Page 200 - Appreciative Leadership

The Path of Integrity 173

People have an implicit set of principles, a standard of excel-
lence waiting to be called forth. Appreciative Leadership invites them
to identify and to integrate their own personal principles by asking
questions such as, “How will you know when you have done a good

job?” or “What is your definition of success for this project, process, or
procedure?” By inviting people to refl ect on and articulate their own
standards of excellence, appreciative leaders foster self-respect and
accountability to quality and success. Telling people what to do builds
fear of failure. Asking people to articulate and work to principles lib-
erates energy, creates dedication to success, and fosters integrity at

work. This is true for individuals and for teams.
Appreciative Leadership empowers principled performance in
teams, departments, groups, and whole organizations by facilitating the

discovery and articulation of shared principles. They use Appreciative
Inquiry processes to engage with people to identify strengths, imagine
the future, and then design a set of principles for working together.
Many medical schools today are engaging in curriculum redesign
in order to stay relevant in light of changing expectations of students
and society. The leadership of one notable school decided that cur-

riculum redesign should take place in tandem with the design and
construction of a new medical education building. They carried out

a “holistic” design process using Appreciative Inquiry: the content
of medical education, the pedagogy, and the space available were all
simultaneously reinvented. The dedicated, exceedingly competent,

and highly diverse group of faculty members responsible for the cur-
riculum redesign were unable to coordinate their proposals until they

created a set of shared principles. The time they invested in craft ing
their principles paid off . The principles made the job of assessing each

other’s work infinitely easier and much less confl ictual. Th eir shared

principles served as a framework for aligning their proposals and as
criteria for determining final curriculum designs.

There are shared principles—collective wisdom about how to
work together for the good of the whole—waiting to be accessed
within all groups. It just needs to be discovered, articulated, and used
as a foundation for collaboration.