The Power Of Appreciative Inquiry

To someone's weary soul you've got a song,

I've got a song and there's one thing that's for sure it's life on earth,

It don't last too long so I guess we'd better see come on down to Hyman Town,

Pull up a chair put her there,

If you brought a thing to share we're gonna pass it all around it's supper time,

Sit down got soup beans,

Tomatoes and a roast and ears,

A fella can whistle out of both his ears a man like banjo,

A forty dollar bass a dog gonna stand up and lick you in the face when the coffee maker makes you some piece of cake we'll dance around the kitchen till the whole house shakes when your belly gets full,

That's a terrible one to beat you've got a jar of some water and a hole in a tree you've got forty-nine songs the body ever heard half a dozen cousins gonna sing them like a bird ain't no one going out,

No one coming in when the cows come home,

They're gonna run them off the hill we've got four pretty sisters putting out plates love is on the trash can,

Smoking white freight three young drunken on the porch playing cards fourteen youngs in a tussle in the yard daddy's on the mountain,

He ain't coming down cause mama took his fiddle and she threw it on the ground but now it's supper time it's supper time,

It's supper time,

Sit down it's,

It's supper time,

It's supper time That right there was the theme song to the Not Downtown Radio Hour a live radio show that showcases traditional and original music performed at the Appalachian School of Lutherie in Heinemann,

Kentucky That show is hosted by Doug Nasleroad After looking at the community and the infrastructure that was sitting there basically unused I thought I had better try this or I was gonna hate the fact that I didn't So in 2012 I started to work down there building the Appalachian School of Lutherie I met Doug on a class trip to Appalachia back in January He had curly white hair,

Thick green frames,

And wore a button-down denim As the master luthier and lead instructor at the school Doug has been making stringed instruments ranging from guitars to harps for a very long time while training others in the craft Since heading up the school in Heinemann Doug and his team of luthiers ran a whole bunch of stringed instrument projects especially the famous Mountain Dulcimer a traditional Appalachian trapezoidal-shaped fretted sound box Our first job was to build the Heinemann Dulcimer project to create the Museum of the Mountain Dulcimer and start a festival called the Doug and his colleagues made these instruments however They soon realized their craft could have a much larger impact beyond just the Appalachian music and culture it preserves Really early on we were approached by a guy He needed to find a way to busy his hands while he was setting himself a goal of kicking a heroin addiction Long story short,

He did We learned something from it and in 2017 we proposed what we call the culture of recovery where we're able to bring people into our studios the blacksmith,

The pottery and the luthier studio and put them to work learning a trade that it's beneficial We've come to understand that someone really being engaged with kind of labor-intensive work that demands concentration and a little bit of a commitment that that is actually beneficial It goes toward mitigating recidivism with people who are trying to recover Unfortunately,

Recidivism,

Or the tendency to relapse into criminal action or unhealthy behavior,

Is pretty common in Kentucky and the rest of central Appalachia which includes southwest Virginia and west Virginia The region has deep and profound cultural contributions to American music such as bluegrass and old time The musical roots of what we're doing those instruments are the instruments that are historically used in bluegrass bands and old time music I mean we have people who actually play them that have made the instruments and it all ties into the heritage of Appalachian music we're just there near the country music highway where once again it's the cradle of this culture so it's built in I mean it's built into the place and it's built into the mindset of the people who apply themselves to building these instruments But these strong cultural roots are tested by the opioid crisis that scourges eastern Kentucky According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse there were more than 1,

000 opioid-involved deaths in Kentucky in 2017 and Knott County had over 27 drug overdose deaths between 2012 and 2016 That's nearly twice the national average These problems have only grown worse since the decline of the coal industry which has brought even more economic hardship to Appalachia It might seem at first that Heinman and Appalachia altogether are hopeless Well,

At least at first glance Normally our mindset is what we call a deficit mindset to look at what is wrong in a situation how do we fix it so that's called a deficit mindset and most of us are trained in that That's Dr.

Tojo Thachangary He's a professor of public policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University Tojo has spent over 25 years teaching at various public policy,

MBA,

And organizational development programs across the globe After studying the phenomenal growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley since the late 1980s he became one of the leading authors in the field of AI and I'm not talking about artificial intelligence I'm talking about appreciative intelligence The definition of appreciative intelligence,

By the way,

Is that the capacity to reframe and see the reality differently and to work with it to make new things happen So once you reframe and see an opportunity then you have to think about how to make that happen So how do you make it happen?

Korean Thomas here and welcome to another Epidose of Seratunen Today on the show,

How identifying the bright spots of a situation can help create positive change especially when the circumstances may not be in your favor When Tojo was studying this phenomenon of appreciative intelligence in the growth of Silicon Valley he started to analyze why we have so much innovation coming from companies like Google and Apple in the Bay Area as opposed to the rest of the country What he noticed was that a major reason was the culture of risk-taking and diversity among the kinds of people that made up its entrepreneurial community I found that the entrepreneurs there get a lot of support from venture capitalists,

What we call VC So the entrepreneurs are supported there to take risks So they don't care how you look or your accent and things like that They just want to make you succeed Silicon Valley or San Francisco area for various reasons,

One being immigration having a lot of Chinese Americans there and Indian Americans and so on The Bay Area had a different culture,

A demographer called Anneli Saxenian She was the dean in the University of California in Berkeley She has studied this and found that the immigrant community in the Bay Area had a lot to do with innovation They were able to share knowledge in a much more free way There used to be this cafe where people from different companies would go in the evening and they would talk about what they were working on So we had this very interesting statistic that the 5% of the population,

That's Asian Americans as a whole country were starting 35% of the companies in the Bay Area between 1990 and 1998 This was very unusual,

The knowledge sharing that was happening They were free to talk to one another,

They were very informal and less worried about property rights and all these other issues that we are facing today So I think the cafe culture or knowledge sharing,

Community practice culture really engraves a lot of innovation I was very encouraged by this concept that some people look at business situations differently and see opportunities there Since forming the Culture of Recovery initiative back in Hyman,

Kentucky Doug and his colleagues had recognized an opportunity to train the many individuals affected by the opioid crisis in Appalachia to craft wooden stringed instruments They did this by starting a non-profit called the Troublesome Creek Stringed Instruments Company We were able to actually open a factory right in Nut County,

Kentucky,

Right in Hyman where we were able to employ people who have completed our training downtown and despite the fact that they have drug arrests and they may have felonies on their records we were able to give them really cool jobs The Troublesome Creek Stringed Instruments Company helps former addicts reframe their drug-infused past by bringing in people both from the local recovery center and the Hyman community to build these stringed instruments and sing about their struggles Doug says it's not only therapeutic,

But it also removes the stigma from people who have gotten really sideways by the virtue of their addiction by reconnecting them with the region's resilient artistic heritage When I think about various communities,

The first thing you may observe is how economically downturned the area might be You may be seeing a lot of things that look very depressed in terms of economic activities and so on or you could reframe and see the resilience of the people there that their concept of well-being and happiness is different than what many of us might be used to and they're seeing or experiencing the reality in a different way so you have to look at that from a different lens The default lens will be deficit,

What is wrong here,

It's so terrible here versus what's right here,

What's happening that's good here that I can build on You were able to see this process of recovery and could you just explain that a little bit more like what do you see with the people that you work with when they're working with your instruments when they're making music with you These people are very capable of doing fine work with their hands but when they first start,

They're pretty raw and following that arc where they come in and you sit them down at a bench and say okay,

Here's a hammer,

Here's some fret wire,

See if you can knock some frets into these slots here It's a simple assignment but some of them just look bewildered when they come in They're just out of detox a few weeks or months into the 12-step program and recovery but they find their way pretty quickly and some of them really get engaged to the point where very soon in the process you realize that this is just exactly what they needed to do and then they start having ideas about their goals I want to make a band,

Joe,

I want to make my own guitar just kind of like Eric Clapton's on and on and on Well,

We work with that and that process of them finding that new focus and that new obsession if you will actually rewires the chemistry of the brain some more It's a miraculous process Once you reframe and see a new opportunity,

You'll have to act on it If you don't act on it,

Nothing really happens That's the more equally important component,

Doing something with it but what I said earlier was that doing something with it is done with the mindset of seeing as if it has already happened Accepting the present as good,

The best it can be We're already seeing the world sort of beating a path to our door to buy these wonderful instruments that are not just an expression of our best version of ourselves but each one of those instruments contains a little piece of the lives of the people who made them So in the end result,

These instruments are full of life How do we apply these principles of appreciative intelligence into a community whether that's starting a social venture or leading a government policy How do we apply these principles into something like that?

I see a lot of small communities,

Especially in the mountains,

Small mountain towns They don't get much smaller than Heinemann.

Heinemann is 700 people So a lot of towns,

Despite limited resources and small size can model this and build on what's rooted in their place build on infrastructure that may be vacant or cultural heritage that may be unexplored I mean,

All you need to do is find out who your people are,

Celebrate that then find out what your people need and address that at the same time But I found that people who live in those communities are resilient They want people to believe in them and not to talk at them or not to teach them but to trust them and but enable them with small amount of support How is trust implemented in appreciative intelligence?

Is there something that's an underlying framework or is it just something that's an effect?

You're being transparent.

You're sharing what you're feeling and once they see that you are a person who is genuine,

That you're transparent and you are authentic that is how trust happens In other words,

They see that you're trusting them by you being transparent and authentic So you're not acting,

You're not showing off,

You're not talking like an expert You're just being genuine and expressing your feelings of excitement at the same time,

Feelings of concern that you want this to work and that you're taking a risk but you want to take a risk and because you care about the community and all that and they can feel it in you What do you say is special about Appalachia?

Why do you think it's so influential in the pieces that you guys make?

We actually fold Appalachia into what we make because we use locally sourced hardwoods and we are making them,

Local people are making them right there in Kentucky So we're not,

We're rooted,

It's not just something that's randomly being made Plus,

We also want to be very careful to explain that Appalachian is not a term of derision Appalachian is a superlative when we're doing our best work Appalachian craftsmanship,

That's not a joke That's not something that should be looked at as a hillbilly t-shirt It should be looked at as a badge of honor We're doing the best stuff around and it's not just despite the fact that we're in Appalachia It's because we're in Appalachia and we take a lot of pride in the work of our hands Seeing the mighty oak in the acorn,

That was a metaphor that when you look at an acorn you don't really see the oak But what if you could see it,

Like you're able to see the whole future Part of the magic of what I get to do for a living,

And it really is magical in the most positive sense is that you start out with big old moldy logs,

Trees that have fallen down or been cut for some reason and you drag them out of the mud and at the end of the process you have music That's just like,

You know,

That's magical Starting out with woodworking and ending up with something that's,

You know,

Healing and therapeutic in nature yet again You know,

It's a wonderful thing to be associated with and it's a pleasure to host a show where I get to bring on people who are just starting to see daylight What's a scenario or what's an example that you can give in how an individual can use appreciative inquiry to make change in his or her life?

There's a concept called learned optimism A lot of leaders who became successful,

They failed many times,

So they reframed the failure as learning opportunities So I would say the application on an individual level will be how do we look at failures in life You know,

Is failure bad or is failure an opportunity?

I've heard a quote,

I need to drill down and find out who originally said this but I've heard it said very well that no people are truly lost who have not lost the story of themselves And if you take that as a starting point,

I think you can do just about anything Hard,

But we are the way deer hits the con A falling stone doesn't come down just right A bad break when you're broke is just another dirty joke It ain't funny,

Play it true,

Right Hard is a surprise,

Catch you right between the eyes,

Between your breakfast So there you have it folks,

Just a recap Here are the steps you can take to practice appreciative intelligence and make change to your life or to the lives of those around you So the first thing is reframing,

Second is seeing the positive,

And the third is bringing the future to the present Reframe,

See the positive,

Bring the future to the present,

Got it Building off of what you already have can be incredibly valuable when you start appreciating what makes you,

You