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).

Experience AI: A Practitioner's Guide to Integrating Appreciative Inquiry with Experiential Learning

Business & Money

Willis, James E.

Ricketts, Miriam W.

Management & Leadership

The Taos Institute Publications

How is it that some people seem to have great relationships and success in their lives while others do not? Why are some organizations successful at sustaining positive change while others make a great start but let it fade away? It rests on the dynamics of their relationships. Creating positive dynamics and sustained success requires continuous awareness and informed appreciative action. Dynamic Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Appreciative Inquiry in Daily Living invites us to step into the appreciative paradigm where the principles governing our actions and relationships offer a means for increased value and meaning in our lives and our communities of work and play. Dynamic Relationships offers us the opportunity to practice these principles through cycles of reflection and action in ways that empower us to become a force for creating and sustaining life-affirming relationships and success in daily living.

Dynamic Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Appreciative Inquiry in Daily Living

Jacqueline Stavros

Cheri Torres

In this important book, Sampson launches a new attack - this time on Western culture's centuries-long preoccupation with a contained, individualistic, monologic Self and its fearful suppression of all that is Other - all that is experienced as different from the implicit, self-affirming white male standard. This view, he demonstrates, focuses more on the leading protagonist and supporting cast that he has assembled to service his own interests, desires and fears, than on others as viable people in their own right. Denying the Other so as to create a world secured on behalf of the dominant groups' interests has become an obsession driving not only the larger culture but also the human sciences, in particular psychology's theories of human nature. Women, African-Americans and others not of the dominant classes have been constructed as serviceable Others, and appear in textbooks, journals and popular accounts as figures whose images and everyday realities have been created to serve the dominant groups' desires. Sampson uses the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, George Herbert Mead, and postmodern and feminist theorists to reject this dangerous obsession and to create a dialogic foundation to replace the Other-suppressing views of psychology, and indeed, of all Western culture. Sampson's arguments are convincing, liberating, and have major implications for the human sciences and the people they claim to serve. 'Celebrating the Other' will change the way human nature is viewed and studied. As the author reminds us, in silencing the Other we distort our own situation and stunt our opportunities for growth - 'no one voice can be quoted without losing the greatest opportunity of all: to converse with otherness and to learn about our own otherness in and through those conversations.'

Celebrating the Other: A Dialogic Account of Human Nature

Self-Help

Sampson, Edward E.

Relationships

As the title, Joined Imaginations, suggests, this volume takes us into the lives of Peggy Penn's clients and illustrates how her love of language and its infinite possibilities invites the creation of new stories, new possibilities, and joined imaginations. Peggy positions herself as a master of double description as she takes on the serious business of clients' problems by expanding their voices as well as the means by which those voices are given expression. This book is about language and writing and therapy. Joined Imaginations draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's idea of "dialogism in therapy" and attempts to illustrate how we author ourselves in conversation with others. Using the ideas of inner and outer dialogue, coupled with an understanding of subtext (an idea taken from the author's work in the theatre) the therapeutic conversation is seen as creating a text. Therapist and client build a new story together -- in their talk and in writing -- it is a "participant text." Creating a participant text is more than the usual talk of therapy. This volume features the use of writing as a central part of the therapeutic process. The client writes from new and appreciative stances and the byproduct is a change in one's life story; the result, a "kind of" literature. The act of writing invites meanings that have been ignored or unspoken into the relational field by way of the text. Words cross or bump up against one another when captured in writing, cracking open and revealing other words that may evoke experiences of self with others. This book is for all readers who use language as a treatment option. It is the author's hope that their extended language will attract others. Language has the properties of mystery and insight beyond its use in direct expression. More than reading a volume on social construction and therapeutic practice, this book takes us into the magical world of language and the drama of life.

Joined Imaginations: Writing and Language in Therapy

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Penn, Peggy

Psychology & Counseling

Ordinary Life Therapy is anything but ordinary. The work described in this book is relational, collaborative, generative and constructionist. It is also clinically sound and exciting -- an extraordinary program. The ideas presented in this book challenge the foundations of mental illness healthcare as practiced in many places around the world. Carina describes an alternative and creative way of practicing the healing art of therapy. Rejecting diagnostic categories, drugs and institutional care, Carina shares the stories of several therapists in Sweden who work with and help severely troubled individuals by finding them "ordinary" family homes where they can live for a period of time. In these "family homes" they are treated with care and respect and over time they adjust to the life of the family. The program is designed to treat the client not as "an illness" but as a multi-faceted individual who is capable of becoming healthy. The book describes in intimate detail how people whose lives seemed ruined are helped and can re-enter society as full-fledged participants. The book invites the reader to explore therapy through ordinary life experiences. Carina Håkansson is the founder and leader of Family Care Foundation. She is a social worker and a licensed psychotherapist. Her passion is to create networks with people in various ways and in different contexts to help to make life a bit better. She writes books and articles about the importance of using words and language in a humane and dignified way when meeting people in a professional context.

Ordinary Life Therapy: Experiences from a Collaborative Systemic Practice

Hkansson, Carina

Hakansson, Carina

Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding is a path-breaking contribution to peacemaking for a global society. In a highly readable fashion, it combines theory and case studies, domestic and international experiences, and advocacy of innovative approaches along with appropriate caution against simplistic application of these practices. The theoretical frameworks are rich enough to satisfy scholars, the case studies are practical enough to engage practitioners and the tips and guides to practice are sure to inspire new and innovative work among peacebuilders. This book presents an innovative perspective on peacebuilding that breaks new ground while maintaining strong roots and relationships in tradition. The impact of this book on the reader and those with whom the reader works, will last a lifetime.

Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding: A Resource for Innovators

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

This volume, a sequel to Horizons in Buddhist Psychology: Practice, Research &amp; Theory, is for all who wish to read about cutting-edge developments in Buddhist Psychology and will be of special interest to professionals (coaches, clinicians, teachers), scholars of various academic disciplines (medicine and the social sciences), as well as to the informed public attracted to meditation (students and experts). It provides illuminating insights into "Relational Buddhism," an approach based on "social construction", which lies at the heart of this pioneering work. In this work, Maurits G.T. Kwee provides a rich feast of offerings for practitioners and scholars alike. The work vibrates with the wisdom of the centuries, and simultaneously offers cutting edge resources for therapists, coaches, and teachers alike. The scholarly attempt to ground these contributions in theoretical and historical traditions is well presented. The volume may indeed establish a precedent for illuminating the cultural, historical, and theoretical context of human change practices.

New Horizons in Buddhist Psychology: Relational Buddhism for Collaborative Practitioners

Religion & Spirituality

Buddhism

In unforeseeable ways, events in organizations can lead to loss of face, violations of personal dignity, damaged relationships and poor results. Managers, employees and consultants search for ideas that might help them deal with complicated situations in morally respectful ways. By telling nine dramatic real life stories the authors illustrate how managers, employees and consultants might find inspiration in key social constructionist concepts and relational ethics. They introduce and unfold five key moral obligations in relational ethics: social responsibility, dialogic obligations, shared responsibility for positioning, inquiry of value to the work community and the obligation to interact as morally responsible agents. This book moves forward the discussion about ethics in organizations within a social constructionist perspective. Beautifully written and a delight to read, it provides an opportunity for readers to see how familiar ideas are being developed and practiced in a less familiar social, political, and institutional context, and the authors succeed in inscribing their wisdom and humanity. The book shows how we can make relational ethics support our being human in organizations.

Practicing Relational Ethics in Organizations

Haslebo, Gitte

Haslebo, Maja Loua

This book, BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT GROUPS, fills the gap between the challenges to conventional grief psychology and the practice of bereavement counseling. The deceased person has often been left behind in counseling conversations, requiring the bereaved to distance themselves from honoring memories that could soothe their heartache. Ironically, the stories of the dead person have not featured prominently in the grief experience. This book offers a structured guide for facilitating bereavement support groups, but is intended as more than a simple "how to" book. It will also inspire readers with invigorating practice ideas. This new way of thinking includes the stories and love that remain after death. Here is a model for folding the deceased person's values, legacies, meanings, and connections into the lives of the living. The book shows how to utilize the metaphorical presence of the deceased, accessed through stories, actions and rituals, to affirm the relationship with the deceased as more than a lost memory to be shelved next to dusty old photo albums.

Bereavement Support Groups: Breathing Life Into Stories of the Dead

Hedtke, Lorraine

Parenting & Relationships

Retiring But Not Shy: Feminist Psychologists Create their Post-Careers is composed of the stories of 23 women who address this time of life we call "retirement." Each woman has been highly successful in her career as a psychologist, and each has taken seriously her commitment to feminism. Yet the authors are diverse in other ways, with differences in age, career specialties, ethnicity, ableness, sexual orientation, and partner status. The chapters are engaging, personal, lively, and, above all, a helpful guide to any professional woman who is considering what the future holds for her in her "post-career." Issues of health, emotional well-being, housing issues, balancing career and post-career tensions, partner negotiations, financial decisions, endings and beginnings, are all touched upon. These accounts of resilience and creativity are written from the heart but also provide practical resources for readers. The introduction by Michelle Fine begins by describing it as "a textual pajama party of essays by the very women who pioneered feminist psychology." The forewords by editors Ellen Cole and Mary Gergen invite us all to join in.

Retiring But Not Shy: Feminist Psychologists Create Their Post-Careers

Anthropology

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