Appreciative Inquiry is a shift from looking at problems and deficiencies and instead focusing on strengths and successes. It is a tool for change, and it will strengthen relationships throughout your business. Most people struggle to obtain this mindset without training. We have just been conditioned otherwise. I always use the example that is about obtaining the flow of what and how versus the drilling down of why. In sales and marketing when you analyze your wins instead of your losses it makes you 10X more likely to understand the events that trigger decision makers to become motivated about buying your product or service. Appreciative Inquiry is a missing ingredient in most of our sale’s toolbox.
Your Instructor:
Andy Smith is an Emotional Intelligence consultant and Appreciative Inquiry facilitator based in the UK. He has been assisting individuals and groups with accelerated change for 20 years. His experience includes IT consultancy, stress management, and corporate branding. He is the author of Leadership EQ: How To Lead With Emotional Intelligence (Coaching Leaders 2014), and Achieve Your Goals: Strategies To Transform Your Life (Dorling Kindersley 2006). Andy is accredited to administer the Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI™) 360º assessment. Andy has provided executive coaching, team facilitation, and training in emotional intelligence to a client list which includes the National School of Government, Disney, GlaxoSmithKline UK, Mizuho Corporate Bank, the Cabinet Office, Lancashire County Council, and the NHS. You can find out more at https://coachingleaders.co.uk/appreciative-inquiry-/
What’s In The Course?
The aims of the Practical Appreciative Inquiry course is to give you everything you need to get started using Appreciative Inquiry with teams and small groups, even if you’ve never used Appreciative Inquiry before.
The curriculum goes like this:
Week 1: Intro to Appreciative Inquiry, where it came from, why it works, and Principles (part 1)
Week 2: Principles (part 2), the 5-D format (Defining, Discovery, Dream, Design, and Delivery/Destiny), and how to craft Affirmative Topics
Week 3: How to facilitate the Discovery stage and how to conduct successful Appreciative Interviews (formats, how to craft questions, what interviewers need to know)
Week 4: How to facilitate the Dream stage, formats for building a shared vision, how to encourage the ‘non-creative’ participant
Week 5: How to facilitate the Design stage, how to ensure quiet/introverted participants are heard, formats for getting from Dream to Delivery
Week 6: How to facilitate the Delivery stage, the Fishbone/Swim Lanes format for quick, inclusive planning, when (and when not) to use Appreciative Inquiry, review of course experience.
On top of the lessons, you also get:
Recordings of each lesson, in case you miss one or want to refer back to it
A one to one session to help you plan your first Appreciative Inquiry implementation
Access to a private Facebook group, where you can connect with fellow students
The AI Toolkit that gives you step by step instructions for how to conduct each stage.
What do I need to know?
Dates: The Practical Appreciative Inquiry online course is a six-week program that meets online for about 90 minutes each Sunday from 14 July 2019, along with weekly action assignments. The final lesson will be on 18 August.
Times: There will be two groups going through the course in parallel: one group for participants in SE Asia / ANZ time zones with lessons at 10:00 Central European Time (CET) and one for America / Europe with lessons at 16:00 / 4pm (Central European Time). In practice, you can choose to join either group to get the time slot that suits you.
Support: You will also have a one to one coaching session with Andy towards the end of the course to help you plan your first implementation of Appreciative Inquiry Previous students have said they have found this extremely valuable.
Each live lesson will include the opportunity to ask questions, and of course, you can email Andy with your questions in between lessons.
Your commitment: There will be some assignments in between each session. The time commitment for assignments will be at most two hours per week, probably less.
Although Andy has taught Appreciative Inquiry scores of times in a ‘classroom’ setting, it’s only the second time I’ve taught it online. So you should definitely be prepared to give me lots of feedback about the content and structure of the program.
Also, I will be asking for testimonials after the course, as I’m confident you will get huge value from it (I’m even more confident after the great feedback I got from the pilot course).
Another big upside when you participate in a ‘live’ course like this is that you get much more access to Andy that there would be in the more traditional kind of online course where you learn by watching videos. And it still keeps the big advantages of online courses, that you can attend it from anywhere in the world, without travel or accommodation costs, and you have a video of each lesson that you can review as many times as you want.
How do I book?
Checkout problems go directly to Andy’s website: https://coachingleaders.co.uk/appreciative-inquiry-online-course/