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More Info About
This Book
Excerpt
Readers' Comments
Recommendations
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 Experience
AI: A Practitioner's Guide to Integrating Appreciative
Inquiry and Experiential Learning, by Miriam
Ricketts and Jim Willis, of Executive Edge, Inc.
(Taos Institute Publications, 2001, $14.95). This
volume invites you to share in a conversation
around the power and efficacy of embedding experiential
learning models, tools and techniques into appreciative
inquiry in order to accelerate positive change,
motivate teams and individuals, generate buy-in
and engage people at all levels. By sharing and
learning from experience, people attain the high
levels of rapport, empathy, trust and mutual understanding
necessary to risk and embrace change together.
When integrated into each stage of an Appreciative
Inquiry, Experiential Learning supports and illuminates
the AI process, making AI "come alive"
for all stakeholders. When designed into an AI
process, experiential learning allows participants
to actually experience "the best of what
exist" (Discovery), creates opportunities
for organizational "peak experiences"
(Dream), provides opportunities to experience,
practice and refine provocative propositions (Design),
and builds critical mass as change is cascaded
throughout the community (Destiny).
$14.95 plus shipping and handling (volume discounts
at Shopping Cart)
ISBN: 0-9712312-2-2
13-digit: 978-0-9712312-2-1
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»»Readers'
Comments
"I should tell you that the book has been unbelievably
useful to me -- I have used it for at least six separate
client team building processes so far this fall, and
it constantly provides me with benchmarks and ways of
looking at the process that is ROCK SOLID -- both the
continuous learning cycle, and the 4-D approach."
--Celes Davar, President
Earth Rhythms
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»»Recommendations
"The book 'Experiencing AI: A Practitioner's Guide
to Integrating Appreciative Inquiry With Experiential
Learning' provides a glimpse into the world of experiential/adventure-based
training and development. If you work as a 'helping
professional' -- trainer, consultant, educator, therapist
-- this book introduces you to the practice of Appreciate
Inquiry and experiential/adventure training in a short,
concise, and easy-to-understand format.
As a seasoned organization development consultant and
experiential educator, I found the book fascinating
in its description of the kinds of activities and interventions
the authors use with their clients, and came away energized
thinking about how to incorporate some of these strategies
into my own practice. I was also amazed, and to be honest
somewhat skeptical, to think that you could get a group
of corporate executives to fully engage and buy-in to
some of the activities described in the book given the
level of commitment and intellectual/creative demands
they required. And yet, if what one hopes to accomplish
as, say, an organizational consultant working with a
senior-level management team, is a breakthrough in trust,
communication and problem-solving skills, and performance,
then the integration of Appreciative Inquiry with hands-on,
real-world experiential activities strategically designed
to mirror the kinds of workplace demands that the client
faces daily seems to be a powerful and effective strategy.
My wife, who has a private counseling practice, has
increasingly begun to explore and integrate both the
Appreciative and experiential aspects of what this book
has introduced her to into her practice, and is discovering
a whole new way of engaging her clients. What is interesting,
is that for both my wife and I, we have always struggled
with ways to reduce our client's dependency on us as
'experts', and to increase the degree to which they
take ownership of not only their problems and issues
(or, opportunities and dreams), but also to own and
control the process of learning, growth, and discovery.
Curiously, in their book, Ricketts and Willis describe
a part of their organizing philosophy about just such
a phenomena when talking about 'transfer of learning'
and the underlying dynamic tensions that exist between
client and consultant.
Both of us are also exploring how to bring this into
our work as university professors in relation to the
training we provide students in human services, education,
and business. I especially am excited about how to integrate
aspects of Appreciative Inquiry into the graduate-level
courses I teach on research methods, program evaluation,
and organizational needs assessment.
This book has opened our eyes to new ways of seeing
our work as helping professionals and educators, and
we highly recommend it to beginning and seasoned practitioners."
--Richard F. Flor, Ph.D
Core Faculty
School of Human Services Administration, Management,
& The Center for Social Sciences Research
Capella University
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