Appreciative Inquiry at Work: Why It Works and How to Run a Session

Appreciative Inquiry at Work: Why It Works and How to Run a Session

There is real discipline in choosing to focus on what is working.

In most organisations, attention is drawn relentlessly toward problems. Meetings begin with what is broken. Reports highlight what failed. Dashboards glow red. Over time, this creates a subtle distortion: people begin to believe that progress only comes from fixing faults.

Appreciative Inquiry offers a different stance.

It is not naïve optimism, nor is it avoidance. It is a deliberate practice of studying success — of understanding where value already exists and asking how it might be amplified. And it is one of the most effective session formats I use when working with teams on strategy, direction, and change.

Why it works

The most effective sessions I run begin with a simple, generative set of questions:

What is working well right now? Where are we succeeding? What should we protect, reinforce, and extend?

Something shifts when people are invited into this frame. Energy changes. Defensiveness drops. People speak more freely. They begin to recognise their own contribution to outcomes that matter.

This is not accidental. When people are asked to catalogue problems, they retreat into caution. When they are asked to notice success, they lean forward.

Appreciation creates safety without ceremony. It gives people permission to speak honestly about what helps work move — without the implicit threat that being honest about difficulty will be used against them.

Appreciative Inquiry does not deny the existence of problems. It simply refuses to let them dominate every conversation. Problems require attention — but not all attention, all the time.

By isolating a space where the focus is explicitly on what works, teams develop a clearer understanding of their strengths, behaviours, and systems. Patterns emerge. People begin to see how success is produced, not just that it occurs.

When teams understand why something works, they can repeat it. Improvement becomes an act of reinforcement rather than reinvention.

There is also a human consequence. Appreciative Inquiry restores dignity to work. It acknowledges effort, craft, and care — things that are often invisible in performance metrics. It allows people to feel seen not just for what they fix, but for what they sustain. From that foundation, ambition grows naturally.

Appreciative Inquiry, when practised well, is not soft. It is focused.

How to run a session

I have been running Appreciative Inquiry sessions for many years — for strategy planning, team development, goal-setting, and organisational direction. What follows is how I approach them.

Invite the right people.

Send the invitation only to those who genuinely need to be there. More voices mean more communication complexity — which works against the generative quality these sessions depend on. I book at least two hours; three is better. I make the intent explicit in the invitation: this session is about what is working, not what is broken. Negative observations and problem-cataloguing belong in a different meeting.

Prepare the space.

A good wall, whiteboard, and plenty of sticky notes and pens. These sessions are interactive and physical — people should be standing and moving, not sitting passively around a table. Food and drinks help. For remote sessions, a shared digital workspace like Mural works well, though in-person produces better energy. Ask participants to come prepared with one or two observations about what is currently going well in their work — this gives quieter members a voice and limits the natural dominance of the loudest people in the room.

Create a safe place first.

Before diving into the content, run a short warmup exercise to make the room feel psychologically safe. I often use a quick creativity exercise — something playful and non-threatening that produces laughter and reduces defensiveness. People need to feel comfortable sharing before you ask them to.

Discovery — what is working now.

Ask people to write their positive observations on sticky notes, then bring them to the wall one at a time, reading each one aloud. Group similar themes as you go. This part of the session reveals what people genuinely value about the work, often in ways that surprise both them and their leaders. Every person contributes — quiet or loud, senior or junior. This is non-negotiable.

Dream — what could be even better.

Once you have surfaced what is working, invite people to amplify it. The questions I use: If we won an award for best team in the organisation, what would our work and processes look like? What could we do to extend what is already working? If we had no constraints at all, what would our future look like?

Anything framed negatively — problems, gripes, complaints — goes into a parking lot for a different meeting. This part of the session produces big ideas. Narrow them to the most promising two or three, evaluated against three filters: customer benefit, business viability, and team wellbeing.

Design — how would we deliver it.

Take the shortlisted ideas and pressure-test them. What would it take to deliver this? What would need to be deprioritised to make space? How would we know when we have succeeded? Can we measure it? This is not about detailed project planning — it is about making sure the ideas are credible before momentum is invested in them.

Plan — who does what, by when.

Assign ownership, identify the team, and set the first milestone. Keep the horizon short — a week at most. The goal is immediate forward motion, not a long roadmap. One substantial initiative and one or two quick wins is usually the right balance. Avoid starting more than you can sustain.

Ensure clear outcomes.

Close the session by repeating back what was decided, who owns what, and when the next check-in is. Field questions. Keep the energy positive. The close is as important as the opening.

Follow up consistently.

The energy from an Appreciative Inquiry session is real — and it fades. Subsequent check-ins, regular progress conversations, and visible momentum are what convert the session's energy into lasting change. Without follow-through, the session becomes an expensive pep talk.

When to use it — and when not to

Appreciative Inquiry is not a replacement for problem-solving. Some situations require direct diagnosis and honest scrutiny of what is broken. Running only Appreciative Inquiry sessions is not a viable approach to organisational life.

But when the default is problem-first — when every meeting begins with what is wrong and every conversation treats improvement as deficit repair — something important is being lost. The most resilient teams I work with know how to switch lenses.

They know when to fix and when to amplify. When to diagnose and when to deepen. When to correct and when to celebrate.

Focusing on what works does not make organisations complacent. It makes them confident. And confidence, grounded in evidence, is one of the most underrated forces in good work.