"There is no sense being a pessimist.
It would never work anyway." -- Unknown

The news is...

Aw, pick a negative. Fill in the blank with any gloomy descriptor you can think of to depict just how un-rosy things are in the world right now. It's easy, right? It's not so easy to see through that news all the way to optimism. But it is possible.

I had a strong reminder this week about the value of the approach called Appreciative Inquiry. The first came in a conversation with a leader I've worked with the last three years. He was planning a staff meeting.

• The agenda: Problems with co-workers.
• The concern: The conversation would lapse into unproductive finger pointing.
• The goal: Come up with some ideas about how to improve communication and collaboration, and to keep the process positive.

The plan we came up with for the meeting is to focus on what's going on in the team when things are going well, and then to brainstorm how to do more of that. What are people doing that's good? And how can they get better at doing more good?

That's an extreme simplification of the thinking behind appreciative inquiry, but that's the essence for me. Instead of looking at what's broken, focus on what works well. Admit that things don't go well all time, and figure out what you can do to up the percentage.

Appreciative Inquiry got its start in 1980 in the doctoral work of David Cooperrider. Read more at The Appreciative Inquiry Commons. Another school of evolving thought in this same vein is Positive Psychology.

Call me terminally optimistic, but given the choice -- and we are all given the choice -- I think it's far preferable to pursue hope than it is to roll over to despair.

Make a Difference,

Brian

More Blog: Brian@GrowthWorks -- Life, Learning & Leadership