Walking the Talk

Appreciative Inquiry and Evaluation
Carol Tilley and Daniel Pryfogle

Evaluation is essential for any program or organization. But it usually focuses on finding and fixing problems - not a very inspiring activity. How might evaluation be positive, so that it identifies successes, encourages replication, and generates energy in an organization?

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) fosters productive evaluation by first asking employees what works then using that knowledge to create a better system. What's more, the practice of AI ensures that an organization's evaluation activities contribute to continuous learning and informed decision-making.

AI asks positive questions about affirmative topics. It focuses on possibilities, not problems. The AI method inspires mutual imagination and innovation. In doing so, the process breaks through habitual obstacles erected by deficit thinking in favor of discovering what's right with an organization.

AI can be applied to evaluation in several ways:

• AI's storytelling techniques help individuals and groups think in open, generative ways
• AI provides constructive and positive frameworks for posing and focusing evaluative questions
• AI's exercises of visualizing "what could be" help define evaluation goals/objectives
• AI helps develop concrete steps to put changes into practice.

AI not only provides the framework for exploring, setting goals, and planning action steps, but, through its repetitive practice of linking reflection and action, also provides a way of leading every day.

What are the benefits of using Appreciative Inquiry in evaluation?
(Source: EnCompass, LLC)

• More honest data about a program's successes and challenges
• Faster data collection, because it allows structured, large group participation
• Fully participatory because of its interview structure
• Respectful of diversity by preserving everyone's language
• Increased comfort and openness of participants
• Rich contextual information through storytelling
• Highly empowering in having participants collect, analyze and make meaning of their own data in real time
• Motivating and energizing evaluation process that spurs action because of the focus on studying successes

People want to believe that they add value through their work and that their time is meaningful. AI's methods promote this belief by phrasing inquiry in ways that capture what's most energizing and most important to people. Used in evaluation, AI respects the contributions of all employees by drawing them into reflection on how their organization can be better based on what they have already done well.

Would you like to know more about how Appreciative Inquiry can help your ministry with meaningful evaluation? Please talk with Daniel Pryfogle, CHHSM's director of consulting services, at 919-460-7069, or by email.