Using Appreciative Inquiry To More Effectively Change Behavior

The Challenge 

A health-industry marketing director at a Fortune 500 firm wanted the 40 people in her department to embrace a new way of working with internal clients. To contribute more value and fulfill the entire team’s potential, she wanted her people to focus more on acting like proactive strategic partners and less like reactive day-to-day order takers. This challenge was one of creating inclusive change - an inclusive approach to change helps people to embrace something new and different.

The Engagement 

We began by asking all 40 team members to share stories about times they felt they’d worked like strategic partners – serving internal clients at the upper end of their ability. Only three hands went up. Over the next 12 months, we studied the behaviors of the people whose hands went up. We learned what they were doing to act like strategic partners and then planned and delivered a series of facilitated activities designed to help the team more deeply explore what it would take to incorporate some of those behaviors into how they approached their work. Those activities included reading and discussing a curated selection of articles on strategic partnering, interviewing senior leaders on developing a strategic partner mindset, attending small group workshops to practice and develop strategic partner skills, and conducting frequent “teach-back” sessions where team members shared their learning with each other.

The Result 

At the end of the year, we met with the team and again asked them to share stories about working like strategic partners. This time, all 40 hands went up. Every team member now had multiple stories to share. Two weeks later the department was honored with multiple performance awards.

The sr4 Insight 

We believe in appreciative inquiry, which teaches us that people evolve in the direction of the things they inquire about. It leads us to questions like, “What’s working?” and “What do you want more of?” In our experience, there are always a few people who already know what’s working, or what we need to do to make the change. Including the people who already know and bring the others along in that direction is one of the most powerful tools in our toolkit. It is a proven process and a great way to discover untapped capacity and help individuals and teams contribute at the upper end of what’s possible.