Building on Foundation of Strengths

The appreciative inquiry process can be utilized effectively as a team building process. One of the key first steps is to establish an affirmative topic such as "Build an effective team" that can be used in a team building effort. The next step in any change process is to develop a current state. In the AI process, the first step is to Discover the strengths of the team members and the accomplishments of the collective team even if dysfunctional.

An excellent process to identifiy and celebrate the strengths of the team is to take the Gallup StrengthFinder evaluation. Tom Rath and the Gallup organization has developed a book that uses the strengthfinders results to speak to speak to leadership and how to leverage different strengths of the team members into a team leveraging those strengths. Strength Based Leadership  Tom Rath

The basis for using these strengths into a team building function comes from the belief: "Although individuals need not be well-rounded, teams should be." Some of the key finding of the book are:

• The most effective leaders are always investing in strengths
• The most effective leaders surround themselves with the right people and then maximize their team
• The most effective leaders understand their followers' needs

Research has shown that there are four domains that group the specific 34 themes inside the domain.

• Executing
• Influencing
• Relationship Building
• Strategic Thinking

The steps for utilizing the strength finders into a team building process is:

• Take the evaluation
• Use the book as a resource
• Compile the team themes and place in domain
• Use the data as a foundation to the team building

There have been several different aspects of team building that these steps have led to successe:

• Senior leadership - the application of strength finders into an AI team building process where the team were senior managers at a location who reported into remote executives resulted in an appreciation for each others roles and developed a common language and bond to work together despite the reporting relationship.
• Team leadership - used as a team building tool to improve team communication between the leader and the team as well as between team members. Specifically identified that each indivudal had a different lens to the challenges and needed to see the other's point of view.
• Team building - utilized within a team to improve working together. Specifically allowed the AI process to start from a foundation of strength and celebrate successes together and mutual unqiue contributions to the common good.
• Strategic planning - strengthfinders also helps form the foundation of a group of different individuals placed together to think about the vision and strategic plan for the organization.

Creating a Shared Vision

The idea of creating a vision for the future and visualizing a preferred future state is a long held basic tenant of effective leadership theory. Leaders use positive change models building on a clear discernment of the current state and asking themselves what they want more of thus creating that vision for the future. In the Appreciative Inquiry Model, one of the powerful models of change, this is the journey from Discovery to Dream. This vision is cocreated between the leader and the followers to be most effective follows these steps:

• Target a vision for a desired future
• Cocreate the vision
• Identify strengths
• Create an initial picture of the desired future
• Solicit feedback and create the final vision
• Share the vision consistently and persistently

Many organizations, leaderships, and followers see this preferred state as progress in what is already so the vision or dream is often an organic progression of improvement. This continuous improvement albeit important and beneficial is not the dream or vision. The dream or vision needs to be what might be rather than what can be achieved.

Khalil Gibran put it this way:

"Progress lies not in enhancing what is, it lies in advancing toward what will be."

Next time your organization talks about creating a shared vision, consider not thinking incrementally rather develop a process to view the preferred future through the eyes of possibilities rather than barriers. Create an organizational sized vision of your preferred future.

Enabling Ministries through Stories

We are often asked how to financially resource ministries and a large part of the answer is to tell your story. Jesus patterned his ministry through telling stories of relationships and lives changed. As leaders we search for ways to gain resources to accomplish our ministries and finding measurements of success. We produce metrics to connect with the goals of the team and organization in order to measure and celebrate that success. Often lost in organizations is the sharing and celebrating of stories as a measure of success. These shared stories help shape the organizations and create an environment that sustains success for longer periods of time. The stories also form the reason for the invitation to contribute to the success of the ministry - a story of lives changed.

Let me share some thoughts on telling your story through the lens of a ministry we, here at Assurance UMC, are looking for support to accomplish our God given dream in the area of recreational ministries focused on youth in the streets on our Connections Campus called Peace on the Streets.

A good story has these elements which we will walk through together using the Peace on the Street ministry. Think about the ministry your church wants to enable as we take a journey together:

Why?

Find your God reason for the Ministry. Here is ours as an example: The Assurance faith community is committed to make the mystery of God's presence, peace, and power real in the lives of his people. We recognize that all Christians are called to minister in word and deed wherever Christ would have them serve: healing the broken, setting free those in captivity, clothing the naked and giving drink to the thirsty. We are committed to the inclusiveness of all people. Inclusiveness refers to the openness, acceptance, and support enabling all persons to participate in the community of faith. As such, we are called to be faithful to the example of Jesus ministry to all people. We affirm all persons as equally valuable in the sight of God. Therefore, we work toward societies in which each person's value is recognized, maintained, and strengthened. 

How?

Find your heart for the ministry and path to meeting the need. For Connections one of those ministries is to the youth of the community and here is our example as you think about your how: Peace on the Streets is a recreational ministry partnership between Assurance and the community which focuses on youth growing in Christ. Peace on the Street is a component of the recreational ministries including a summer league for youth on the streets, a competitive church league in the winter, and skill building camps in the Spring.

Who?

Find like minded people, including individuals, faith communities, and corporate sponsors to participate in the journey to reach the youth of the community with you and here is our example: Created TC1C - two churches one cause with a neighborhood church called Zion Wounded Lamb along with a faith partner and community members interested in reaching youth on the streets. 

Where?

Find the community leaders and members of the community to work with you by walking the community and spreading the vision. Create a specific place for the ministry. Name the people to be reached in the community with the ministry. Our example, walking the streets and doing church for a couple years, starting a community gym night for the youth we were targeting, and finding through that community presence a partner to come alongside us on the journey. The church gym became that community place for this ministry.

When?

Create a specific scope of when the ministry takes place. Our vision is a year around six day a week recreational ministry where we meet the needs of the youth in the community and help them to know they are loved and valued so they find Christ's love for them. The specific scope for Peace on the Streets started with a summer basketball league and grew from there.

What?

Create a specific ask of how to become involved in the ministry. Tell the vision and then tell the stories of success over and over again to anyone who will listen. Our ask was for coaches and adults to be involved in the life of the youth, money for uniforms and referees, and prayers for the ministry. It has grown into a winter church league ask and most recently a ask to contribute through donating money to a piece of a new gym floor to build the ministry.

Tell the Story?

Gather and tell stories of lives changed. People whose lives were changed by Jesus through participation in the ministry. In our case, youth gaining respect and discipline, a place to go that was safe, and a concept of team rather than self. 

Ask?

Be specific about the ask and what the need is whether it is in volunteer time or dollars. Break the cost down to manageable chunks and most importantly tell the story of lives changed to balance the costs with the impact of the benefits. We told our story and received our initial funds, now we plan to share our story to put down a new floor to the gym.

To whom?

Tell the story to everyone and often. Lives changed should be celebrated not for what we did individually and collectively rather for what God is doing in people's lives. We start every meeting with: How has God blessed this ministry since the last time we met?

Visuals?

Use pictures and images to share the stories. Impact brings liked minded people to participate in your journey with you.

Stories can have a tremendous influence on people's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors within an organization. Storytelling goes hand in hand with good active listening skills in a leader. Leaders listen to stories from their supervisors, employees, customers, and vendors to construct what is strong and good about the organization. Stories connect people with the processes of the organization and allow long lasting positive changes to be implemented.

Stories can make sense of complex situations, connecting them together for a common purpose and goal, inspire action, and invoke powerful images of success that improves organizations. Howard Gardner, in his book Leading Minds, says: "Stories are the most powerful weapon in a leader's arsenal." Create a positive organizational culture, one of inquiry and positive stories.

The Challenging Human Resource Role

The workplace is undergoing dramatic shifts in many fundamental aspects. Global organzations and diverse workforces are combining with technology leaps and cultural shifts to put pressure and opportunity on human resource professionals.

The most significant human resource challenges of the next ten year from a SHRM survey cited:

• recruiting, selecting, retaining and rewarding the best employees
• developing future corporate leaders
• creating a corporate culture that attracts and encourages the best employee performance

The role of the human resource professional in the midst of these workforce shifts and major challenges fall into three categories:

• employee advocate
• manager/supervisor advisor 
• organization (senior management / ownership) defender and shaper

Employee Advocate

The HR role of employee advocate has traditionally been predicated on resisting unionization activity and keeping employees focused on the objectives of the organization by sharing their creative cost cutting / improvement ideas. The change in technology, job reductions, and out-sourcing of the talent management has narrowed this employee advocate role leaving many employees feeling like after-thoughts and numbers. 

The role of employee advocate has become counter-intuitively become even more important against this backdrop as employees have become a competitive advantage for world class organization because other competitive factors are closed sooner by globalization and technology. Appreciative Inquiry as a change model and methodology of approaching the employee's challenges through valuing them as individuals is becoming increasingly beneficial to build individual performance along with team building.

Manager/ Supervisor Advisor

The HR role of manager/supervisor advisor has deteriorated within many organizations because of the need to document discipline, constant criticism of actions taken, and a perception that the HR professional are mechanics going through the motions of rigid policies and practices. The pressure of a diverse workforce and discrimination laws along with the negative organizational consequences to violating procedures have pitted in many cases HR professionals with line management.  

There has never been an important time for the HR professional to be a partner with management and supervision in relating to the organization's employees. Appreciative Inquiry as a change model and methodology of approaching the supervisor/manager's challenges through supporting and partnering with them on employee relation strategies is becoming increasingly beneficial to build individual supervisor/manager performance along with team building.

Organization (senior management / ownership) Defender and Shaper

Hunman Resource professional in many ways have embraced this role of defender against the possibility of discrimination claims and shaper of policies & procedures with a great deal of enthusiasm and a choking success. This embracing of the role of defender and shaper has been exagerated by the out-sourcing of human resource roles making the needs for policies to be spelled out and inflexible greater. Technology and HRIS systems has been a great asset to the modern HR organization with the unintended consequence that the Human Resource professional often is seen as little more than a parrot of policies and procedures where judgement and creativity to maximize the employee and supervisor/manager once ruled the HR profession, 

The use of a relational approach to the Human Resource function using Appreciative Inquiry would re-introduce curiosity and potential to the role to be a defender and shaper of the organization. Looking through the organizational prism of strengths, possibilities, and curisoity will provide much greater potential than limiting rigid policies and procedures.