Appreciative Collaboration is a way of working that we believe sits somewhere between authoritarian leadership and entirely self-managing teams.
It is Appreciative in that team members have a genuine respect and admiration of one another. They take an approach of building to better and not just articulating what isn’t working.
It is Collaboration, in that team members are effective in working together towards a shared goal, especially in circumstances where there is disagreement. It is also where a team feels a collective desire and responsibility for achieving that goal.
We were inspired by the Appreciative Inquiry approach, using a starting point of what is currently working and building on that rather than identifying deficits and working to solve them, which is how we structure the Explore stage of an ExEnEm programme.
There are 5 areas we use to help teams learn about Appreciative Collaboration:
We have collected a series of activities, tools, frameworks, and processes to facilitate development in each of these areas. We dip into these to develop workshops and even 1-2-1s during the Engage step in the programme.
The culture is also appreciative in the sense that is always in development to increase in value. It is not a culture that gets ‘done’ but instead is always being worked on and built upon to create ever better futures. This is where the ongoing work of the Embed part helps ensure the endurance of an Appreciative Collaborative culture.
