Page 108 - Appreciative Leadership

The Art of Illumination 81

Jim: What made you decide to gather the team together up
front? [4]
Sally: Well, on a previous team I’d discovered too late that it’s impor-
tant to know people’s individual preferences and then to build
them into the project assignments.
Jim: How? [5]
Sally: On that team, we had a big blow-up midway through imple-
mentation. Rather than tamping it down or waiting for it to
blow over, I gathered people together so that we could talk
through how we could restore the balance and fi nish the job
with a greater sense of ease and fellowship. A few people sug-
gested that we ask everyone what he or she needed in order
to stay focused and connected. It worked like a charm! Out
of that blow-up, we established new agreements—and I saw
the importance of starting with those kinds of agreements in
the future.

Following this exchange, Jim, Sally, and the rest of the team mem-
bers discussed and illuminated the strengths essential to their suc-

cess. These included such things as meeting regularly; keeping people
informed; being curious; being willing to learn from mistakes; hon-
ing great communication skills; acting with humility; and sustaining
a deep belief in tapping into and drawing on each other’s wisdom and
capacities.
By engaging in a root-cause-of-success analysis such as this, leaders
can illuminate people’s strengths and build value for their teams and their
organizations. Oh how readily, however, do some people describe the
errors of another’s way or why something is not as they believe it should
and could be. When a customer receives bad service, she or he tells seven
people. When a customer receives good service or even extraordinary
service, she or he tells one, maybe two people. Why is this?

The answer lies in habits of communication. Most people have
learned at home, at school, in the military, and at work that complain-
ing gets attention, that finding and fixing problems gets rewarded, and