[Ailist] appreciative warm-ups

[Rob Voyle]

Hi Sue
Here is my standard introduction at training workshops weremost people don't 
know each other: People briefly intoduce themselves to the grouip a s a whole or 
two their table depending on numbers using the following questions
	Who you are?
	Where are you?
	What do you do?
	Beyond family what do you love?
I denonstrate what I want them to do and "cheat" and give them two 
things.
After the exercise I debrief the experience asking whether anyone had 
theexperience of thinking of one thing and then another thing came into 
their mind and another and another. I then ask whether people were 
making connections with others during the time and identifying mutual 
things they love.  That is their first experience of AI.  We will use that 
cascading cognitive phenomena in our work together because: 
I then briefly mention Barbara Fredrickson's research on Broadening:
The Zone of Things You Love
When the daily ratio of positive to negative emotional events is above 3:1 
the human mind becomes expansive, creative, resilient and reparative.  Less 
than 3:1 the mind becomes linear and unable to think beyond the rut it 
finds itself in. 	Barbara Fredrickson  www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/peplab/
Other researchers would add that in the positive zone people are also 
racially tolerant and their intuition is more accurate.
The other thing the exercise does is give people something positive to 
connect with others at breaks etc.  One time I did it with a group of clergy 
one priest came up to me at the first break and asked whether positive 
people self-selected to come to AI workshops because he had never been 
in a room with such positive clergy. ....  I just wondered what would have 
happened if I had got them to say what they hate about ministry.  My guess 
is he would have thought the group was the most negative group of clergy 
he had been with..... Its all in the question.

Rob
  
Robert J. Voyle, Psy.D.
Director, Clergy Leadership Institute
For Coaching and Training in Appreciative Inquiry
Author: Core Elements of the Appreciative Way 
http://www.clergyleadership.com/
503-647-2378 or 503-647-2382


On 19 Feb 2008 at 11:33, Sue Fick wrote:

> Does anyone have some elegant appreciative warm-up exercises
> before
> going into stories for a group that hasn't met all of its members
> yet?
> Sue Fick
> Professional Development Consultant
>  
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