Appreciative Inquiry

(Originally posted 2003.May.07 Wed; links may have expired.)

Brad Appleton, on the XP mailing list, recommends "appreciative inquiry" http://www.appreciative-inquiry.org/ and http://www.thinbook.com/chap11fromle.html. This technique lets people feel they and their ideas are appreciated, and focus on what's right rather than on what's wrong.

On Hal Macomber's blog Reforming Project Management, he wrote on Tuesday, April 29, 2003:

My favorite management author is Ken Blanchard author of The One Minute Manager and dozens of other books. [...] Blanchard implores people to focus on positive feedback. In his book Whale Done! he goes into how trainers never use negative feedback when working with dangerous animals. If killer whales can be trained to do the spectacular things that they do with only positive feedback, then why would we want to use negative feedback with the even more dangerous human beings?

Apparently, "Whale Done!" is also on video, dvd, etc... http://www.rctm.com/app/Product/71727.html