Coaching and Counselling Appreciative Inquiry

I wonder what your reaction is my cartoon (always good to hear from people). What I am attempting to show is in essence your uniqueness. When we consider your unique gene make up and your unique experiences and how you make sense of them, how could you be anything other than unique?

The Constructionist Principle
Organisations are made up of people, to effect change within organisations we must be adept at understanding, reading and analysing organisations as living human constructions. To effect change in training and coaching we must be open to the same principles. But and it is a big but, I would contend that we cannot understand, read or analyse others without firstly having some awareness of who we are and being mindful of what is happening for us in the moment. I draw upon the Transactional Principle of Eric Berne, ‘I’m O.K and you're O.K. This principle has become central to me but I find is hugely challenging as I find some people hugely challenging but my management experience also tells me that if I have some understanding of a challenging individuals preferred way of being in the world there is a good chance that I can help them uncover what is best in them.

The Principle of Simultaneity
Dialogue/inquiry thought and change do not take place separately. In the moments As someone speaks to you many thoughts cross your mind, often they are unrelated to what the other person is saying, as your mind just drifts a little on to something perhaps tangential but initially prompted by something the other person said. Thus in coaching the coach must be prepared to 'catch' the importance of the tangential response, for as de Bono has shown, linear thinking keeps us on the same path to the block; we can either try battering the block into submission or we can look to go around it.

One question can instantly inspire the beginning of change because of the phraseology and what it prompts in the other person and equally our very first questions will influence what we find and discover.

Questions are both revelatory to the inquirer and the respondent. A good friend of mine tells me that most Jewish people would be happy to have, “didn’t have all the answers but had a lot of good questions,’ on their tombstone. Questions and dialogue cause us to think and maybe rethink?

Poetic Principle
As I have already suggested people are unique and complex. Poetry offers us words and images for us to react to individually. Poems are like people and cannot be captured by a single explanation.

Here is a poem written in the 17 century by Richard Lovelace for his love Althea.
Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty

I can give you my reaction to a poem today but I do not know what my reaction to these words may be tomorrow. Beware of facts, linear thinking and givens. They have their place but it was a given that borrowing vast sums of money to buy up companies was a way of making huge profits. It was a fact that securitising loans offered guarantees. It was a fact that all swans were white until people in the west went to Australia and discovered that there were also black swans. When Einstein wrote his general theory of relativity in 1915, he suggested that gravity was not a force, as Sir Isaac Newton had supposed and as had become accepted fact. Objects distort the fabric of space-time and the bigger it is, the greater the effect. Time bends! Death and taxes are certainties, after that most things it seems to me are open to interpretation and discovery.

The poetic principle gives us "permission" to understand the past and influence the future in terms of our own languages and experience, our deepest passions and commitment—and to become co-creators. There is a tremendous book called, The Heart Aroused by David Whyte, that explores ‘poetry and the preservation of the soul at work’ and I would urge you to read it. The poetic principle is a metaphor for the way each organisation’s story is constantly being co-authored.

“There have been many societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
Ursula Le Guin

The past, present and future are all matters of interpretation. As we inquire so the stories tell us of joy, enthusiasm, morale, efficiency, inefficiency, effectiveness, ineffectiveness, victories and losses etc. I love this principle and personally I could easily rename it the jazz principle because it speaks of fluidity and creativity in unique moments in time. Someone once asked the jazz musician Sun Ra if he didn’t get bored playing the same music every night; to which he replied, ‘I might if I played the same thing every night.’ No two moments are the same in life and organisations are in constant change. Equally, I find I work at my very best when I am open to the people I coach/train and what they bring in that moment.