Tapping the Positive Organizational Potential Through Appreciative Leadership

Abstract

This chapter brings to the readers a crisp understanding of what appreciative inquiry (AI) is all about in terms of envisioning an effective organization towards sustainability. The chapter journeys through different phases of AI and explains organizational transformations as living systems, energetic and entrenched endeavours of ever-widening webs of unlimited strength and boundless human imagination, can develop into a desired organization. It highlights that HR practices need to focus on the eternal faith upon the dream of a fully functioning organization and focus on how leadership has a role and outcome with respect to appreciative inquiry. Touching upon team effectiveness through AI and how co-owning and co-creating organizational effectiveness is achieved, the chapter also touches upon briefly the required skills of a AI practitioners who lead the change. Finally, it elucidates how AI is used within an evaluation context. The chapter is an attempt to give a crisp message as to how to tap the positive organizational potential by emphasizing the role of appreciative leadership.