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Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry: A Leadership Journey through Hope, Despair, and Forgiveness
Journey through hope, despair, and forgiveness
Leaders cannot predict the complex challenges they are called on to face. Veteran consultants Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell show that Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an invaluable tool to build resilience.
AI is a widely used change approach that emphasizes identifying what's working well in a system. Leaders can use AI to increase their ability to weather the storms they'll inevitably encounter and be resilient. A profound guide, this book features personal accounts from leaders across a variety of settings describing how they've practiced appreciative resilience in the ongoing cycle of hope, despair, and forgiveness.
Leaders cannot predict the complex challenges they are called on to face. Veteran consultants Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell show that Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an invaluable tool to build resilience.
AI is a widely used change approach that emphasizes identifying what's working well in a system. Leaders can use AI to increase their ability to weather the storms they'll inevitably encounter and be resilient. A profound guide, this book features personal accounts from leaders across a variety of settings describing how they've practiced appreciative resilience in the ongoing cycle of hope, despair, and forgiveness.
256 pages, Paperback
Published May 15, 2018
15 people are currently reading
41 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 10, 2018
Leadership is a journey that doesn’t have a definitive playbook. It’s helpful to have different ideas and models to guide and mentor as we improve our leadership skills. The new book Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry by Joan McArthur- Blair and Jeanie Cockell offer a unique roadmap that they call Appreciative Inquiry. This model illustrates how to build resilience in leading oneself and those around you. It’s an approach for positive change in organizations, individuals, and groups. The process engages people by telling and listening to stories to build the future of people and organizations together in an engaging manner.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) can be used in strategic planning, team development, coaching, organizational development, and research. Ultimately, the process shows leaders at all levels how to build long-term resilience by using AI to reflect on and explore leadership through hope, despair, and forgiveness. This process builds leadership resilience in not just us, but our people. AI helps us navigate through difficult situations as leaders. It guides us in connecting with others.
The book offers personal and real-life leadership situations for readers to see AI in action. It’s useful to know the impact of AI by introducing several valuable models. Moreover, each chapter opens with an inspiring poem and ends with reflection questions to really get us thinking as leaders and asking how we can use the lessons in the book to be stronger leaders who can impact the people around us and the organizations that we work in.
What I enjoyed most about the book are the first-hand stories about AI and how it can change people and organizations. It helps to bring all the various ideas in the book together for that “aha” moment. It helps everything to gel and assists the reader to start down on a new path to leadership.
For those that really see the benefits that AI can bring to your organization or team, there are some excellence chapters at the end of the book to help you practice AI and even conduct your own AI workshop with your team with the support of other leaders in your organization.
If you want to explore a new leadership method, pick up a copy of Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) can be used in strategic planning, team development, coaching, organizational development, and research. Ultimately, the process shows leaders at all levels how to build long-term resilience by using AI to reflect on and explore leadership through hope, despair, and forgiveness. This process builds leadership resilience in not just us, but our people. AI helps us navigate through difficult situations as leaders. It guides us in connecting with others.
The book offers personal and real-life leadership situations for readers to see AI in action. It’s useful to know the impact of AI by introducing several valuable models. Moreover, each chapter opens with an inspiring poem and ends with reflection questions to really get us thinking as leaders and asking how we can use the lessons in the book to be stronger leaders who can impact the people around us and the organizations that we work in.
What I enjoyed most about the book are the first-hand stories about AI and how it can change people and organizations. It helps to bring all the various ideas in the book together for that “aha” moment. It helps everything to gel and assists the reader to start down on a new path to leadership.
For those that really see the benefits that AI can bring to your organization or team, there are some excellence chapters at the end of the book to help you practice AI and even conduct your own AI workshop with your team with the support of other leaders in your organization.
If you want to explore a new leadership method, pick up a copy of Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry.
October 23, 2023
The beauty of this book was in its being an emotionally tough read. One can't appreciate it fully unless a) one has a thorough understanding of Appreciate Inquiry (AI) and b) one has experienced in some way the promise of hope, the depths of despair, and the power of forgiveness. Without, it's theory that may or may not be the invaluable tool to build resilience.
Thoughtfully and methodically written, the book's authors take great pains to walk the uninitiated through a thorough explanation of AI and see it for the tool that it is, or can be, to build resilience. The reader comes to view hope, despair, and forgiveness as elements that move in tandem, "in an ever changing ebb and flow" for leaders. Hope - "the thing with feathers," as Emily Dickinson called it - becomes a compelling force as presented here. Leaders share their disappointments and betrayals, in part, as opportunities to shape new directions and form new ideas. Its antithesis, Despair, while the hardest of states for leaders, is the one that so often arrives "uncalled and unbidden." Again, unless one has experienced it fully, understanding Despair as something that stays awhile and moves on at its own time and at its own pace, it's an abstract. Finally, the exquisite perfection that is Forgiveness comes at a cost, reliving the hurts and disappointments that necessitate it in the first place.
Authors Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell write compassionately but methodically as they break down the process of AI and rebuild it for the reader. Each section contains final thoughts and a series of reflections. And, there are sections of Resilience Practice and holding an Appreciate Inquiry Workshop.
Whether you've had to weather storms in your work life or your home life - and, particularly, wherever you're seen to be a leader - the journey this book offers is powerful, profound, and poetic. While there may not be any "happy endings," or neat solutions that wipe the slate clean, the invitation to come to terms, look forward, and move on - resilience - is a compelling one that makes reading this book worthwhile.
Thoughtfully and methodically written, the book's authors take great pains to walk the uninitiated through a thorough explanation of AI and see it for the tool that it is, or can be, to build resilience. The reader comes to view hope, despair, and forgiveness as elements that move in tandem, "in an ever changing ebb and flow" for leaders. Hope - "the thing with feathers," as Emily Dickinson called it - becomes a compelling force as presented here. Leaders share their disappointments and betrayals, in part, as opportunities to shape new directions and form new ideas. Its antithesis, Despair, while the hardest of states for leaders, is the one that so often arrives "uncalled and unbidden." Again, unless one has experienced it fully, understanding Despair as something that stays awhile and moves on at its own time and at its own pace, it's an abstract. Finally, the exquisite perfection that is Forgiveness comes at a cost, reliving the hurts and disappointments that necessitate it in the first place.
Authors Joan McArthur-Blair and Jeanie Cockell write compassionately but methodically as they break down the process of AI and rebuild it for the reader. Each section contains final thoughts and a series of reflections. And, there are sections of Resilience Practice and holding an Appreciate Inquiry Workshop.
Whether you've had to weather storms in your work life or your home life - and, particularly, wherever you're seen to be a leader - the journey this book offers is powerful, profound, and poetic. While there may not be any "happy endings," or neat solutions that wipe the slate clean, the invitation to come to terms, look forward, and move on - resilience - is a compelling one that makes reading this book worthwhile.
March 27, 2021
Leaders can use appreciative inquiry to lead themselves and others can increase their ability to weather the storms they will encounter and can bounce back from. The authors provide a step by step guide for leaders to follow and increase their apeiciative inquiry. This book features real world, personal examples from leaders across a variety of organizations identifying how they practice appreciative resilience in the face of despair. This is a process I am learning to employ in my own leadership research and it teaches me something new every day.
July 15, 2025
Leaders or anyone looking to build resilience check out the book Building Resilience with Appreciative Inquiry by Joan McArthur-Blair & Jeanie Cockell. The authors present a framework to help individuals on a resilience journey. They outline their approach to resilience in a way that enables you to reach new heights.
December 4, 2018
I’ve been interested in appreciative inquiry for a long time, so I was very happy to receive a copy of this book for review. The authors do a great job of showing how appreciative inquiry principles can help leaders and organizations build resilience. It really has a wealth of detailed information about creating hope, working through despair, and practicing forgiveness. There are many stories that show how real people have used the principles personally and within their organizations, which I found helpful and interesting. There is also a detailed chapter on how to conduct an Appreciative Resilience Workshop, but it’s not for a novice. You do need to understand appreciative inquiry to be effective. It’s a good resource and if practiced could help leaders create personal and organizational satisfaction.
March 8, 2019
Great book! I learned a lot.
September 2, 2019
Clear, informative, and inspiring. Interspersed with poetry and illustrative interviews of the power of the Appreciative Resilience Model in leadership.
April 9, 2019
Using Hope, Strengths in times of Despair and Forgiveness to forge leadership resilience
This warm generous book is a gift for our times.
Through an immediately readable mix of honest reflections from their own lives, anecdotes from their leadership learning practice, poetry and practical activities, tools and techniques the writers give us a way to harvest our own and each other’s hard won wisdom, building always from appreciative (amplifying what is best about us) inquiry (amplifying our curiosity and ability to find fresh intelligence through stories and conversation) to strengthen our collaborative co-creative capabilities for not just surviving challenges and trauma but becoming finer versions of ourselves through the process.
Highly recommended for all leaders and leadership learning guides. And people wanting to learn and grow through whatever life delivers them.
This warm generous book is a gift for our times.
Through an immediately readable mix of honest reflections from their own lives, anecdotes from their leadership learning practice, poetry and practical activities, tools and techniques the writers give us a way to harvest our own and each other’s hard won wisdom, building always from appreciative (amplifying what is best about us) inquiry (amplifying our curiosity and ability to find fresh intelligence through stories and conversation) to strengthen our collaborative co-creative capabilities for not just surviving challenges and trauma but becoming finer versions of ourselves through the process.
Highly recommended for all leaders and leadership learning guides. And people wanting to learn and grow through whatever life delivers them.
March 23, 2021
Excellent mashup of Appreciative Inquiry and Resilience
The authors offer a great framework for understanding how the concepts of Appreciative Inquiry can be used to promote individual and organizational resilience.
The text is more practical than academic yet offers solid explanations for how to facilitate workshops and discussions in a manner that promotes a strengths focused perspective.
Outlining concepts of Hope, Despair, and Forgjveness, they help us understand how to help participants become familiar and confident in their lives with various goals.
The beauty of Appreciative Inquiry is its generative nature. It’s not just a way of questioning, it’s a way of changing. The insight is the intervention. By answering the carefully crafted questions, you’ve made the first step in a journey toward positive change. Well done to the authors for capturing this spirit in the interests of promoting resilience!
The authors offer a great framework for understanding how the concepts of Appreciative Inquiry can be used to promote individual and organizational resilience.
The text is more practical than academic yet offers solid explanations for how to facilitate workshops and discussions in a manner that promotes a strengths focused perspective.
Outlining concepts of Hope, Despair, and Forgjveness, they help us understand how to help participants become familiar and confident in their lives with various goals.
The beauty of Appreciative Inquiry is its generative nature. It’s not just a way of questioning, it’s a way of changing. The insight is the intervention. By answering the carefully crafted questions, you’ve made the first step in a journey toward positive change. Well done to the authors for capturing this spirit in the interests of promoting resilience!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews