The Point of Connection

Hello friends, colleagues, and community.

Can you learn the truth about a community's experience by starting with what’s strong and whole, instead of what’s broken?

How do you find the “gems” in multi-year survey data to power a social justice movement?

What community interview insights will help people leading anti-bias work see and build on short-term wins for sustainable success?

These are some questions we've been addressing with our clients lately.

Recently, we supported a client in learning about impacts and opportunities to improve a program involving young community members. We suggested using an engagement strategy that would start by asking participants what was fulfilling and important about their experience and what it would take to have more of those moments.

Our client was concerned that we would only get a rosy picture from this strategy. Instead, by starting with the strengths of the program, we were able to open up space for honest feedback.

Program participants talked about impacts that were core to the program's purpose. But they also had much to say about the benefits of something that wasn't quite as central in its design—the value and power of building relationships with each other.

Our client later told us that this theme and participants' recommendations to make even more space for relationship-building are helping to shape the next phase of the program.

Free Resource? Yes, Please!

We believe that people are more than the hardships they experience—and organizations are more than their challenges. We put this belief into action by using strengths-based approaches.

One of our favorite examples is Appreciative Inquiry, and we embed it in many of our strategies.

It led to conversations that uncovered unexpected program benefits in our example above.

It's helped us draw out diverse definitions of words like "safety," "wellness," "success," and "support" to help build a better understanding of community members' hopes and challenges.

And we've seen it transform a quiet room of staff from multiple organizations into a vibrant group of peers sharing what inspires them—launching a new learning community process.

If you’re not familiar with this approach, or if you’d like to see and share a summary of it with others, you can download the Appreciative Inquiry resource from our website's Evaluation and Learning page, here.

Join the Conversation

Are you already using Appreciative Inquiry? Or do you have another favorite strengths-based strategy in your work?

Are you seeing the same kind of positive results we're hearing about from our clients?

Reply to this email to share your thoughts.

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Let's set up a call and figure out how we can work together.

All the best,

Robin and the rest of the Radiance team.

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www.radianceforchange.com