Appreciative Inquiry Coaching
Coaching is a collaborative process through which coaches and clients learn, make meaning and develop in relation to each other. Appreciative coaching is a fully affirmative approach to human performance and development. It is a shift away from deficit-based assessments of human weaknesses toward strengths-based inquiry into human capabilities, potential and callings. It is a shift away from relating to people through their weaknesses toward seeing all people with noble potential to be discovered, nurtured and expressed.
This idea is especially important when applied to workplaces around the world. Where people are treated as parts of an organizational machine that needs to be managed and controlled, people will behave like disengaged parts of a machine. If they are treated as problems to be solved, with weaknesses to overcome, people will behave in problematic ways. If, on the other hand, leadership and coaching practices treat people as valued contributors, people will more readily engage and contribute. Leadership and coaching practices can either invite and reinforce weaknesses or bring out the best of people and teams. For this reason, coaches, managers and leaders seeking ways to help people discover their strengths and bring their best to work will find the book by Miriam Subirana Flourishing together, guide of appreciative inquiry coaching profoundly useful. By Diana Whitney, from the preface to Miriam Subirana book. Published in 2016 by John Hunt Publishing in London.
