Applying Appreciative Intelligence At The Organizational Level

August 22, 2007 | Tojo Thatchenkery, Ph.D., Professor of Organization Development, School of Public Policy, George Mason University

In the first of this three part series which appeared last month, I described what Appreciative Intelligence® is and its relevance to the public sector. In this second installment, I describe specific examples of Appreciative Intelligence in the organizational sector. To recap from the first article, Appreciative Intelligence is the ability to perceive the positive inherent generative potential in a given situation and to act purposively to transform the potential to outcomes. In other words, it is the ability to reframe a given situation to recognize the positive possibilities embedded in it but is not apparent to the untrained eye, and to engage in the necessary actions so that the desired outcomes may unfold from the generative aspects of the current situation (Thatchenkery & Metzker, 2006). Appreciative intelligence has three components: Reframing – perceiving or interpreting situations in such a way that something new an...