Page 50 - Appreciative Leadership

From Potential to Positive Power 23

Each of the eight sources of positive potential requires you to look,
listen, and interact with others appreciatively, with curiosity and com-
passion. Many of the sources invite courage on your part: to engage

with people who are different from you, to consider unfavorable ideas,

and to allow yourself be influenced and changed in the process.

The liberation of creative potential is a generative journey. It is an
opening to innovation, and to the mysterious uncertainty of human
organizing. It is an invitation to collaborative creativity, to learn as you
go and cocreate along the way. It is the way of Appreciative Leader-
ship, enacted through the Five Core Strategies and a myriad of posi-
tive practices.

Five Core Strategies of Appreciative Leadership

Our research on Appreciative Leadership and positive power, our
experience as executive coaches, and the success of our work and that
of our colleagues facilitating large-scale transformation using Appre-
ciative Inquiry all coalesce into five areas of relational practice—what

we call the Five Core Strategies of Appreciative Leadership. Th ey are
presented in Table 2-2. Each strategy is a means by which Apprecia-
tive Leadership successfully unleashes potential and elevates positive
performance.
Each of the Five Core Strategies meets a different need that people

have for high performance: to know they belong; to feel valued for what

TABLE 2-2
FIVE CORE STRATEGIES OF APPRECIATIVE LEADERSHIP

Inquiry Ask positively powerful questions.

Illumination Bring out the best of people and situations.
Inclusion Engage with people to coauthor the future.
Inspiration Awaken the creative spirit.

Integrity Make choices for the good of the whole.