On the Cutting Edge: Best Practice in Organizational Planning & Coaching

I have been fortunate throughout my career to be surrounded by some of the most cutting-edge, best practice leaders in human services in North Carolina:

• Community Partnerships (then Specialized Services for Children) was one of the first programs in the area to provide support for preschools in creating fully inclusive environments for children with significant developmental delays and disabilities . . . when others were still saying it couldn’t be done. http://www.compart.org/
• The Orange County Partnership for Young Children, was an early leader in the Smart Start initiative to improve the quality of child care and increase accessibility to early childhood education and family support services so that children arrived at kindergarten ready for success. Smart Start, now a state-wide program, has won national awards for its proven success and is being replicated in many states across the country. http://www.orangesmartstart.org/
• Though the mental health system in NC has faced unquestionable struggles, Durham County was at the front of the line bringing together community partners to develop a nationally recognized System of Care for struggling children and youth. In collaboration with schools and the criminal justice system, youth were kept out of detention facilities at an amazing rate and surrounded by evidence-based community services allowing them the opportunities to get healthy, redirect their lives, and stay at home with their families. http://www.durhamcenter.org/
• PLM Families Together is currently the only program of its kind in Wake County, providing short-term housing for homeless families with an 80% success rate of families obtaining permanent housing. At PLM Families Together, families stay together – even Dads and teenaged sons – because they provide apartments rather than group living. And they believe in the power of families being together in tough times. http://www.plmft.org/

Now I continue this tradition in joining organizational development consultants and coaching professionals who have discovered the cutting-edge of appreciative inquiry/appreciative coaching.

The basic concepts:

1. Where we focus and how we use language creates our reality – so let’s put our focus on what we want to work (our vision) and the assets and resources we have to move us there, rather than on what isn’t working and what we need but don’t have!
2. Emotions, both positive and negative, tend to be contagious. Recent research in emotional intelligence and positive psychology shows that positive emotions can be antidotes and even undo the effects of negative emotions (Sara Orem, Jacquelie Binkert & Ann Clancy, Appreciative Coaching, 2007). Plus, positive emotions open the doors to creative thinking, intrigue and curiosity as well as feelings of safety allowing a person or group to explore in deeper more productive ways.
3. As all researchers, evaluators, therapists and interviewers know, questions drive thinking processes! Asking the right questions makes all the difference in the world and can lead to a powerful critical thinking process bringing new meaning to past experiences, new understandings about today’s reality and new excitement about the future dream.
4. Our lives and the lives of our organizations carry the powerful success stories that we need to move into the future we strive for.
5. Our vision of the future guides our current behavior. Hope makes all the difference in the world!

What does this appreciative approach to strategic planning or coaching look like? It looks like remembering and telling the stories of our successes, discovering and embracing our assets and resources, dreaming about the future and pulling the threads through that tie together our stories of past successes with our vision for future success . . . and then making it happen!