as the basis of an organizational change
strategy. In his classic article, “Positive Image, Positive Action: The Affirmative Basis of Organizing,”29 Cooperrider gives a more complete summary and cites that research,
which I only briefly touch on here.
Medical research has shown that positive images, projected as a positive belief, have real healing power. Known as the placebo effect, “between one-third and two-thirds of all patients show marked physiological and emotional improvement in symptoms simply by believing in the effectiveness of the treatment, even when the treatment is just a sugar pill or some other inert substance.”30 Research continues on the mind-body pathway, but what can be demonstrated is that anticipatory images lead to real results or effects. Appreciative Inquiry incorporates the placebo effect into its theory by concluding that, like for an individual human, what a human system or organization anticipates and believes about it future, will have a concrete effect on the future that will be created.
Research into educational methodology has demonstrated the Pygmalion effect. Simply, teachers were told that a selected group of students had exceptional ability. In fact, the selected students were randomly chosen and had no greater ability than the rest of the class. However, in time, the selected students did begin to outperform the rest of the class, not because of any innate superior intelligence or ability, but solely because of the expectation that had been created in the teacher. “The key lesson is that cognitive capacities are cued and shaped by the images projected through another’s expectations.”31 Because the teachers expected the selected students to perform better, they projected that expectation and the students responded to the positive image that the teacher had of them. This reveals a relational element in the positive image-positive action pathway and it has important implications for organizational leadership and for interventions that are motivated by a desire to transform a human system.
While not yet conclusive, some recent research has pointed to the link between the positive emotions that accompany positive images, as a causal factor in the choice that a person makes to perform a positive action. “Somehow, positive emotions draw people out of themselves, pull us away from self-oriented preoccupations, enlarge the focus of the potential good of the world, increase feelings of solidarity with others, and propels them to act in more altruistic and positive ways.”32
All human systems (and individuals) have a continual inner dialogue. Like an inner newsreel, the system is continually recounting the memories of the past and bringing various accounts of current and future scenarios into a dialogue which seeks to interpret and bring meaning to those events. That inner dialogue is influenced and expressed in the narratives (the outer dialogue) of the organization, but it is primarily an inner expression of the shared beliefs about the organization that are held by the participants and influences the unconscious choices of the participants. In that dialogue the human system brings into a dialectic both positive and negative statements and the outcome of that dialectic becomes the guiding image of the organization. Studies show that in healthy and effectively functioning organizations, there is a 2:1 ratio of positive to negative images. A mildly dysfunctional group might have an inner dialogue where the ratio of positive to negative is equal.
The AI process seeks to introduce positive images into the organization’s inner dialogue. “The AI dialogue creates guiding images of the future from the collective whole of the group. It exists in a very observable, energizing and tangible way in the living dialogue that flows through every living system, expressing itself anew at every moment.”33
The use of questions within the process of AI is to influence the organization, by guiding the dialogue of the organization towards positive images. Simply stated, if you are able to change the dialogue, you are able to transform the organization.
Medical research has shown that positive images, projected as a positive belief, have real healing power. Known as the placebo effect, “between one-third and two-thirds of all patients show marked physiological and emotional improvement in symptoms simply by believing in the effectiveness of the treatment, even when the treatment is just a sugar pill or some other inert substance.”30 Research continues on the mind-body pathway, but what can be demonstrated is that anticipatory images lead to real results or effects. Appreciative Inquiry incorporates the placebo effect into its theory by concluding that, like for an individual human, what a human system or organization anticipates and believes about it future, will have a concrete effect on the future that will be created.
Research into educational methodology has demonstrated the Pygmalion effect. Simply, teachers were told that a selected group of students had exceptional ability. In fact, the selected students were randomly chosen and had no greater ability than the rest of the class. However, in time, the selected students did begin to outperform the rest of the class, not because of any innate superior intelligence or ability, but solely because of the expectation that had been created in the teacher. “The key lesson is that cognitive capacities are cued and shaped by the images projected through another’s expectations.”31 Because the teachers expected the selected students to perform better, they projected that expectation and the students responded to the positive image that the teacher had of them. This reveals a relational element in the positive image-positive action pathway and it has important implications for organizational leadership and for interventions that are motivated by a desire to transform a human system.
While not yet conclusive, some recent research has pointed to the link between the positive emotions that accompany positive images, as a causal factor in the choice that a person makes to perform a positive action. “Somehow, positive emotions draw people out of themselves, pull us away from self-oriented preoccupations, enlarge the focus of the potential good of the world, increase feelings of solidarity with others, and propels them to act in more altruistic and positive ways.”32
All human systems (and individuals) have a continual inner dialogue. Like an inner newsreel, the system is continually recounting the memories of the past and bringing various accounts of current and future scenarios into a dialogue which seeks to interpret and bring meaning to those events. That inner dialogue is influenced and expressed in the narratives (the outer dialogue) of the organization, but it is primarily an inner expression of the shared beliefs about the organization that are held by the participants and influences the unconscious choices of the participants. In that dialogue the human system brings into a dialectic both positive and negative statements and the outcome of that dialectic becomes the guiding image of the organization. Studies show that in healthy and effectively functioning organizations, there is a 2:1 ratio of positive to negative images. A mildly dysfunctional group might have an inner dialogue where the ratio of positive to negative is equal.
The AI process seeks to introduce positive images into the organization’s inner dialogue. “The AI dialogue creates guiding images of the future from the collective whole of the group. It exists in a very observable, energizing and tangible way in the living dialogue that flows through every living system, expressing itself anew at every moment.”33
The use of questions within the process of AI is to influence the organization, by guiding the dialogue of the organization towards positive images. Simply stated, if you are able to change the dialogue, you are able to transform the organization.
Sociological research also affirms that a positive image of the future has a dynamic influence on the organization. The Dutch sociologist Fred Polak held that the single most important indicator of the health of a social system and the most important variable in understanding cultural evolution, is found by observing if the system holds a positive image of the future. Simply, “when there is a vision or a bright image of the future, the people flourish.”34
Based on a wide spectrum of research, AI has emerged to challenge a long held paradigm of organizational theory. Appreciative Inquiry needs to be understood as new frame of reference which requires a new model for working with organizations and for designing and implementing strategies to assist an organization to achieve a desired transformation. I turn to that model now.
29 Cooperrider, David L. “Positive Image, Positive Action: The Affirmative Basis for Organizing,” in
Appreciative Management and Leadership: The Power of Positive Thought and Actions in Organizations,
ed. S. Srivastva and D.L. Cooperrider (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990). 91-125
30 Cooperrider, Whitley and Stavros, AI Handbook, 10.
31 Ibid., 10.
32 Ibid., 11.
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