All of the AI Principles are evident in her story.  She opens with examples of the Constructionist Principle: how words create worlds and the role we all play in co-creating our realities and defining each other.

She advocates the need to honor the wholeness, possibility and potency of ourselves and each other.  She asks us to open ourselves up to and embrace our adversities, rather than sweep them under the carpet.

She reminds us from her own story that we live up OR down to others’ image of us, and how positive imagery leads to positive outcomes.  She is such an example of nurturing the human spirit, keeping hope, seeing the beauty, valuing curiosity … and so much more.

I highly recommend this video.

Aimee Mullen’s TED Talk on “The Opportunity of Adversity“.

My publisher had emailed me 3 days earlier with the following heartwarming message:

It’s here and it’s beautiful!!!!
Congratulations.  You should get your copy soon.

I am really happy, as my book is a unique application of Appreciative Inquiry to the world of learning and development.  Amid global challenges and complexities, the Appreciative Inquiry worldview asks, “What is it that we do already that is working for us, and how can we leverage our strengths going forward?”

The twenty-one workshops in this book are on topics of strategic importance, addressing the desire and need, in our interconnected world, for greater participation and active collaboration in meaning making and resource sharing.   This book is for change agents, leaders, trainers, facilitators, organization development professionals, and consultants.

All 21 workshops are ready for delivery; the topics are all highly relevant in today’s world, and with the Appreciative Inquiry design, they are equally applicable in global corporations, local communities, schools, colleges, universities, government agencies, non-profits, non-governmental agencies, special interest groups, communities of practice, and small business.

Workshop titles include classic topics, such as team building, leadership, and change, as well as on newer topics, such as cultural diversity, corporate social responsibility, intergenerational mix, and social media, to name a few.

This book takes Appreciative Inquiry principles and processes and applies them to real, everyday work and relationship issues in a workshop format that allows organizational members to resolve issues and create solutions from a strength-based perspective.

See larger image Appreciative Inquiry for Collaborative Solutions: 21 Strength-Based Workshops (Paperback) By (author) Robyn Stratton-Berkessel List Price: $60.00 USD New From: $49.91 In Stock Used from: $93.83 In Stock

Peter Drucker wrote in his 1967 classic, The Effective Executive. “To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant.”  So if, in fact, a key task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths, then imagine the possibilities of strengths connected to strengths?  What might that look like and why might that be worth striving for?

For leadership to create an alignment of strengths, it most likely means looking at organizations with new eyes.  What if we were to look at organization not as problems to be solved, but as miracles to be embraced?  What if we were consciously to look for the good and hold up the achievements and the successes; to invest generously and respectfully in inquiring into existing organizational strengths and assets?  What if we were to invite people to tell their stories of when they felt most energized, enlivened and valued at work.  And we listened.  Really listened.  What language would employees, customers, vendors, media be using?  Is it uplifting and positive?  What stories are they sharing about their experiences with the various products, services and people?  Are they focusing  on what works well, and what they want more of?  If yes, that’s great, as such language creates upward spirals, and there’s the broadening effect of noticing more acutely what works.  As a consequence, you are more likely to enact your capabilities and your potential. Performance improves, since it is more energizing and creative to have people talk about what they can do and what they aspire to than the reverse.  Two maxims come to mind:

What you focus on grows.

People support what they create.

To connect strengths to strengths and to see anew, with an appreciative eye,  and to facilitate the leadership capability so that it creates flourishing organizations is work that is meaningful, joyful, rewarding and essential.

That there is good passion and bad passion is not new.  But appreciating the psychological impacts of good and bad passion is of interest. Of even greater interest is how to cultivate more good passion and why does that matter?

Robert J. Vallerand, Professor of Psychology at Universite du Quebec a Montreal defines passion “as a strong inclination toward an activity that people like, find important, and in which they invest time and energy.”

Vallerand’s model posits the existence of two types of passion – harmonious passion and obsessive passion – each associated with different outcomes and experiences.

1. “Harmonious passion originates from an autonomous internalisation of the activity in the individual and leads people to choose to engage in the activity that they love. It is expected to lead mainly to more adaptive outcomes”, such as improved psychological well-being, health, relationships and performance. “An autonomous internalisation is driven by one’s own chosing;  it’s important to pursue the activity without any contingencies attached to it.  Motivation is intrinsic; it satisfies the needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.” These activities come to be so self-defining that they represent “who you are” in the world.  The harmoniously passionate person has a natural, authentic congruency.  Think of some people you know personally or  well-known athletes, artists, professionals and business people, who exhibit harmonious passion.
2. “Obsessive passion originates from a controlled internalisation in the individual’s identity and leads people to experience an uncontrollable urge to engage in the activity. It is hypothesised to predict less adaptive outcomes”, which could be conflict with self, others, competing activities, thus leading to possible disatisfaction, stress and burnout. “Obsessive passion may be displayed as a rigid persistence toward the activity”, as with such passion, one cannot NOT engage in the acivity. This happens because “ego-invested rather than integrative self processes are at play with obsessive passion leading the person to eventually becoming dependent on the activity. While such persistence may lead to some benefits (e.g., improved performance at the activity), it may also come at a cost for the individual, potentially leading to less than optimal functioning within the confines of the passionate activity because of the lack of flexibility that it entails.”

What role does competition play in the cultivation of obsessive passion?

There are too many examples of the negative consequences of obsessive passion spanning the history of our human species and in all areas of human endeavor – from politics, to business, to sports.  If you think about athletes (and others) who feel the need to take performance enhancing drugs, you’d have to ask which type of passion is internalized in them – autonomous or controlled?  And if not them, their managers, coaches or promoters?  What role does competition play in the cultivation of obsessive passion?  How does such obsessive passion play out in our personal well-being, long term success, health, relationships and performance?

How to cultivate harmonious passion and why does it matter?

• Love what you do, persist and practice. People who love what they do generally use a blend of their talents, gifts, strengths with a big shot of harmonious passion that keeps them doing what they love to do – even against all odds.  They get better at it, through persistence and practice and society benefits.   Think of the legacies left by painters and musicians, writers and scientists.  Van Gogh, Beethoven, Shakespeare and Marie Curie come to mind.  By the way there are no age, race, gender, culture barriers to loving what you do.   How many septuagenarian rock stars, or seven year old poets are out there?

• Take responsiblity to make it happen. If it’s you, then recognize which activities play to your talents and strengths and matter very deeply to you, not because something or somebody outside you tells you to, but because the activity or actitivies make you feel alive: they are instrinsic to your identity.   Take responsibility to cultivate and nurture them.  If you are a parent or boss, notice which activities enliven your child or staff member when they are at one with the activity.  Encourage their deliberate practice.

• Notice the impact your good (harmonious) passion generates in relation to:  your own well-being – your sense of vitality, aliveness and purpose in the world; your relationship with others – what and how you relate to others;  your physical health and energy levels;  your performance and outputs – the quality and quantity and your satisfaction levels.

When you pursue your passion, is it harmoniously integrated, creating a kind of peace within?  And how does that matter?  Your comments are welcome.

Punters at the racetrack don’t place their hard-earned money on the weakest horse in the race.  They bet on the best and the strongest.  Owners and trainers of racehorses invest in nurturing and developing the strengths of each individual horse.  It’s not to say, they discount or ignore their weak areas.  They work on the principle, that the return on investment will come from developing what is already a natural strength in each horse.

When training for a triathlon, cycling was my strength, running was in the middle and swimming was my weakest stage.  To perform at my best, it was the cycling I needed to excel at.  I could get into the zone when I cycled.  I was at one with the bike, torso parallel to the road, legs dancing on the pedals, feeling the exhilaration of my rhythmic cadence, the wind flowing over me as I challenging myself to go faster and faster.  It was hard work and it was pure joy.  I trained in running, but it took much more effort to feel pleasure above pain.  No matter how much I trained, I would never bring my running up to a standard that would exceed my performance on the bike.  When it came to swimming, I trained just to be able to compete, damage control as it’s known as.   Had I invested all my time in my weakest stage, I would have jeopardized my overall performance and would have certainly dampened the pleasure and reward I got out of participating in a triathlon.

Similarly, if you were the coach of a successful swimming team, you’d know the strengths and weaknesses of all you team members.  In order to get the best out of the team, you’d invest greater effort on developing the strengths of each team member to optimize their performance.  You would also work with them to overcome their weaknesses for necessary damage control.  The biggest investment of your time, effort and money, however, would be in building the strengths of each team member.   You would not do it the other way round – focus on individuals’ weaknesses, at the cost of their natural talents and strengths.

It seems we know this in the sports arena.  Yet, when it comes to organizational contexts, don’t we do it the other way round?  A vast majority of leaders still think we need to eliminate weaknesses in order to get optimal performance.  Peter Drucker, (1919-2005), one of the most influential thinkers on leadership and management, stressed that the role of leadership is to build on organizational strengths so that weaknesses seem irrelevant.  Weaknesses cannot be ignored.  But to develop and improve performance, it is more resourceful to focus on what already works well.  Recently, I was contracted to coach a number of highly talented women in a professional services firm.  All six came to their first coaching session with their 360 performance review reports.  The first gesture of each person was to go the end of the document and point to the feedback of their manager with the comments, “these are my weaknesses.  These are the areas my manager wants me to work on.”

How does this resonate with you?  What do you and your organizations invest in?  It would be terrific to have your comments.

I have been willing regime change for just about the whole 9 years I’ve lived here, so during that time, I have been, at times, quite “unappreciative” and a done my fair share of ” **** bashing” – another of our not so generous cultural constructs.

So now that has all passed, I’m seeing the best in America, which fills me up with energy and optimism and hope. I see such opportunities for us to co-construct. The shift in what we are now paying attention to leads to a whole new set of discoveries, dreams, designs and destiny.

So wondering what might be responses to the following questions:

• What are the best and highest qualities that represent America’s “positive core”?
• What areas offer America the greatest possibilities to bring about justice, equity and equality?
• And, in 10 years,  how do you want America to be in the world?