Appreciative Inquiry with Heike Aiello

Heike Aiello

I think that every leader should have the approach, the principles, and some methods for an Appreciative Inquiry in their repertoire. Because over and over, I find that people don't leave organizations, they leave bosses, and people yearn for recognition. They want to be seen, they want to be appreciated. And these bosses, who are human beings I work with, are themselves under pressure. And what do we do under pressure? I said it at the beginning of this podcast. Our mind narrows, we go into our survival mode, and we see the negative. But it is so important to stay still, breathe, expand, see people, appreciate people, and let people co-create. That's what organizations need, and that's what fuels my work every day.

Tobi

Have you ever ended a coaching session and noticed that you spent the entire hour inside the problem space of the client? You analyzed the problem, you looked at the root cause, and at the end of the conversation, maybe your client was smarter than when they came, but also a lot more tired and less energized. My guest today, Heike Aiello, says that for this reason it is unethical to coach the problem, because what you focus on expands. Heike is an ICF PCC coach. She's the founder of her coaching practice, CoreConnect, and she's the president-elect of ICF Germany. And most importantly for today's conversation, she works with Appreciative Inquiry, an approach that comes from organizational development and that she has also brought into one-on-one coaching with an approach she calls Appreciative Coaching. So today we talk about how to invite a client to step out of the shadow of their problem. We look at the four phases of the appreciative process: discover, dream, design, and destiny. We look at how this is very different from using the GROW model, for example, and we also look at the principles that underlie this approach. Of course, we also make this very practical. In the middle of our conversation, we have a small coaching demo where Heike spontaneously coaches me on a personal topic that ends up being about making choices. So if you are coaching one-on-one and you want to get from stuck to appreciating what works, then this one is for you. Let's go.

Heike Aiello

Yeah, the power of the approach is to look beyond the problem. As human beings, we are fascinated by problems because that also made us survive in evolution. We saw the negative deviation from the norm first. We saw the bear in the bush, we saw the poisonous insect in our food, and that helped us survive. And we have developed so many tools for dealing with problems. At the same time, there are questions in our society that are better addressed by looking at what works. And appreciative inquiry, as I call it, that's the British pronunciation. You're using the American pronunciation, appreciative inquiry. That is a way and a set of tools, a method, a framework, a mindset that helps us to address what works.

Tobi

Nice. So all the humans who didn't focus on the problems, you are saying, died throughout the evolutionary process over the last ten thousands of years, and the ones that are left are the ones that always try to look at the problem and solve the problem. And yet, this may not always be helpful, especially if we are talking about development and actually opening up to creativity, to curiosity. Why is that?

Heike Aiello

Yeah. In today's society, there's a lot of collaboration needed. Also, we are in perpetual change, and people need to collaborate, need to co-create, need to think out of the box. That works best when you don't start from a place of fear, but from a place of trust and hope. And that's why we start an appreciative inquiry process or coaching by looking at what works. Barbara Fredrickson, our colleague from the positive psychology field, has done a lot of research about that. If you ask people positive questions, they not only physiologically relax, I mean, even their saliva changes. But what is most important is their... And their view literally opens, and people generate more ideas, and ideas of better quality, because they're in a different space. That's why appreciative inquiry practitioners approach problems as a suggestion, as information, but then look at what the person, the system, the team really wants. What is behind that problem, and what is the state they want to get to? Appreciative inquiry is not a method that works for everything. When there's a crisis, if I'm on the operation table and my appendix has to be taken out, then please do that. And please, fire brigades, get the flames out, do what's necessary, implement the IT system next Monday. But afterwards, when you reflect, when you evaluate the learning, when you do the team building, when you do the vision planning, the collaboration part, there appreciative inquiry offers proven methods and a framework.

Tobi

So you're saying we don't want to close our eyes in front of the problems, even though today there's no bear waiting to eat us. And there are advantages to getting into a more resourceful state and opening up our field of vision. So this is where we want to get, but we also don't want to close our eyes towards the problems. So if we say we do an appreciative inquiry process, how does that roughly look?

Heike Aiello

Yeah. One thing that I really want to make very clear: this is not a happy clappy approach. It's not that you ignore the problems, and there are even bigger bears today. All I'm saying is that we have a full bag of repertoires to deal with problems, and we had very little repertoire until the 1980s, when, among other approaches like solution-focused change, positive psychology and strengths-based thinking, appreciative inquiry also evolved. And how does that work? People usually come with a problem. People are leaving my organization, or I feel frustrated, or things are not working. As I said, we use that as information and let the person first expand on their problem, and then I invite them to a shift of mind. What often helps is a visualization: you see the problem as a large object that casts a shadow on you. Behind it is the sunlight, and it casts a shadow. And maybe when I explain this, you already feel a little bit how cold and dark and gloomy it is. The first step would be inviting the client to step out of this shadow, step into the sunshine, explore what it is they really want, and find words for it. Appreciative inquiry comes out of action research, so it's a research method. We first have to define the area of our research, and then help the client make the shift from the problem to what they really want. So that could be: everyone is leaving me. What do you really want? Well, in essence, I want our department to be an employee magnet. Or you say that people don't give you enough respect. What is it that you want? I want to be seen as a whole person. And then the inquiry starts, and we ask the client, or the system, the team, the whole organization, because you can do this at large scale: when have you experienced a moment in which what you desire was already there? A moment in which you felt alive? For many people it feels a little bit frivolous, because, hey, we have a problem, it's not working here, and we're exploring what works well. Aren't we neglecting things? So it is always the art of the practitioner to encourage the client and to trust the process. And yes, we will get to the problem, but later in the process. So step one is to shift from the problem to the desired situation, a statement, a wish. Then to explore where that is already present, consciously or unconsciously, and thereby shift reality a little bit. It's like a kaleidoscope that you turn a little bit, and the pieces fall into a new order. And then we do something even more frivolous. We don't dig deeper into a root cause analysis and look at what's not working, like the GROW model. No, we look unashamedly into the future and say, "Hey, if you let these seeds that you found grow, and they grew into the future that you desire, what would they look like?" In that phase, you see people expand. I like to use visual images, also your cards, Tobi, for really visualizing that future. It is a wonderful phase when you do this with a team. There's a lot of creativity and knowledge. People are usually not asked, "So what do you want for our department?" So it's also a very co-creative approach. We have now done discover and dream, and then comes the design phase. There we have the luxury of choosing from this rich future. With the budget that we have, with our possibilities, with the requirements that we have, what makes sense to bring that future a little bit more into the here and now? That's also the moment when the difficult questions typically get asked. What bears do we see on the way? What will we stop doing? And people might say, "Well, if we embrace that future, I don't wanna be a part of it anymore." Okay, so how can you deal with those persons and conversations? And once you have designed a framework together, then comes the part that is the hardest in every change initiative, and that is getting into the doing. We call it destiny. So you really live into that new future you have designed. Traditionally, people work with action points or a to-do list, and that dies off, because people are usually already overloaded, and you know how hard it is to put a new habit into your day. So we tend to work with learning experiments. Try to really do it, make it intrinsic fun. What would you like to try out? What is one thing that you would like to change in your day? And if it's a group or team that changes, we try to bring it into real collaboration. It is interesting how people are motivated to this. Some are really acting for the cause, "I wanna change this," and others join a group just because they like the other person. It doesn't matter. The most important thing is that positive change happens, and that change doesn't happen on paper but is carried out by people. When I work with teams, I like to measure the success of my interventions later by how their lunch conversations have changed. Are they still talking about what's not working? Are they still complaining? Are they still gossiping, or are they giving compliments? Are they remarking on positive things that have changed? So appreciative inquiry is really a method that can be used for intrinsic change.

Tobi

Amazing. Thank you. While you were explaining that, I was trying to map it a bit. What you said is that at the beginning of maybe an organizational consulting process, or also a coaching session, there's a client who says, "I have this problem. This is what I need to be solving. This is my focus." And then you say, "Why don't we look at the sun that is behind that big cloud of problems, in a way, and what is it that we want?" So we shift the focus from what we do not want to what we want. How would it be if this ideal reality was already there? How would it feel? And you say we call these two phases the discover and dream phase in the appreciative inquiry process. Would you,

Heike Aiello

Absolutely. And you call it the five phases of appreciative inquiry, and you map four phases. No, that's absolutely correct, because the discover phase has a pre-phase, and that is to define the core question or the core statement. It depends on the literature: in some it's five phases, and in some it's just a pre-phase to the four stages that follow. So just to clarify, if listeners or viewers look into the literature, you will find both the four phases and the five phases, and both are correct.

Tobi

Okay. Cool. So this define phase would be when we maybe also give room to the client and define, okay, what is the problem we want to solve? What is it that we want to work on? And then we go into this discovery and dream phase where we look at what our ideal future would look like. Then we proceed to making things more concrete: what do we continue? What do we maybe stop? It reminds me a bit of retrospective work. Then we go towards this destiny. And what you described here still sounded a bit abstract to me, learning experiments, collaboration. How exactly can I imagine that

Heike Aiello

Yeah.

Tobi

room?

Heike Aiello

Okay. So traditionally, imagine you have a session with a group, or you're in the coaching, and you brainstorm, you create to-dos, actions that would help you bring that future more into your daily life. And then in traditional organizations or settings, this is often divided up: HR does this, finance does that, and marketing does this. You get an action to do, and then you have something on top of your workload. I can imagine that if it's something you have to do, it's not your top priority. If, however, you let the persons who are stakeholders in the change choose, and you just tell them, "Choose something, anything of this that you want to do, that you can present to us when we meet," and you always have to do a follow-up three weeks later, six weeks later, what would it be? And then, as I said, one person chooses something big, another person something small, another person something you had not expected. So this process also requires a very trusting kind of leadership. I always tell leaders: you tell, and they will have to do it. They tell, and they will do it. So in that phase there is also often a lot of encouragement for the leader to trust the process. And then we have two terms to support the process of getting things done, and that is tracking and fanning. The person organizing the change has to make sure that the persons acting on the change can roll, that there are tracks, that they have time for it, that there's a certain budget, that there's a follow-up moment. And with the fanning, I mean, imagine this little flame that needs oxygen, and you just give it oxygen,

Tobi

Mhm.

Heike Aiello

and encourage people.

Tobi

Yeah. Appreciative inquiry is, from what I learned in my preparation, a process that originates in organizational development. So this is rather a group process, for groups and bigger organizations, and the examples that you gave fit that. If I got it right, you also use an approach that is called appreciative coaching. How is that different, and how would that phase, for example, look there? Because if I look at all of this, I could see it playing out both in a bigger series of workshops in an organizational change process over several months, and also in a two-hour coaching session. So what's the difference between appreciative coaching and appreciative inquiry?

Heike Aiello

Yeah. Appreciative coaching is 100% inspired by appreciative inquiry, so you will recognize these four or five phases. And of course, the coaching is based on the five principles of appreciative inquiry. As you said, you can use it as a coach to structure the coaching conversation. You mentioned two hours. You can also have one session per phase. The power behind it is really the shift from the problem to the opportunity. And practitioners will tell you that it is unethical to coach the problem, because what you concentrate on expands. That's why I'm a bit critical of the GROW coaching model, because there you stick with the problem the whole time. There's no shift out of it. With appreciative inquiry, you shift out of the problem into opportunity, and from there you build what the client wants. So I use this one-on-one in coaching, and you can make it even more personal. David Cooperrider, the person who co-created Appreciative Inquiry, has published a wonderful paper about the tiniest AI summit in the world, and that was when he coached himself with this method. I'm sure if you Google it, you will find it. Appreciative inquiry has hundreds of applications worldwide. So you can apply this to vision processes, evaluations, strategy sessions, and also to your whole being as a leader.

Tobi

Yeah. So when you describe this appreciative inquiry summit of one person, I imagine the destiny phase would also look like: okay, I look at what I am drawn to, not at what my inner voices tell me I should be doing, but at what my energy draws me to. Is that right? Or how would this destiny phase especially unfold in a one-on-one coaching session?

Heike Aiello

Yeah. And here too, what I try to do is make sure the coachee is never alone, that he or she is part of a system. So I always ask, "With whom are you going to do this?" It's also important to then make the transfer very small. Typical questions are: what is the smallest thing with the biggest impact that you could do? Or what will you do in three minutes, 30 minutes, three hours, three days, three weeks after this coaching?

Tobi

Yeah.

Heike Aiello

Or through which door of all the possibilities do you want to walk first?

Tobi

Mhm. So in a way, what we see here is a focus not on the long-term future, but on what I can do here and now?

Heike Aiello

Yes, absolutely.

Tobi

Cool. Wow. Thank you. I know you as the president-elect of ICF Germany, but of course you are also, I think, one of the key practitioners of this approach, and I'm wondering, how did you find this?

Heike Aiello

Of course, as a PCC certified coach, there are the core competencies and also a certain ICF way of coaching. At the same time, I find the two concepts very, very connected, because the image of the human being as creative, resourceful and whole is absolutely the same in both approaches. I even find that it builds on my practice, because I have this toolbox of methods from the appreciative inquiry realm that I can apply. And one of them is that I really like to expand on the future, also with creative methods. And you said that you perceive appreciative inquiry as a method that's more in the here and now. That's exactly the goal in working with a client: to make them aware of the unconscious images they hold about the future. We call that the anticipatory principle. We are unconsciously drawn towards the images that we hold about the future. And then to step out of the shadow, expand on those images and create fresh images that are rich and powerful. Not to work in a linear way, thinking, "Oh my goodness, I have to work hard, and success is out there," but from a mindset of: no, you've already created it. That's the simultaneity principle. Or something has already shifted, and now it just wants to be brought to life. So that's a very subtle mindset, but very encouraging for clients. So I find I'm very much at home with the very ethical ICF way of coaching, and I find that appreciative inquiry has a home there.

Tobi

Mhm. And just to get to know you a bit, because I think this whole approach of working and living maybe also reflects in your CV. So you lived abroad quite a bit. You were living in South Africa and also in the Netherlands. Did the experience there... And how did you discover the Appreciative Inquiry method?

Heike Aiello

Yeah. I worked for an airline in the Netherlands, and it was a fantastic organization. At the same time, what really hurt me was that there were so many capable people with so much frustration. I guess that holds true for many corporate organizations. They felt they would really like to spread their wings, and it was almost as if they would put their soul on the hanger of the wardrobe in the morning and then pick it up at 5:00. It's maybe a strong image. But I wondered, how can we create organizations and leadership where people flourish? Where people are not small, but where we still do our turnover, we still do our projects and our focus, and people flourish. And I set out on learning. I left the airline, which is a great organization, and went to South Africa to do an MBA there in Cape Town, which was already then very much focused on coaching, on facilitation, on diversity and inclusion. For example, we all had coaching training there, and we had a facilitator who worked with these 80 students on our persona as a group and our wellbeing. I also wrote my thesis there on coaching and then went back to the Netherlands and joined a very interesting international organization, Kessels & Smit, where colleagues went to the US and came back very enthusiastic and talked about a David Cooperrider and Appreciative Inquiry. And then the Appreciative Inquiry World Conference came up in Orlando, Florida, and they had an offer of five for the price of four, and I managed to round up four colleagues, and we all went,

Tobi

Ah,

Heike Aiello

and that was it. And I'm still in touch with many of the practitioners I met there in our Appreciative Inquiry Europe network. I think that every leader should have the approach, the principles and some methods of Appreciative Inquiry in their repertoire. Because over and over, I find that people don't leave organizations, they leave bosses, and people yearn for recognition. They want to be seen, they want to be appreciated. And these bosses I work with, who are human beings, are themselves under pressure. And what do we do under pressure? I said it at the beginning of this podcast. Our mind narrows, we go into our survival mode, and we see the negative. But it is so important to stay still, breathe, expand, see people and appreciate people, and let people co-create. That's what organizations need, and that's what fuels my work every day.

Tobi

Okay, thanks. So after this quick excursion into application and your life experience, let's try to go back to the actual coaching practice. When we were going through the process earlier, you already brought up quite a few questions that you would ask in the beginning to shift the client's focus from the problem towards what it is that they want and what they are working on. Let's say I'm coming to you today as a client. How would you approach this kind of client, in this case me, who comes with this kind of problem? Would that be a suitable case for Appreciative Inquiry?

Heike Aiello

Absolutely. Yeah. Would you like me to talk about how I would approach it, or would you like me to coach you in the here and now?

Tobi

Yeah, maybe we can actually do that. Maybe we can make it very,

Heike Aiello

Okay, okay.

Tobi

Okay, so this is not planned and very authentic. We are living right now in a rooftop flat with three rooms, and with both of us working from home, the place becomes small. With the baby also, and with the rooftop, the heat becomes quite unbearable. So we started this quest of how we want our life to look and where we want to live. Do we want to move to the outskirts, to suburbia, and have two or three extra rooms, or do we rather want to limit our needs when it comes to space and stay more in the city center area? And yeah, this is a field that I've looked into quite a bit. I spend a lot of time visiting places. I think the main problem is that I don't really know what it is that I really want.

Heike Aiello

I hear it's a fundamental question for you now. I feel the stuffiness of the hot room. Yeah. What is the hotspot for you in this situation, if you had to describe the essence of it?

Tobi

Yeah. In a way, my problem is that right now, at the end of September, the need to move out that I felt so urgently in hot August is a bit gone, and I'm wondering whether we should even change at all. So this is another question, or another option, that is also there. And I think for me it's the fear of making a change that I might regret afterwards.

Heike Aiello

The fear of making a change that you might regret afterwards. May I invite you for a short visualization, Tobi?

Tobi

Mhm.

Heike Aiello

Yeah. If you can imagine this fear of

Tobi

Mm, very much.

Heike Aiello

Yeah. Yeah.

Tobi

Belly, chest.

Heike Aiello

In your belly. Chest. So what I want to invite you to do is to gently step out of this shadow and see if you can step to the right or the left into a little bit warmer situation, into a situation where this fear is no longer relevant. You feel alive. You feel resourceful. You feel creative, you feel whole. So what is it that you desire in the situation that you are in now, when you look at it from the sunshine?

Tobi

I think when you said to step to the side, in a way, what I stepped into is a reality where we have already made a decision, and we are now making that nice, making that awesome. I don't know, having a place that looks however. I still don't have an answer to that. But there's no fear of, oh, we made the wrong choice, or regret because we invested so much money into this, and we will have to work our entire life to pay it off. So in a way, in this space there's already clarity, and this ambiguity of what is right and what is wrong and what we want is already resolved.

Heike Aiello

And how does it feel in your body?

Tobi

More spacious. I really had this tightness in my chest and my belly at the beginning of our conversation. And now there's more space to breathe and to be creative, in a way.

Heike Aiello

So if we would step into the inquiry now, and discovery, how would you describe the area that you would like to inquire into?

Tobi

Maybe what our place, the reality we live in, looks like?

Heike Aiello

Okay. Mhm.

Tobi

Be interesting.

Heike Aiello

Yes, what else?

Tobi

What does our reality look like? Do we now have a huge, huge mortgage, or did we somehow manage it differently? Do we have a bigger place where we maybe also rent out a room or a small flat that's included? Or do we just have our own place, and it's maybe a four or five room flat in the center?

Heike Aiello

So there are many different realities, many aspects. And may I reflect back to you what I feel when I hear you talk? Yeah. I wonder if you would be open to inquire into strong moments of choice in your life, in which you had an ambiguous feeling but you made a choice and it worked out well.

Tobi

Hm.

Heike Aiello

Would that be relevant for you?

Tobi

Do that. Yeah, yeah.

Heike Aiello

Okay. So I want to invite you to look back on your life, look at it like a film, a story, through the lens of making choices. What is a moment that comes to life in which you felt alive, in which you made a choice, and wow, it worked out for the better? Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Tobi

Yeah, it's actually very clear what moment comes to my mind, and that is when I was at my last employer. I had gone for pizza with colleagues, and we had used our strengths cards to reflect on the collaboration period. A few people were leaving, and we did a bit of an appreciation exercise: which strengths did I appreciate about you in the collaboration over the last few years. And at this point I was still employed. Max, my co-founder, had just had his second child, and it felt like now is not the right moment to leave our employment and go full-time with metaFox. But we did this exercise, and people were so encouraging and said, "Wow, Tobi, this is so cool. Da, da, da, you should really do this full time." So afterwards I left this pizza place and recorded a voice message to Max: "Maybe I can actually go ahead, and then we see how it goes, and you come after in a way." From these conversations and this pizza evening, I got the courage to say, "Okay, let's make the leap." And it worked out pretty well, looking back at it now.

Heike Aiello

Let's make the leap, and I see your energy changing. I see a big smile and I see strength. Yeah. All of a sudden it was clear. What happened in that moment in you, and what in the situation helped you to gain that clarity? Two questions.

Tobi

Encouragement, maybe.

Heike Aiello

Mhm. Encouragement.

Tobi

though I don't like it, I think I'm still very dependent of the opinion of others

Heike Aiello

Okay, encouragement

Tobi

or the safety, the sense of "We have your back." Even though, of course, in the end, in this situation, how would they have my back? But in a way, there was this sense of support, which was more an emotional support than a financial support or whatever, of course, but still super, super valuable.

Heike Aiello

So the others gave you encouragement, safety, emotional support. And then what in you helped you make that decision?

Tobi

Yeah, maybe this sense of deep trust in the universe that either way it will be fine, kind of.

Heike Aiello

Mhm.

Tobi

No decision is really irreversible. And a bit this more playful attitude in a way.

Heike Aiello

So in you it was a sense of deep trust into the universe, the insight that things are reversible, and this playfulness. Yeah. So those are the working ingredients of making a choice. Just on a meta moment now, Tobi: if we were in a longer coaching conversation, I would ask you about more of these moments, and then we would establish a pattern. And all of a sudden it would emerge that you are an expert in making choices in ambiguous moments, but you haven't been aware of it yet. And now you also have ingredients that you can organize that will help you with this decision. I don't know if it would work for you, but maybe there's already a small insight out of this one moment you analyzed that you could apply to the choice that you're making today.

Tobi

Yeah, thanks. It's quite interesting, and I'm also already stepping out of our coaching and looking at this from a meta level: what is it that you actually did? Because if we look at our four or five phases from earlier, this was a bit different now. You didn't make me imagine a future, but you

Heike Aiello

No.

Tobi

in the past, where the other questions were, when were you in a similar situation? And before that, you had this moment when you did this exercise of, okay, out of the cloud in a way, step

Heike Aiello

Mhm.

Tobi

the light. How does your body feel now?

Heike Aiello

Yeah. So we were deep in the discovery phase. We have not touched the dream phase yet. What I would then continue to do in the coaching is to make you aware of these working ingredients, of these seeds that you have in you, and then imagine: if you would apply them to this situation and it would be a success, how would that look? And to really feel more into it and create more of this courage. After the dream, a technique that I like to use is to create provocative statements. That is really to keep the playfulness in the process, but also to make the action areas distinct. So designing is now translating the fluffiness of the dream into a house you can build. A provocative statement might be "I'm so good at making choices, I can advise my friends." Or, "I am the real estate agent of my own life." Whatever comes out of there is made dense, and that's often with a smile on the face and a moment to go into the next building step, which is really a shift in energy as well. So it's not the playfulness and hypothetical ideas of a dream, but now it's really bringing it into reality. But with these provocative statements, you still stretch yourself a little bit. And then comes the next step of creating a transfer, an action plan, a learning plan, as I like to call it, with the client. And from there comes this question: inspired by everything we did, what would be the smallest thing with the biggest impact that you would like to try out, and with whom? And how would that feel and look when you do it? So to really ease into the here and now. And very often when people go out of the session, it is no longer, oh, the solution is out there. No, the solution is in me. I just have to do it more often. That's the big insight. It's not "From Monday on I do everything differently." No. It's: what am I aware of that I have done so far and that was successful, and how can I use that deliberately?

Tobi

Yeah. Cool. Yeah, so in a way, in my example, we would go towards, okay, how would your reality, your house, your living situation, your surroundings, your neighborhood look? And then dreaming that, and then, okay, what

Heike Aiello

No, no.

Tobi

we would... No?

Heike Aiello

No.

Tobi

Okay.

Heike Aiello

We were still... that's also interesting. We shifted not to creating your living situation. We shifted to looking at making choices.

Tobi

Mhm.

Heike Aiello

So, if you would make this choice with ease and you would be confident with your choice and you would really own it, how would that feel and look, and what would that mean for the next step? So I'm moving you away a little bit from the living situation because that's too complex. There are so many images

Tobi

Mhm.

Heike Aiello

to empowering you and making you aware of how you deal with ambiguous, unclear situations and finding your strength in that.

Tobi

Yeah. Okay, interesting. So to really focus on this resourceful state and really get me there, that's the idea.

Heike Aiello

Yes.

Tobi

And earlier we said this is very different from GROW.

Heike Aiello

Yes.

Tobi

Where we would say, "Okay, we have a goal." We look at how the reality is now, then we look at the opportunity and our commitment, the will. How is it different? How could that conversation have gone in a GROW world?

Heike Aiello

Yeah. Honestly, I don't even want to look at the GROW world, because there the word goal in itself is something that's out there. And as I said earlier, it would keep you stuck in the problem.

Tobi

Mhm.

Heike Aiello

You would look at root cause analysis: how did we mess up, what mess am I in, and out of that mess, how can I see sparks of daylight? So, as I said, I find it unethical to coach the problem. I find it ethical to coach the resource, that which makes clients be alive.

Tobi

Because what you're saying is, if you ask for the goal, I would probably say something like, "Yeah, I would not have this anymore," which would just make me dig deeper into this. And it wouldn't bring me even one step closer to the resourceful state, to a reality where I'm actually capable. I can feel the sun because I stepped

Heike Aiello

Mhm.

Tobi

and I'm not covered by the cloud anymore.

Heike Aiello

Yes.

Tobi

Mhm. Okay. Well, thanks so much. You said you shifted the focus from my problem of what my housing situation looks like towards this state where I can take a resourceful decision. What are you listening for to spot that, to see, okay, actually Tobi, my client, has a... I don't know. Let's focus that session on the decision capability rather than the problem he came to me with?

Heike Aiello

Mhm. Yeah. To me it's really listening for the energy. And I have an inner image in which I look: where is the bright puzzle piece? Where is the blinking star? And in all of what you told me earlier, I felt a lot of energy around making empowered choices. So that's what sparked my curiosity. As coaches we are also our own thermometer, so I also feel it physically, that I get goosebumps or I feel giddiness. At that moment I feel, okay, this is where we want to go. And then we continue in finding, I also call it drilling for oil, during the discovery phase. We look at your life through a new lens, the lens of Tobi the empowered decision-maker, who wasn't aware that he was doing it, but is doing it. And then we collect all these moments where the eyes spark and you really feel the energy, and look together with the client: okay, what pattern does emerge? What circumstances do you have to create for yourself in order to make a decision, in your case, from an empowered stance? The history line is a beautiful tool. That would mean going back in the life of the client to unearth these moments of greatness, of feeling alive. Usually three to five moments work to establish a pattern. And the client often goes down to moments where it doesn't work. Our brain works like that, and we're confronted with our own frustration. Then it's also the task of the coach to gently help the client and ask them, "Well, how did you get out of that moment then?" That's also information. So the first part of the coaching is an inquiry: collecting, making a list, an overview of strong moments and words, ingredients, powerful principles in the client's life.

Tobi

Yeah. In a way, the client is stuck and has the strong belief, okay, I cannot make that decision. And what we are doing with these questions, okay, when in your past did you have moments when you actually made decisions, is proving the client's brain wrong, in the sense that, yes, you actually are able to make decisions, and here is proof one, proof two, proof three. What's the pattern that we see?

Heike Aiello

Yeah, I don't wanna prove their brain wrong. I have too much appreciation for that. I want to show them a pattern they have maybe not seen as a pattern so far. So change their narrative a little bit. Point out to them that not everything is red dots, but there's also some green dots, and connect those

Tobi

Yeah. Cool. Okay, so we have this focus on the present. Then we also look into the past, into what has worked in the past. Earlier you also talked about these principles of appreciative

Heike Aiello

Mhm.

Tobi

and I don't have them top of mind now, but one that stuck with me when I was reading up on it was the anticipatory principle, the power of vision, which adds an element of future to this past and present focus. Can you explain that a bit?

Heike Aiello

The five principles are not a checklist in appreciative inquiry, and in some literature more principles have been added. Let's stick with the original five for the sake of simplicity, of which one is the anticipatory principle. That is that we human beings develop into the images we hold about the future. So let that sink in for a moment. We obviously have unconscious images of how we are, of what our place should be, that we work towards. And with appreciative inquiry, we consciously create a space in which clients can expand on these images. We don't do that as a loose brainstorming activity, like "So now you go and get old magazines, cut out whatever you wanna be, and then sit and meditate over it." No, we connect it to the strong moments of the past, to what's already in the client, and say, "Okay, what could expand from those moments?" And that overlaps the old image people have with a powerful image of themselves expanding and really growing and being their fullest self. I like doing that with visual methods, just to use the other half of the brain and to get out of speech. Not everyone likes that. But surprisingly many people, once they have overcome their blocking belief that they can't draw or paint or act, and I also say I'm kissing them over the edge, engage in a creative activity, and they absolutely love it. There is so much. There are these visualization cards. If there's not much time, I just ask a client, "Well, choose a few cards that embody how you would see the ideal future around making choices, or around being an empowered leader." Or I ask people to draw. If there's more time, they cut out of newspapers. We can act together. We can make a living statue and really embody it. Anything to get the client into their body and their creativity, and it's great fun, and it's very surprising to people. And then comes the conversation. If you have a team coaching, they talk with each other: "Well, hey, what do you see in each other's images? And what are the common principles in these images?" If you have one person, of course, you have a conversation with them. They can also show the image to friends, family, colleagues, and connect with them. It doesn't always have to be with a coach. And that's how I use the anticipatory principle.

Tobi

Yeah. And this can obviously be used one-on-one or also in teams. Cool. Super interesting. What else is there? You said there's five principles, or more depending on who we ask. We don't even have to unpack all of them, but which is another one of your favorite principles?

Heike Aiello

Yeah. Oh, I'll unpack them all quickly, with your permission.

Tobi

Yeah. Okay,

Heike Aiello

So we start with the positive principle, and the big confusion is that appreciative inquiry is not positive inquiry. Sometimes we need to appreciate what's not working and invite the shadow. However, it turns out that the quality of the results is much better, and the psychological safety is higher, when we start with what works. So that's the positive principle. The constructionist principle says that we create our reality through our words and actions. This is a little bit more philosophical. There is no ultimate, objective reality, but we co-create it. For example, this podcast is as good or as bad as people talk about it. We don't know. For us, it's a reality, and we would give it five stars and think it is great, and other people perceive it differently. So it is how people talk about it that creates reality. And that's also the power for organizations: how do people talk about it, and inviting them to have a different conversation. Ask them about moments that worked. And there's also the internal dialogue of a client. We are constantly talking with different parts of ourselves. Is that more towards deficit orientation, or towards abundance and growth? There we can help with questions. And the typical questions in appreciative inquiry are generative questions. That's connected to the synchronicity principle, in which we observe that when we ask powerful questions, reality already shifts. So this is not an approach in which we first look systematically into the dirt, at what's not working. Here we look at the energy, the top moments, what gives life to a client. We don't go through the back door of a problem. We go through the front door of the solution, of the opportunity. And with those generative questions, reality already shifts. And then we have,

Tobi

Question?

Heike Aiello

Mhm. A generative question is, for instance, what is the best thing you would like to say about this podcast later? Or, what has to happen in this podcast to make it an outstanding experience? Or, tell me about a moment in your life in which you proudly told your mother, father, or a friend about a choice you made. Or, where have you seen a friend, colleague, or dear person make a choice, and you were touched by their choice, and it worked out well? Those are questions you have to think about for a moment.

Tobi

Mhm.

Heike Aiello

And sometimes practitioners really sit down and think about these generative questions. They should be connecting. They should get people a little bit out of conventional thinking. They should be absolutely from the heart, and they should be fueled by curiosity. So in our training we put a lot of time into crafting good questions.

Tobi

Yeah, yeah. I love them too.

Heike Aiello

There's one more principle, and that is the poetic principle. This has many layers. On the one side, it's making the client understand that they have the power to write a new chapter, that their life is a poem, a story, and how do they want the new chapter to look. So the empowerment. This is also about storytelling. Sometimes storytelling is used as another principle, but I like to embed it here. The power of stories. We are not bullet-point human beings, we are storytelling beings. So take time to listen to stories. They are so rich, and ask questions to make them richer. Ask them to add feelings and colors. There is a lot of information in stories. And one metaphor I like that is connected with this is to invite clients to look at their life as if it was a poem, which can be interpreted in different ways. So that was, just on the surface and in a very short moment, the essence of these five principles.

Tobi

Yeah.

Heike Aiello

Thank you for that question, Tobi. I would like to point out the importance of the shadow. Appreciative inquiry is not the happy-clappy approach. If you approach it as happy-clappy, you will only use it once. People won't come back. Teams won't come back, because they won't feel heard. You can embrace the shadow at several moments during this process. Either all the way at the beginning: as I said, people might have to grieve, or might have to work through issues with another method like deep democracy. This is a method you can use if the future is not clear but you need all the voices in the room, or you really want to connect with the living core. Another moment of shadow is the design phase. You have beautifully expanded on the future, there's so much energy in the room, and now comes today, comes the budget, come the restraints, comes the overfull schedule. There, too, it's about sitting with a client and appreciating that it's hard, and that there's also sadness about maybe letting things go through these new insights. So that's also a moment. And the third moment of the shadow is in the destiny phase, in the implementation. People leave a coaching session or a group intervention with so much energy, they've seen the light and they wanna do it, and then reality hits. And it is so hard. There, too, it's about creating structures in which this flame is kept alive. Clients have made soundtracks that they would play to themselves, or have chosen a little item to remind them. If this is a team coaching, there's regular meetings, or maybe a little running gag that goes through it and keeps the spirit alive. And very, very important is always follow-up. I've had beautiful team coachings with appreciative inquiry, and no one followed up, and it just died out. And of course, that's not why we do this. So follow-up is really important, and then it's not a soft approach. I like it because it sometimes brings people to their goal more quickly than other approaches. One has to be accountable, but not from a place of being pulled by the ears through a framework, but from a place of expansion and flourishing.

Tobi

Mhm. Wow. So what you stress here is that it's not about closing our eyes to the problems, but actually making room for them, giving that grieving process space. And despite the space for the shadow, as you call it, you also help clients to be reminded of their resources. Maybe in the dream phase we chose a picture, as you said earlier: what do I look like, what does my world look like when I am in a resourceful decision-maker state? And now you follow up and allow your client to take that picture with them and look at it, and bring that resourceful state back also when the problems are there and coming back to them.

Heike Aiello

Yeah. I'm like a smiling flight attendant who assures the client that they will land, although it might be shaking a little bit. So one also has to believe that this works. It's important as a practitioner to have the belief that it works to look at the positive. And to add on the negative side, a technique that has proven valuable for me is the shit flip. We take a flip chart, and wherever the shadow is needed, I stop and address the resistance. For example, when I feel that a client works for me and not for themselves, because they think "Heike says it, so I do it," but not intrinsically, there's resistance. I ask, "What keeps you from going on? What are you worried about?" And we write that down. It could be at the beginning: "So why don't you even wanna start with this?" And we write it down. Or it is when there's really the decision now to dream, and I say, "Okay, something's in the way of the dream, because everything that comes out is a bit shallow, or not really out of the living core." Then we write down why this doesn't work, what the absolutely worst future could be. And trust me, Tobi, this has not only been one page of a flip chart. This goes on and on and on. At one point we're both exhausted, and we look at the flip chart, and I invite the client to choose.

Tobi

Mhm.

Heike Aiello

Luckily, so far they've always chosen to expand on the desired future.

Tobi

Yeah, that's really cool. It reminds me of, I think Tim Ferriss coined this term, fear setting, which is kind of the opposite of goal setting. You actually make room for what could go wrong, and by having that out there on paper, it loses its

Heike Aiello

Yeah.

Tobi

terror.

Heike Aiello

Yeah. Yeah. One thing that David Cooperrider also says is, if you align your strengths, your weaknesses become irrelevant. So dare to look at your strengths.

Tobi

Mhm. Okay. Thank you so much. If I listen to this now and say, "Wow, this seems such a powerful method," and even though I think we covered a lot of ground, there's for sure more to learn, where would you recommend I go to dig deeper and learn appreciative inquiry?

Heike Aiello

Well, a good place to start would be my website, www.coreconnect.today, where I offer a lot of free resources. I also offer a newsletter. You can sign up for the newsletter, where I share methods and insights and news from the community. I also offer regular free-of-charge taster sessions, just 45 minutes, every few months, where people can sign up and get to know it a little bit more. I can recommend the Appreciative Inquiry Practitioner Magazine, AIP Magazine, which has new insights every month around different topics of appreciative inquiry. And then there's the AI Commons, a free resource where lots of cases, insights and methods are combined online. Yeah, we like to share knowledge. Also, many books have been published. A strong thought leader in the whole field of positive expansion is the Taos Institute, T-A-O-S, who offer WorldShare Books, and many are written by AI practitioners, and those are free of charge to spread the knowledge. So the website of the Taos Institute is also a rich resource.

Tobi

Hm. Okay, wow. So Taos, AIP, the AI Practitioner, AI Commons, and also your website coreconnect.today. Nice. Thank you.

Heike Aiello

Thank you very much, Tobi, for having me. And I'm curious what your future in empowered decision-making will look like.

Tobi

This was Appreciative Coaching with Heike Aiello. You can find Heike's website, coreconnect.today, and of course also her LinkedIn profile in the show notes, as well as all the other appreciative inquiry resources Heike mentioned at the end. As you heard, Heike also mentioned that she likes using picture cards, especially in the dream phase, to help the client really feel and embody their desired future. This is something you can very easily do on metafox.online, the platform that I also use to visualize our conversation during the conversation. So go to metafox.online, give it a try, and let me know if you have any feedback. Of course, I'm also super grateful for your comments wherever you listen to podcasts, or an email to tobias@metafox.eu. I'm Tobi, one of the co-founders of metaFox, and I wish you all the best on your journey towards becoming an impactful coach. See you back here in two weeks. Bye-bye.