In Signs of Safety, Partnering for Safety and many other approaches that are based on the solution-focused approach, the term Appreciative Inquiry is used for a process of strength-based interviewing that is intended to bring to the foreground strengths, not only of clients, but also between collegues. It is often referred to as ‘the moter of change’ in both organzations and in client contacts. We argue that the term Appreciative Inquiry is rather confusing because it refers to a specific process described by David Cooperrider. More over, there are only minimal changes compared to the EARS process that was already introduced by Insoo Kim Berg and Peter de Jong.
However, we have the experience that there is value for the sake of practice, to separate the Solution-Focused Interviewing part that only looks back on what is already there (past success) from the part that looks at the next step, simply because in practice, practitioners tend to step too swiftly into ‘coaching towards the next step’, in stead of spending enough time to look together into what is already working.
Therefore we have named the practice/exercise where we only analyse a (small) success: Succes-focused Interviewing (SFI), thereby stressing that it is simply a part of the Solution-focused Approach.
We have found that workers find it very useful, to have a more structured approach to this, to make sure we explore several different angles: Not only competencies, but also motivation and values.
To that effect we have developed a ‘tips and tricks’ sheet of one page, in which a number of potential pitfalls is described and ways to help workers explore all areas.
Through experiential exercises we will demonstrate the importance of values in our work and we will demonstrate the use of the ‘tips and tricks’ sheet in practive, befire handing it out.
From experience in over 50 training sessions, feedback was received that having a number of tips at hand was extremely useful in increasing the depth of the process. Our general advice is for every team to spend 20 minutes on doing a SFI at the start of every teammeeting, either in small groups or preferably as a public demonstration done by 2 workers in front of the team.
