Positive Psychology and Change by Sarah Lewis

Author:Sarah Lewis [Sarah Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Personal & Professional Development
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Published: 2016-05-01T21:00:00+00:00

4. The flip

There is an Appreciative Inquiry process known as “the flip” that works to shift a push motivation to a pull motivation. Essentially, once someone has outlined what is wrong, you then say something like, “Ok, I understand what you don’t want/what the problem is/what isn’t working/what is frustrating” (being sure to demonstrate that you truly do understand by reflecting your understanding back to them, i.e., ensuring that you have actually heard their pain, frustration, hopelessness, etc.), and then say something like, “So tell me something about what you do want?” or “Describe to me how things would be if this problem didn’t exist,” or “If you woke up tomorrow and by some miracle the problem/issue/frustration had disappeared, how would you know? What would be different?” All of these and many others are ways of encouraging the person to talk about the dream instead of the problem. And talking about the dream is motivating, energizing, and induces positive emotional states.

Of course, judgement has to be applied as to when it is appropriate to attempt to “flip” the conversation. At the 2015 World Appreciative Inquiry Conference there was some concern expressed that sometimes it seemed that people didn’t want to even hear about the problem before moving onto encouraging people to describe the dream. It was pointed out that the problem story has value and meaning and must be honoured. I thoroughly agree, and I explored this conundrum in my earlier book on Appreciative Inquiry (Lewis, Passmore, & Cantore, 2007). Barbara Fredrickson puts it very well and, I believe, successfully squared this circle when she emphasized that “Positive Emotions act as a reset button for negative emotions that have outgrown their usefulness” (2015). Deciding when to introduce a flip question is a situated, context-sensitive judgement.

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