Page 76 - Appreciative Leadership

The Wisdom of Inquiry 49

Consider starting a question log or journal. Record
PAUSE the questions you ask and the responses you get.
You may even want to record changes you see in
people as you consistently ask them positively powerful ques-
tions. Keep your log or journal for 30 days, and then make
note of the changes you see and feel in yourself and your rela-
tionships at work and at home. Make note of your favorite
and most powerful questions.

Team Inquiry and Team Performance

Teams, like people, learn, grow, and move in the direction of what

they study. This makes inquiry a very powerful strategy for team
development. A team’s stage of development can be defined by the

questions it needs to ask. You can foster team development and team
performance by gathering team members and asking the following
stage-appropriate questions.

In the Beginning

When people gather to form a team, their initial curiosities are about
getting to know each other and exploring who they are as a group on
the path to becoming a team. Helpful questions include these:

• Who are we, individually and collectively?
• What are our strengths, values, and capacities, individually and
collectively?
• What energizes us, individually and collectively?

When these questions are addressed, the group moves from being
a collection of individuals to a team with a collective identity and
voice—“we.”