Appreciative intelligence allows one to maintain hope that a situation can and will improve despite how dire it appears in the moment. Metzker explains that we all have some degree of appreciative intelligence.
Ponder your own for a moment…under which paradigm of thought do you operate? Are you an unshakable optimist, an entrenched pessimist, or somewhere in between?
Their research has found that appreciative intelligence grows from three absolutely necessary abilities:
- Reframing
- Appreciating the positive
- Seeing how the future unfolds from the present (Thatchenkery & Metzker, 2006)
Lee paraphrases re framing as “seeing and object, situation, or person from a different perspective” (2010, p. 36). Further, she explains the second attribute as one, which allows daily reality to be viewed appreciatively through a chosen perspective of value, use, and positivism. The third ability encompasses an almost strategic knack to understand how the current reality can become the preferred future state.
Applying one’s quotient of appreciative intelligence was found in the research to lead to the following four resulting qualities:
- Persistence
- Conviction that one’s actions matter
- Tolerance for uncertainty
- Irrepressible resilience (Thatchenkery & Metzker, 2006, pp. 15–16)
The idea that you should call upon your talents and develop even more abilities to use those talents, in essence produces an optimal future, very much aligned with AI’s philosophy. As people practice appreciative intelligence, their capacity increases for all those qualities listed above. Remember, what is focused on grows.
So why are leaders appreciative, here is what the research shows;
- the leaders are willing to be with their people;
- these leaders believe in the positive;
- they are learners in the AI; and
- they care about people (2010, pp. xvii–xix).
An “appreciative eye” of sorts, seeks out the generative capacity within a system and develops it with a typical outcome of circumventing the problems by way of leveraging the system strengths. Further, “the appreciative eye seeks to learn by examining the best of what is in any given experience” (Guberman, 2014, ¶ 1). Those trained to use this concept in their leadership then discover “ways to meet challenges, upsets and opportunities with an appreciative eye” (Davy & Weiss, 2011, p. 10). The appreciative leader lives an appreciative worldview.
“Appreciative leaders are highly skilled at turning negative issues into positive questions” (Whitney et al., 2010, p. 35). They call this ability “the flip” (p. 35). Trosten-Bloom, and Rader explain that appreciative intelligence allows the appreciative leader “to see positive potential, and they invite it to come to life by asking positive questions” (p. 35).
Exercise: Choose a problem or challenge that you seem to face over and over. Leave a reply on how you can affirmatively turn your own focus of inquiry using appreciative leadership language?
For example:
The habitual problem __________ vs.
Note the possibilities for improvement here __________.
Can you see the difference in these statements and the nature of AI language in the second? You try it now.