Appreciative Coaching E-Book

Sara L. Orem

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 376

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Appreciative Coaching describes an approach to coaching that is rooted in Appreciative Inquiry. At its core the Appreciative Coaching method shows individuals how to tap into (or rediscover) their own sense of wonder and excitement about their present life and future possibilities. Rather than focusing on individuals in limited or problem-oriented ways, Appreciate Coaching guides clients through four stages--Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny--that inspire them to an appreciative and empowering view of themselves and their future.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Foreword

Reference

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Our Desire with This Book

Our Common Roots in Coaching

Our Paths to an Appreciative Approach

How to Use This Book

The Authors

Chapter 1 - An Overview of Appreciative Coaching

Alan’s Story

The Basic Structure of the Appreciative Approach

Summary

Chapter 2 - Positive Methods

A New Emerging Paradigm

Appreciative Inquiry: A Revolutionary Force

Positive Organizational Scholarship

Positive Psychology

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Summary

Chapter 3 - The Foundation of Appreciative Coaching—Part I

The Principles in Action

The Constructionist Principle

The Positive Principle

Summary

Chapter 4 - The Foundation of Appreciative Coaching—Part II

Time and Possibilities

The Simultaneity Principle

The Poetic Principle

The Anticipatory Principle

Summary

Chapter 5 - The Appreciative Coaching Process

The Appreciative Coaching Model

Setting the Stage

Forming the Relationship

The Initial Coaching Sessions

Clients Who Present Inspiring Opportunities

Summary

Chapter 6 - Discovery Stage

The Coach’s Focus in the Discovery Stage

A Coaching Sequence in the Discovery Stage

Coaching Tools in Discovery

Getting the Most out of Discovery

Summary

Chapter 7 - Dream Stage

What Is a Dream?

The Coach’s Focus in the Dream Stage

A Coaching Sequence in the Dream Stage

Coaching Tools in the Dream Stage

Summary

Chapter 8 - Design Stage

The Coach’s Focus in the Design Stage

A Coaching Sequence in the Design Stage

Coaching Tools in the Design Stage

Summary

Chapter 9 - Destiny Stage

The Coach’s Focus in the Destiny Stage

A Coaching Sequence in the Destiny Stage

Coaching Tools in the Destiny Stage

Summary

Chapter 10 - Stepping into Appreciative Coaching

Addressing Worldview

Using Appreciative Language

Understanding What Clients Bring

Becoming Familiar with Appreciative Coaching Stages and Principles

Summary

A Final Word

A Glossary of Terms

Appendix A - Our Research Methodology

Appendix B - Client Information Form

Appendix C - Coaching Prep Form

Notes

References

Index

Sara L. Orem Jacqueline Binkert Ann L. Clancy

Copyright © 2007 by Sara L. Orem, Jacqueline Binkert, and Ann L. Clancy. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 www.josseybass.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Orem, Sara L., date.

Appreciative coaching : a positive process for change / Sara L. Orem, Jacqueline Binkert, Ann L. Clancy.

p. cm.—(The Jossey-Bass business & management series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-8453-3

1. Executive coaching. 2. Organizational change. I. Binkert, Jacqueline.

II. Clancy, Ann L. III. Title.

HD30.4.O74 2007

658.3’124—dc22

2006035778

Foreword

In the early 1980s at Case Western Reserve University, I was part of a small group of scholars, including David Cooperrider, Suresh Srivastva, and Ron Fry, who were experimenting with an appreciative approach to organizational life. Led by David Cooperrider, we were frustrated with the widespread acceptance and use of problem solving in action research and organization development. The beginnings of our work focused on what was good in organizations and on what and who worked well and effectively together. As this philosophy became more widely known, many people were drawn to it because of its positive, even uplifting focus. Other researchers, organization development consultants, government workers, and project managers began to apply Appreciative Inquiry in their work. The three authors of this book came to know Appreciative Inquiry in this way, through their own work in organizations.

They found, as we did, that focusing on what is life giving now so that something even greater can be made from it in the future has transformed the way people think about organizational change. What makes this book unique is the innovative way the authors have applied the principles and stages of Appreciative Inquiry to the realm of coaching, transforming the way people think about individual change and the coaching relationships which enable that change. They have built an Appreciative Coaching model based on sound coaching research and have grounded their approach in a solid theoretical foundation that includes not only Appreciative Inquiry but also Positive Psychology, Positive Organizational Scholarship, and other positive psychological theories of change and time.

This is an exciting new application of Appreciative Inquiry and one that I think will make an impact in the field of organization development and coaching. The interest in Appreciative Inquiry and other affirmative modes of inquiry has grown beyond Case Western Reserve University, where this research began. Other similar centers of learning and practice have sprung up, such as the Taos Institute and Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan Business School. The appreciative approach to coaching expands on the meaning and significance of the five core principles underlying Appreciative Inquiry (Constructionist Principle, Positive Principle, Simultaneity Principle, Poetic Principle, and Anticipatory Principle) and creates a new foundation for enabling positive, transformative change in individuals.

The authors explore each of the five principles and provide suggestions and client stories to ensure that readers understand not only the theoretical underpinnings of positive individual change but also how to apply the principles in a concrete manner. I was delighted to see that the Appreciative Coaching principles, like those in Appreciative Inquiry, reflect a worldview, not of a fixed and determined machinelike universe, but of one that is open, dynamic, interconnected, and filled with possibilities.

What Appreciative Inquiry has offered to organizations and individuals over the past twenty years is an alternative to focusing on problems and to problem solving. An overdependence on a problem perspective can result in cases of solving the wrong problem or of solving one problem only to find that a more serious problem has arisen out of the solution to the original one. For example, in executive coaching, where there is typically a more positive focus on strengths, a continued emphasis on individual weaknesses in the development of corporate talent is still pervasive. As we have found after working with thousands of different organizations, the positive energy created in an appreciative process is very different from the energy created in solving a problem, no matter how important the solution of that problem may be. An appreciative process allows for the unfolding of innovation and creativity based on a positive foundation. It is energizing for people to think about, dream about, and talk about the things they do well and enjoy! Building on these things is very often easier than enabling incremental improvement in something they or someone else has identified as a weakness.

Consultants, coaches, and managers seek tools to address the increased complexity of personal and organizational life. Having witnessed and participated in the palpable energy created by an Appreciative Inquiry initiative in groups, the authors of this book have crafted a remarkable model for coaching that uses the best of this perspective with individual clients to create and sustain the energy needed to act into a more positively envisioned future.

Drawing from their experience with Appreciative Inquiry, the authors have adapted the four key stages of Appreciative Inquiry into their Appreciative Coaching approach: Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny. They then expand on the core stages to present an authoritative yet insightful process for engaging in Appreciative Coaching. They skillfully weave together concepts, client stories, suggestions, and tools for incorporating an appreciative approach into an existing or new coaching practice.

The Discovery stage is about truly appreciating what gives life to clients and helping them acknowledge an appreciative view of themselves. The coach specifically helps clients focus on the life-giving forces and root causes of their current and past successes using four core appreciative questions. In the Dream stage, the coach guides clients to explore their longings and concrete desires for an even more successful future. This stage enables clients to experience a unique sense of coherence to their lives because their dream is grounded in and extends from their own past and present. During the Design stage, the coach helps clients direct their attention and take action so that they become the designers of the future they most desire. Finally, in the Destiny stage, clients learn to recognize and celebrate their dream and to live their lives fully and well.

Karen Armstrong, one of our most cogent thinkers about the divisions caused by world religions, writes in The Spiral Staircase, “The one and only test of a valid religious idea, spiritual experience, or devotional practice is that it must lead directly to practical compassion.” What Appreciative Coaching does is to put this practical compassion at the forefront of each stage of the coaching relationship, making sure that together, coach and client discover each accomplishment and prideful recollection, dream each future with care and attention, design experiments that are fun, and deliver clients to their destiny having both learned about themselves and their world and created lasting change!

Experienced coaches will want to add appreciative processes to their own already expert practices. Newer coaches may want to adopt Appreciative Coaching as their core philosophy. All coaches, managers who coach, and people interested in self-coaching will learn how to celebrate their own wisdom and to leverage that wisdom to achieve greater and more satisfactory results in their lives and in the lives of their clients and employees. The authors provocatively suggest that coaching processes based on Appreciative Inquiry engage people more completely because the focus is on the positive present and possible future, rather than on the problems of the past and present. Who wouldn’t want to participate in such a series of coaching conversations?

Reference

Armstrong, K. (2004). The spiral staircase: My climb out of darkness. New York: Anchor, p. 293.

Frank J. Barrett, Ph.D. Professor of Management Graduate School of Business and Public Policy Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, California 93943 [email protected]

Acknowledgments

First, we acknowledge David Cooperrider, Frank Barrett, Suresh Srivastva, Jackie Stavros, and the many, many others who showed us the power of Appreciative Inquiry (AI). We thank the Fielding Graduate University and the International Coach Federation for giving us a “playing field” and an audience of colleagues, supporters, and fellow coaches. The International Coach Federation also provided us a scholarly conference in which to present and test our theory.

Positive Links at the University of Michigan, the fluid group that studies and practices together using the principles of Positive Organizational Scholarship, provided more opportunities to learn and network with scholars working with other positive methods, and a community of practice in which we could question, try out, and dream our own dream.

Sara thanks Frank Barrett, a cocreator of AI and an early guide, and Jackie Stavros, for their instruction, encouragement, and support. She is also in debt to two book writing groups, and especially to Rich Snowden for comments early and late, and Leslie Quinn. Murray, her husband, suffered her absence or anxiety with good humor and good advice.

Jackie thanks her family, friends, and colleagues for supporting and encouraging her, forgiving her absences, and holding a place for her return. She thanks her husband, Peter, not only for the gifts of love and support but especially for his gift of time and talent on behalf of this project when he might have been listening to opera or enjoying the Florida sun.

Ann thanks her coach Bobette Reeder for her unflagging support over the years and for being a wonderful model of positive coaching. She also thanks her husband, Gene, and daughter, Coco, for their love and understanding, and friends Sarie and Linda for their support.

We could not have done this work without the early enthusiasm of Neal Maillet, our editor at Jossey-Bass, and Bernadette Walter, also of Jossey-Bass, who saw the idea as a viable possibility and referred us to Neal.

Our clients, both those who participated in our formal research and those who have joined our practice since, deserve our most heartfelt thanks. They have helped us see more clearly what we intend and what we are able to do as Appreciative Coaches. Our coders confirmed that we were using Appreciative Inquiry consistently and visibly in our second phase of research. We thank Linda Blong, Steve Wallis, and George Johnstone for their generous donation of time, thoughtfulness, and accurate attention to a detailed job.

Peter Binkert, theoretical linguist and editor extraordinaire, not only helped us identify a consistent voice and style but also asked us questions about our stories, our method, and our collaboration that caused us to think more deeply. Although all of the work is our responsibility, that it is as clear as it is should be credited to Peter.

Introduction

Certainty is often an illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), Greek philosopher, teacher of Alexander the Great

Who of us can forget that feeling of wonder and excitement when as children we first looked into a kaleidoscope? Suddenly we were privy to an incredible world of color and patterns that kept changing as we turned it. Nothing on the outside could prepare us for the images we saw on the inside. What a mystery it seemed to glimpse a whole other world, visible only through a tiny hole!

Invented in 1816 by a child prodigy, Sir David Brewster of Scotland, kaleidoscopes are enjoying a resurgence of popularity in the twenty-first century. For some collectors and aficionados, the kaleidoscope is a metaphor for wholeness and integration. The instrument is tube shaped and contains mirrors set at different angles to reflect the image of loose pieces of glass and other colorful objects, creating symmetrical patterns. Looking through the eyepiece, the viewer can turn the tube to see different patterns. A kaleidoscope can generate infinite numbers of images, yet focuses the mind in such a way that one sees into a new perceptual frontier, an experience that demonstrates the unity and interrelatedness of form into an organic whole—but just for an instant! One nudge of the tube, and that image is erased and a new one produced. Brewster, who was greatly delighted with his new device, named it using the Greek words (“beautiful”), (“form”), and (“watcher”): the beautiful form-watcher.