ECCAY RESOURCES

The ECCAY resources can help professionals to use in practice the solution focused knowledge they have just acquired.

Exercise nr. 27

APPRECIATIVE STORIES

Minimum number of participants	Average time length	Individual setting	Group setting	Special Equipment	Unit	Online	Challenges/ competition
1	30-40 min	yes	yes	no	2,3,4,5	yes	no

Appreciative Stories, which may be also known as Appreciative Inquiry (AI) technique, focuses on the strengths of a person based on his/her previous experiences and learnings. It is about the best in people, in the way they live and behave, and the way they work and engage with their community. By bringing attention to what worked rather than what didn’t in previous steps of the person’s life. So that, by sharing his/her own story the idea of a better future scenario is reinforced.

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Aim / Benefits

According to David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastava (1987), who developed the contemporary main concept of the Appreciative Inquiry (AI), this exercise may help as follows:
●       Building the core strengths of an organisation/group working together
●       Shifting the focus from one’s weaknesses to his/her strengths (or the group ones),
●       Letting individuals stick to their fundamental principles.
●       Useful for solution building dynamics.

Some of the potential benefits of this exercise under ECCAY are:
●       It shifts the perspective from the participants' weaknesses to their strengths and successful past experiences.
●       It puts the focus on important and positive moments from past experiences and allows to visualise better possible futures for the young people.
●       It allows for stronger and more trusting relationships to be established between the professional working with young people at risk of social exclusion and these young people, or between the members of the group with whom they work.
●       Storytelling encourages participants to share their life stories that have meaning for them and can inspire others. The goal is to make participants realise that their experiences are valuable to others. Participants create a sense of cohesiveness among themselves and motivate each other to keep going by sharing their stories and listening to others.
●       As a professional, by focusing on your own successful experiences you can learn more about yourself and your work, notice your fortes and spot out some areas of improvement when working with young people at risk of exclusion. This is an optimistic, strength-based approach to remarkable personal change.

UNIT(s) related

The Appreciative Stories could be used to start a conversation with a young person at risk of exclusion, allowing him or her to reflect on previous events in which their strengths were highlighted.

As such, it is related to Unit 2: Solution Focused Inquiry, as the bulk of the exercise will be based on the reflective conversation you have with your client through different questions about their feelings, resources, hopes, desired futures, ... as well as to Unit 3: Building the Relationship, as it can be used for a better common understanding of the other person(s). Similarly it can be related to Unit 5: Self-reflection, as during shedding light on appreciative moments and stories, it is possible to reflect on one’s own best performances and learnings. Furthermore, it can be an eye-opening exercise for you, as a professional, to carry out in order to learn more about yourself.
If used in a group setting, it may also be linked to Unit 4. Solution Focused Group Work with young people at risk of exclusion.

How to do the exercise

Step 1 / Preparation:
According to psychologist Madhuleena Roy Chowdhury, Appreciative Stories may be proposed as a 4-steps storytelling model, the so-called 4-D cycle of AI (BJ Seminars International, n.d.):

Discovery - acknowledging and appreciating what “is” (strengths, skills, abilities, etc.)
Dream - imagining and appreciating what will be (one’s idea of success, ideal self, what it may be the desired future, etc.)
Design - deciding what “should be”, and how would it be possible to make it real from the dream version. How success could be achieved?
Deliver - building ways to achieve the dream and applying the necessary strategies to do so based on one's own strong points and abilities. It also takes its own steps: learn from past stories, execute the designed strategies, communicate one’s dream, ask for feedback if necessary and, then, repeat again.

However, for the purposes of this exercise, only the first three steps of the 4-D cycle - i.e. Discovery, Dream and Design - will be considered, as the last stage - Deliver - would require follow-up and long-term planning that cannot be carried out in a single session with the young person.

As a professional working with people at risk of social exclusion, make sure to adapt the previous scheme to the activity you want to carry out, whether it is starting a conversation with one client, as a team building exercise with a group or as a self-reflection practice. From now on, we’ll focus on the exercise as a one-to-one activity with a young client, but bear aware of the possibilities to replicate it with a group working in pairs and, then, sharing the thought in a common discussion, or making participants share some appreciative stories with the whole group in a round-session. Once all participants have shared their stories, discuss in a plenary session and make meaning out of what has been learned from each other.

Step 2
Appreciative Acknowledgment
One of the principles of AI states that "human systems move in the direction of what they inquire about". Therefore, you will first try to guide your client in the conversation to identify the desired change, the direction they want to take for their future life, according to their interests. This step is thus identified with the "discovery" phase of the 4-D cycle model, since the aim is to find out what “is” what the young person wants or expects.

Next, you will identify the relevant factors for this change and ask the client to identify a past life experience or a time when they demonstrated their skills, knowledge or resources in a personal success story, in order to relate these already demonstrated strengths to the desired vision.

What are these relevant learnings? Think about skills such as resilience, self-confidence, people in their support network who have contributed to their growth in the past, educational or professional training in a particular area, etc.

Remember that it is always about keeping the focus on the solutions, not on the problems that the young person faced in the event they narrate in their appreciative story. It is likely that learning will emerge from their narrative that was not originally intended, which may provide a motivational impetus to reflect on the resources already existing in their life.

Step 3
Dream Exercise
At this point, the young person is asked to imagine the desired future, what changes they would like to experience in their life, how they would like to achieve these changes, what prior learning and skills do they already have to achieve this?

This step identifies with the second point of the 4-D cycle model presented above, where the practitioner should guide the client's reflection from an SFA perspective, i.e. focusing on their strengths from previous experiences to imagine and appreciate what their ideal future scenario would look like.

It provides the necessary time for the young person to reflect on the 'dream' and how it connects with their appreciative history.

Final Step / Conclusion:
To conclude this exercise with your client, guide their reflection on their own already developed strengths. Think about how these outstanding skills and knowledge can contribute to the achievement of the desired "dream" or future and how these can also be used to make a positive impact on their community.

This phase can be identified with the design step, i.e. the third step. It is the moment of reflection on how the desired change could be achieved within the available resources.

You can pose some questions such as:
-        Can you think about a personal story when a course or learning experience had a profound influence on your life?
-        A story when you were able to accept openly responsibility for making a mistake? What did you learn from that event?
-        Can you think about any stories of first successes in the field that can guide our strategy for the future?
-        What did this experience mean to you back in the days? What would it mean today?

Debrief

The whole point of the exercise is to reflect on what was or is working well in a young person’s life and how to do more of it to create a positive impact within, as a way to grow stronger

Specific materials

Some materials you might need:
- A piece of paper/whiteboard to take notes, if necessary
- Pencil/pen/marker

Tips and Tricks

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is based upon five principles which may be also taken into consideration while doing this activity. These principles will be helpful while guiding your client(s) self-reflection process and proposing questions under the ECCAY’s epistemology. The idea is that within the AI approach, you as a professional can better help your client(s) to navigate the activity through questions aiming to a SFA, rather than focusing on experiences that might not be fruitful for his/her/their future(s):

Simultaneity Principle - states that appreciative inquiry, or questioning our internal and external systems, aids in bringing about the desired change.
Anticipatory Principle - proposes that appreciative inquiry occurs when we ask questions about things that have meaning for us now or will have some value for us in the future.
Poetic Principle - states that an organisation's performance culture develops through expressions and communication among its human personnel. What determines success or failure is how we communicate with one another, the stories we share at work, and the emotions that employees feel.
Constructionist Principle - asserts that our beliefs influence our actions. We do what we believe is right, and this is what shapes the overall organisational culture.
Positive Principle - which states that appreciative inquiry elicits positive emotions such as hope, inquisitiveness, and motivation, all of which contribute to a better work environment.

In addition, please note the following:
- In case you decide to use this exercise as a group activity, always remember to create a welcoming and trusting atmosphere among all participants. Remind your clients that their personal appreciative stories will not be judged and should remain confidential at the end of the session, and that, on the contrary, they can even be a source of inspiration for others. This exercise can be an interesting ice-breaker to stimulate and strengthen relationships between the young people in the group. Spark peer-to-peer learning, mutual respect, and community building.
- During the session with your client or group, always keep the focus on positive factors, on solutions rather than problems. Emphasise the skills, strengths and knowledge they already have and guide their reflection process towards how these factors can contribute positively to their future.

On-line version

The exercise can be done online, and essentially follows the same steps as the offline version. In this case, a video conferencing tool should be used to have a reflective conversation with the young person.

Bibliography - Sitography

4 Appreciative Inquiry Tools, Exercises and Activities
Edward A. Jacobson, Appreciative MOments: Stories and Practices for Living and Working Appreciatively, 2008. iUniverse. ISBN-10: 059549114
Appreciative Inquiry

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