5.5 Things Every Designer Should Know About Appreciative Inquiry with Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell — DT101 E111

This episode of the Design Thinking 101 podcast is 5.5 Things Every Designer Should Know About: Appreciative Inquiry. Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell are co-presidents of Cockell McArthur-Blair Consulting.

Listen to Learn About

Appreciative inquiry’s ability to generate hope and help people be creative
Using generative questions to unlock people’s imaginations and focus on the positive
How appreciative inquiry can help teams in trouble work through conflict
Ways we can all start to use appreciative inquiry

Our Guests

Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell are Co-Presidents of Cockell McArthur-Blair Consulting. They profoundly believe that education is the most powerful force for social and economic good in the world. Together they have more than 50 years of experience in higher education and have taken that experience to build a consulting practice. They specialize in collaboratively designing strategies to surface the wisdom of individuals, groups and organizations in order for them to build positive futures and to respond effectively to change. They have co-authored many articles on resilience, leadership, appreciative inquiry and published two books, Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Education: A Transformative Force and Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry: A Leadership Journey through Hope, Despair, and Forgiveness.

Show Highlights

[02:42] An introduction to appreciative inquiry.
[04:30] The power of appreciative inquiry.
[05:36] Building bridges from the strengths we have to the better futures we want.
[06:08] The emotional strength appreciative inquiry can help us nurture.
[06:51] Asking good questions and focusing on strengths.
[08:22] How appreciative inquiry helps us better examine our complex world.
[09:48] The origin of appreciative inquiry.
[10:43] You get more of what you focus on.
[13:18] Problems are yearnings.
[14:10] Design is a critical component of appreciative inquiry.
[14:29] The simultaneity effect.
[15:44] Putting design into action.
[17:14] “Don’t create anything without me.”
[18:53] Using appreciative inquiry to help groups and teams work through conflict.
[19:08] Creating the appreciative climate.
[19:23] One of Jeanie’s and Joan’s favorite exercises.
[20:11] Creating the agreement by which the team will work together.
[21:42] Generative questions unlock imagination and possibility.
[25:01] Using questions to help organizations find their strengths and chart their own path.
[26:40] The power of a compelling vision.
[29:50] Making sure everyone can see themselves and their place inside the vision.
[32:34] Taking a look at the “do it phase,” the “destiny” of appreciative inquiry.
[34:24] An organization’s strategy doesn’t sit on a shelf, it lives and changes all the time.
[35:54] Codifying the plan.
[37:28] Carrying appreciative inquiry out into the larger world.
[38:42] Appreciative inquiry creates hope.
[39:58] How Joan and Jeanie define hope.
[42:14] Joan talks about why she became involved in appreciative inquiry.
[44:05] Jeanie and Joan offer advice and ways everyone can start using appreciative inquiry in their work and their lives.

Tell me how the show helps you.

Your ideas support and develop the show. Tell the world how the Design Thinking 101 Podcast has helped you think and solve like a designer. Then, tell me how I might make it even more helpful.

Cheers ~ Dawan

Send the Love!

Fluid Hive's Designing Faciltiation Course

Are you ready to design outstanding events that will engage participants and get the outcomes you need? Fluid Hive's Designing Facilitation Course is a step-by-step design thinking-fueled system for creating and leading events, workshops and meetings that solve problems, save money, and protect your reputation.

Designing Facilitation gives you 32 lessons that walk you through answering our Event Design questions, and 28 Event Design Practice Tools that help you immediately apply your learning. Dawan also offers examples and insight from his decades of experience leading events for thousands of people everywhere from the White House to packed ballrooms, cozy workshop rooms, and online spaces with remote participants.

Enroll Today!

Design Thinking 101 Courses — Framing

In this self-paced, online course, Framing: Creating Better Solutions by Finding More Valuable Problems to Solve, you will learn to create more effective solutions by understanding the problem you are trying to solve. This is the first course in Fluid Hive's Design Thinking 101 Courses Series.

Creating effective solutions begins with understanding the problem we are trying to solve. Is this problem worth solving? Where should we look to understand our problem? What’s happening inside this problem? How do we define the problem? How do we adjust problem framing as we go? During the course, you will learn to answer these questions and apply them to your work.

Start Learning!

Resources — Thinking and Solving Like a Designer

Articles

Ask Like a Designer — Monthly articles with design ideas, methods, frameworks, templates, and a question-fueled approach to design-driven innovation. Discover new ways to think and solve like a designer.

Guide

Download Fluid Hive's Innovation Shield: a guide to avoiding innovation traps by asking 9 of Fluid Hive's Design Thinking Questions.

Your Ask Like a Designer Studio

Your Ask Like a Designer Studio connects you with people interesed in thinking and solving like a designer.

Enjoy invitations to free, live Studio events. Receive articles, Design Thinking 101 podcast updates, tips, tools, templates, workshop information, and more to help you create and perform!

Join Today!

Innovation Smart Start Webinar

Your next project could be easier, faster and more effective if you play smart at the start. In this webinar Dr. Dawan Stanford will teach you ways to ask like a designer so your projects succeed more often and your revenue grows.

Save my seat!