NOAA Alternative Dispute Resolution Program

Conflict Prevention: Team and Workgroup Services

Facilitated Problem Solving

“Morale” problems in a work group can often be resolved through positive action endorsed and accomplished by the group. The Workshop Method and the Action Planning Method developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs have proven to be effective ways to define and plan those actions in a very short time.

The Workshop Method takes about a half day, and has five steps:

The facilitator helps formulate a question the group wants to answer, perhaps something like– “How can our work group deliver outstanding customer service in the next three years?”
Each participant brainstorms, listing as many ideas and answers as possible, then transfers individual ideas in big letters onto half sheets of paper for wall posting.
The facilitator helps the group put the ideas in order and categories.
The categories are named by describing the common theme and these named categories become the basis for the Action Planning Method workshop.
The group selects a named category for the next stage of the process and the workshop is evaluated.

The Action Planning Method follows similar steps:

Each participant generates ideas for implementation individually.
Those ideas are posted and categorized into action items.
Action items are given timelines, milestones and deadlines.
The group decides who will do what and individual participants accept responsibility for their parts of the action plan.
The group evaluates the process and selects the next category for action planning.

The remarkable thing about these two programs? First, the group reaches consensus without effort. Second, each idea from each participant is honored, and third, from ideas to implementation the methods take such a short time.

Appreciative Inquiry has been described as “the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them.” It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system “life” when it most effective and capable in economic, ecological and human terms. The premise is that “human systems grow toward what they persistently ask questions about.”

The Appreciative Inquiry cycle starts with Discovery, where the work group interviews each other with positive affirmative questions designed to elicit descriptions of what works well now and what their best past experience has been. This energizes the group for the next step, where they Dream about what the best possible organization could be. The Design phase emerges through grounded examples from an organization’s positive past. Good news stories are used to craft possibility propositions that bridge the best of “what is” with collective aspiration of “what might be.” With the Destiny phase, plans are implemented and the cycle is incorporated as an integral part of the organization’s culture.

This process takes time, but can produce a positive revolution in the attitudes and productivity of an organization or work group that implements Appreciative Inquiry. Our positive images of the future lead our positive actions.