Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement, by Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres classify four different kinds of conversations. All interactions either add value or they devalue people and situations AND all conversations are either inquiry-based or statement-based. When your questions devalue a person or situation, those are sometimes called “critical conversations” if you are telling and devaluing others. Those are called “destructive.” Critical and destructive conversations trigger a threat response (talked about earlier this month in part 1). The impact of such conversations can last a long time, long after the cortisol has left the system. Why? Our memory stores our experience; the person is recognized as unsafe and this memory will inhibit working well together for some time.

When in conversations you are telling and adding value, those affirmative conversations acknowledge strengths, complement a job well done, or advocate for someone or something. You are doing so by providing specificity for the value and value potential of the person or actions. If you are asking reflective questions, you will add value or generate value by presuming positive intent about what the person wants to do, is committed to do and is already designing how to do. These are Conversations Worth Having! Affirming conversations shift the brain from distrust to trust; conversations worth having broaden and deepen the shift allowing people to bring their full value to relationships in the workplace, at home and in the community. The concept of Presuming Positive Intent in mindset and language is the action component of Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry. All are used by people who desire to foster positive change and improve the outcomes of conversations – in individuals, in teams, in organizations and in communities. This mindset values all voices, opens our thinking to new possibilities and challenges the status quo to inspire new and innovative options to move forward.

As you “listen for” (your listening and paraphrasing essential skills) you are positively framing and asking generative questions that will supercharge thinking and possibilities. As you listen, you are framing your listening and questions from what they don’t want to what they do want; what they want to happen rather than what they are avoiding; from what they are complaining about to what they are committed to. Your listening and reframing (reflective questions) will provide space for all voices, all points of view, deepen understanding of a situation and increase possibilities, creativity and productivity. Your reflective questions

• make room for different perspectives, “how do you see it?”
• surface new information and knowledge, “how are you managing it?”
• stimulate creativity and innovation, “how might we…? what might be?”
• turn what’s wrong about someone’s approach to, “what would you do?” or “how might we handle this better?”
• turn “everyone is resisting” to “which teachers are embracing?”
• hold the power for a single question to shift the tone and direction of a conversation

This type of conversation exchange will see beyond the problem and invite discovery about what is going well or right and what is possible. It holds the potential to create that often elusive “empowered environment.”

“One great conversation can shift the direction of change forever.”
Linda Lambert