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Diane Brown (00:02)
It really is getting under the surface to say, what is valuable in this situation or how can we create value from this situation to move forward in a positive way?

JoDee Curtis (00:18)
Welcome to The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast, where we help HR and business leaders embrace joy in the workplace. I’m JoDee Curtis, owner of Purple Ink, and with me is my friend and co-host, Susan White, owner of Susan Tinder White Consulting, an HR consulting practice. And Susan is also a senior collaborator with Purple Ink.

Susan, I’ve heard this term for a while, but really didn’t understand all the depth of it. So I thought our podcast today would be on the topic of Appreciative Inquiry. And I have a friend, Diane Brown, who is an expert in this topic. So I’ve invited her to join us.

Diane is the co-founder of Archos Advisors. She finds tremendous reward in serving leaders and leadership teams focused on getting to the next level and achieving success with and through their people, not in spite of them. A former CPA, Diane has provided countless leaders with the necessary insight and resources to solve problems, navigate change, and create stronger and more effective teams.

She is Prosci Certified Advanced Change Practitioner, has the SHRM-SCP certification, and is a trained facilitator for Conversations Worth Having, which uses Appreciative Inquiry to fuel productive and meaningful engagement.

JoDee Curtis (02:09)
Diane, thank you so much for joining us today.

Diane Brown (02:13)
Well, thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure.

JoDee Curtis (02:16)
Yeah. So tell us about Appreciative Inquiry. I mean, what is it, what isn’t it, and why is this an even important topic in the workplace?

Diane Brown (02:29)
Yeah, great question because Appreciative Inquiry sounds, like, real heady and heavy. And actually what it is, is it’s a human-centered, strengths-based approach to creating positive change. And when you think about how we work in the workspace, you know, every time we have a conversation, we’re essentially creating some type of change we could use in how we approach certain projects we’re trying to create change or even in strategic planning or change initiatives. And so what it boils down to is Appreciative Inquiry is an approach that capitalizes on different practices so that when you’re having those conversations, what you’re moving toward is something that increases value.

So if you think about the word appreciative, that means that there is value or value added to the situation and you can move forward in that situation in a positive way by leveraging what gives life or the strengths that are already present to say, how can we move towards what we want more of? And so when we talk about Appreciative Inquiry and it sounds all great and nice, people say, “it’s just about all the positivity,” you know, and “it’s just, what you’re trying to say is just focusing on the positive.”

Well, that’s actually not what it is. It really is getting under the surface to say, what is valuable in this situation or how can we create value from this situation to move forward in a positive way? So it’s not about all the lollipops or rainbows or shoving the problems beneath the surface, but it’s really how can we bring people together and move forward in a positive way based on where we are today?

And so that, at a big picture level, is what Appreciative Inquiry is all about and leaders who are skilled in Appreciative Inquiry, I think particularly as you think about HR, HR is all about humans and bringing the best out of humans. When HR leaders are skilled in Appreciative Inquiry or really understand the power of it, there’s a great opportunity to shape workplaces in a positive way by infusing it in a lot of what we do.

JoDee Curtis (04:50)
Yeah, yeah. Well, as someone who has positivity as a strength, I love this.

Susan White (04:56)
Mm hmm. For sure. So Diane, how do the nature of our conversations shape and influence our workplace culture, productivity, or even engagement?

Diane Brown (05:09)
Yeah, so I’m going to start this by asking you a simple question. So if you think about what percentage of your time on a day-to-day basis you spend in conversation with someone else or yourself, what percentage would you say?

Susan White (05:27)
I want to say 90.

Diane Brown (05:29)
I was going to say you hit it right on the head, Susan. Most people answer that question 90 to 100% of our waking hours are spent in conversation. So it’s almost like, I’ll take it out of the workplace and say if you think about fish swimming in a pool of water, we’re like humans swimming in that pool of conversations.

So if our conversations are more positive in nature or focused on the appreciative nature of what’s happening, then we’re gonna have greater wellbeing, we’re gonna have greater success, we’re gonna feel more energy and enthusiasm. Contrast that, like, if you think about fish swimming in water that might be toxic, and you bring that analogy to the workplace, if our conversations are consistently depreciative or taking value away or negative in some way, then that has a significant impact on our culture.

And so it really, when you think about everything that happens in the workplace, almost everything boils down to the conversations that take place to make those things happen. And so if we can be more appreciative in that, then we can all have a stronger positive impact on our culture, which impacts productivity, engagement, and retention ultimately.

Susan White (06:56)
It makes sense.

JoDee Curtis (06:56)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love it. And Diane, I understand there are four different types of conversations. So what are those?

Diane Brown (06:58)
Yeah. Yeah, so I think it’s helpful — and I know it’s a little hard because we’re on a podcast — but to have a visual or think through a visual on this. So everybody loves a two-by-two matrix, right? And so if you were to imagine that on the vertical axis, there was appreciative on the top, on the top half and depreciative on the bottom half, again, by definition, appreciative adds value, depreciative takes away from value. And then on the left-hand side, there was a statement-based type conversation, because we have a lot of conversation that have statements. And then on the right-hand side, an inquiry-based.

Then the four types, if we want to think about first starting below the line, what are those depreciative conversations? If we’re in that lower left-hand quadrant, and we’re just statement-based and we’re negative, that might be saying, you know, “JoDee, your work is really sloppy,” right? It’s just a statement and it can make people feel really bad.

Or if you’re on the inquiry side, what that might sound like? And you think, inquiry, that’s better, but what it might sound like is “Why in the world did you do it that way? I mean, what were you thinking?” That’s inquiry, but it still is negative. And what the neuroscience shows is that when we have those depreciative types of conversations – like, I’ll just ask the two of you. How did it make you feel when I said either one of those statements?

Susan White (08:36)
I was feeling pretty low.

JoDee Curtis (08:38)
Yeah, me too.

Diane Brown (08:40)
Yeah, low and bad. And what often happens when we’re in that depreciative state is that we actually access, it throws us into the amygdala part of our brain, which is in protection mode. And so it narrows the thinking to how do I in this situation protect me? And you start thinking about me.

And so if we contrast that and go back to sort of that two-by-two matrix and think about what would it feel like above the line? So on the statement side of appreciative, you might hear something like, “Oh, I really like your idea on that,” or “I love the options that you see in that.” On the inquiry side, it might be, “Well, what might it look like if we choose option A or option B?” or “Imagine if you were a year from now, what might you look at to see that this project is going to be successful?”

So I’ll ask you again, if you think of, like, a positive or appreciative situation, how does that make you feel?

Susan White (09:43)
You feel great. You feel like you want to start offering up new more ideas, new or more ideas.

JoDee Curtis (09:48)
Yeah.

Diane Brown (09:49)
Yeah, and so the neuroscience behind that is that it actually moves you from the back part of the amygdala to the front part, which is your neocortex, which really opens up your thinking, sort of broadens the view. It also helps you access more innovative thinking, creative thinking, and like you said, positivity. You want to offer more ideas and such.

And so in terms of the types of conversations, when you’re in that lower left, it’s destructive. When you’re in the lower right, it’s critical. When you’re in the upper left, it’s more affirmative. But when you’re in that upper right-hand quadrant, that’s what we would call Conversations Worth Having. They really create meaningful connection. They encourage productivity. And they do encourage creative thinking.

And so as an individual, one way to think about it is how much time in my conversations, again, with others or someone else, am I spending above the line or below the line? So it’s a really powerful way to think about it. And I would challenge you to think about leaders that you’re drawn to often are much more above the line. So we would call them appreciative leaders than below the line. It really promotes a JoyPowered® workspace.

JoDee Curtis (11:10)
Right, there you go. It makes me think, Diane, I was in this meeting yesterday that was, like, six hours total. And it was a real sort of a rah-rah meeting, I would say, where a group of people, we were all excited about something. We were talking about business development and just was a real energizing conversation overall, both I would say there were a lot of statements and a lot of inquiry happening. But there was one lady in the room who happened to be sitting close to me who was not on the upper half, I’ll say. Most things that came out of her mouth were of concerns or negative questions or negative statements or sort of a, “woe is me” type of thing. And I don’t think — I talked to her a fair amount because she was at my table and, like, I was just thinking later, does she have any sense or self-awareness to think of how she was coming across to the rest of the group? Not that – sometimes we, you, you mentioned earlier life is not all about lollipops, right? We have to ask tough questions or make tough statements sometimes, it just — hers were, like, continuous. And I just felt so drained by her that it’s almost like, I don’t want to sit at your table because you’re draining me. Yeah.

Diane Brown (12:56)
Yeah. And that can happen. And like you said, people sometimes don’t even realize that it might be a blind spot for them, that they’re always, always starting from the negative. And what’s interesting about that is that — and I talk about this above the line, below the line. So we did an exercise with a group of managers and said, “What pushes you above the line or below the line?” and actually mapped it out, you know, and like, how’s that feel? And what was interesting was in one of the situations, somebody said, “Well, what immediately puts me below the line is when somebody sends me a Teams chat that says, ‘Can you come to my office?’”

You know, and it seems like a very, you know, just something that would happen in the course of business, but what we don’t realize is our brains are naturally wired to go protect first. We don’t assume the positive. So in the absence of the context of the tone and the conversation, that just reading those words, it’s like, you feel like I’m being called to the principal’s office.

Well, here’s what’s interesting that happened. In her group was a manager. She didn’t work with him directly. But at the end of the workshop, when we said, “Okay, what’s one thing that you’re going to change or work on or idea that you took away?” and he said, “I am never again going to send a Teams chat that says, ‘Can you come to my office?’” Because it, and this is what he did. He immediately put his hand behind his head and he said, “Because it’s putting my team members into protect mode before we even have the conversation.” And I was like, wow, that’s awesome that you would have that self-awareness, self…

But before that, he was just thinking, like, I’m just sending a nice little note to somebody to say, come stop by my office. I want to chat to you about this. it can, yeah, it can be really powerful to realize that.

JoDee Curtis (15:05)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Susan White (15:12)
That’s a great aha. I have to tell you, Diane, although we don’t have visuals in our podcasts and drawing a two-by-two is very hard, I don’t know if you caught Kim Scott, who wrote “Radical Candor,” she wrote a book last year, “Radical Respect,” and I was listening to her talk about the book and she was saying that she believes that any problem in the world can be solved by a good two-by-two. You know, I think she’s right.

JoDee Curtis (15:13)
Yeah.

Diane Brown (15:25)
I know, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I was hoping, yeah. And I thought, okay, well, I’ve listened to podcasts before where two-by-twos have been described and, hopefully I described it well enough that the picture can be drawn because it’s helpful.

Susan White (15:47)
I saw it in my head, so thank you.

JoDee Curtis (15:47)
Yes.

Diane Brown (15:48)
Good. Good, good, good.

Susan White (15:51)
Diane, I know that you believe there are three fundamental practices that can contribute to being a more appreciative leader. For our listeners, can you spell those three out for us?

Diane Brown (16:01)
Yeah, I’ll just highlight them quickly. And I do want to be completely transparent that these three practices come from a book called “Conversations Worth Having” by Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres, so anybody who wants more depth on them could go there. But I do think these are things that people could practice every day.

And so the first small practice is kind of connected to what we just talked about. It’s called tuning in. And so in any conversation, in any situation, just stopping and sort of training yourself to pause before responding. And so what’s interesting in the neuroscience is it’ll, they say you’ve got, like, a quarter of a second before you react naturally to just interrupt it. So if we just pause, breathe and get curious.

Now here’s the interesting thing in the get curious part. What you can do for yourself is say, “Where am I right now? Am I above the line or below the line?” or “What’s in the background that I’m bringing to this conversation?” like, “Did I just come out of, you know, a previous bad conversation, I’m not really prepared for this next one?” or “Did I, you know, is there something going on in my personal life that I’m like, okay, I just need to take a moment to get centered before I go into this business conversation?”

But it’s really tuning into not only where you are but also then to think about what might be on someone else’s mind. And what that does is it helps us long enough to challenge our assumptions about what we might be making about what’s going on and to challenge our own narrative in our head to say, what’s real about this situation or our reaction to a situation? What’s real versus what’s the narrative I’m making up? And so tuning in is the first practice.

The second practice is generative questions. And so if we’re going to get curious and we’re going to think about how can we get into that upper right-hand quadrant of really having a meaningful, productive conversation, thinking ahead of time or thinking in that moment, just pausing long enough to say, “How can I ask a generative question?”

So what’s interesting is we hear a lot about generative AI and that word generative means creating something. And so a generative question is just saying, hey, I’m gonna ask an open question that’s gonna generate new thought or maybe a different type of thought around this situation. And so sometimes Appreciative Inquiry is called “the other AI” for that reason, it’s the human-centered AI. So using generative questions is really helpful because they often uncover things that might not be visible to everyone. They could uncover assumptions. They could create shared understanding. So practicing and really thinking about your generative questions is the second sort of fundamental practice.

And then the third one is — and so I said earlier that Appreciative Inquiry sometimes is associated with, it’s all positive. Well, an aspect of it is positive framing, which says, you know, we’re going to acknowledge and name when we have a challenge or an issue, we’re going to call it out and say, “You know what, we’re really struggling right now.” And I’ll use employee engagement as an example. “Boy, we’re really struggling right now with employee engagement. And here are all the areas where, you know, we’re really not doing well.”

Well, sometimes when you get into problem solving, you can say, “Here’s where we’re broken and how are we going to fix that?” What the positive frame does is say, “Okay, let’s focus on what’s working really well,” and if we want the positive opposite of, “Hey, we have really low engagement scores” to be, “We want high engagement scores,” then what’s the positive frame? “How can we create an environment that is truly engaging for all of our employees?” That’s the positive frame.

And we want to look at both, you know, where are the challenge areas, but what are we doing well and how can we create more of that and how can we bring more of that to the areas where we might be challenged? And so it’s just flipping. We oftentimes also call it reframing so that you’re focusing on more of what you want versus what we want to fix because in the last part of that offer is when we’re really focused on what’s broken or what we want to fix, it goes back to — it acts like putting us back in that protect mode. We’re going to protect the little space and it’s going to narrow the thinking. Whereas if we can broaden the frame and say “How might we attack this differently?” it will open up the problem solving around it.

JoDee Curtis (20:56)
I love this. I do. really I mean, I’ve heard the term Appreciative Inquiry for several years now, and I didn’t really understand what it meant. So thank you for breaking that down to us in a way that is very easily understandable. if our listeners feel like me and they want to learn more about this, you mentioned a book that was a good resource for us, which we’ll put in our show notes. But how might our listeners also reach out to you?

Diane Brown (21:24)
Yes, at any point in time, they can go to our website, it’s archosadvisors.com. So it’s A-R-C-H-O-S advisors dot com. And there are a couple of pages under the workshop area that describe a little bit more about the Conversations Worth Having and some of the practices. But I will also send you a one pager that just highlights those three practices and you can drop that in the show notes and share that as well.

JoDee Curtis
(22:04)
Yes, we will do that.

Susan White (22:06)
That’s great. Before we let you go, Diane, what is one small step people can do in this area to create joy at work?

Diane Brown (22:15)
You know, I will tell you that since I’ve been working with all of this content, the one thing I absolutely love is that idea of tuning in. And so for me, it’s just taking that pause. And the way you could add joy to that is, like, what is the pause for me that’s gonna break me out of this thinking?

For me personally, it simply adds joy to ask myself the questions of, “What’s real about the situation?” and “What are the stories I’m making up?” or “What are the assumptions that I have?” But if it’s, hey, I need to sort of break out of this mindset because I’ve had a real tough morning and I’m going into another thing, you know, it might be taking just a quick micro break, a 10-minute break. That’s another version of tuning in or pausing. For some people, it might be listening to music, but just, I think, dialing up how you tune in, that brings joy to you and sort of helps you reset around something. That’s my thought around that.

Susan White (23:17)
I think it’s a great one. So thank you.

JoDee Curtis (23:18)
Yeah, I love it.

Susan White (23:20)
Thank you so much for joining us, Diane.

JoDee Curtis (23:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Diane Brown (23:22)
Yeah, well, thank you again for having me. This is an area where I am just passionate because I think that when you get under the covers and you get past the Appreciative Inquiry and how heady it sounds and you go, wait a minute, this in practice is how do we bring the best of ourselves to the work environment, how do we bring value out of our people? I think it could be really powerful to infuse it into workplaces and into the culture.

JoDee Curtis (23:52)
Yeah, totally agree. Thank you.

Diane Brown (23:52)
So thank you.

Susan White (23:57)
JoDee, it’s time for our listener question. “I currently have a hybrid working model where we can work from home two days a week. When working from home, there seems to be more guilt or pressure to start working earlier and work longer hours. Do you see that employers, companies are having a higher expectation for employees that work from home to work longer hours, or do you think this is something that’s more self-inflicted?”

JoDee Curtis (24:25)
Yeah, I thought this was a great question and I’m not sure I have a great answer to it, but I do think, you know, I think about when I used to work four days a week, which was back in, like, 1998. No, back in 1996, I started working four days a week. And I definitely had some bit of a self-inflicted thing that I felt like it was such a benefit to me to be able to have that schedule that I never wanted anyone to question it. So I clearly worked harder and found myself being crazy productive on the days I was working because I, you know, that was an unusual schedule in the environment I was working in at the time. And I have to think that that is still happening today, but maybe it’s happening more on both sides than I thought.

And it made me think back to when I worked four days, did other people, did they feel like they had higher expectations of me as well? So I think it sounds like you enjoy working from home, so you probably want to keep that benefit as well, too, that you don’t want people to question it. So I suspect there is some self-inflicted, self-infliction happening there as well too. But I can also see that many employers and companies, some who maybe don’t like people working hybrid or people working from home on certain days, that they almost want to continue to have that model proven to them, right? To say, you know, if they discover that it isn’t working for the team or the group or the organization or the person, that they might be able to call people back to work at any time if it’s not proving useful. So my sense is there probably are higher expectations on both What do you think, Susan?

Susan White (26:53)
Well, I could reflect back when I was working for a large corporation, the people who worked remotely, they always were told it’s a privilege, it’s not a right. And so there was this mindset that these people were getting a privilege. There was remote work policies they had to sign off on. And I think that the need to, like, always be available when you’re working from home, I like to think that it’s self-inflicted, but we sent a lot of signals to people that, know what, you’re lucky to get to do it.

JoDee Curtis (27:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Susan White (27:22)
And if you started to have a performance issue or there was any concerns, immediately that was the first thing that we take away. We wanna see you in the office. So I don’t think you’re crazy. think that organizations probably are always wondering if it’s a good decision not to have you under their roof.

With that said, I would like to say for all of you that do work from home any part of your week, you’ve got to set boundaries. And for your own mental health, it’s very easy when you have your laptop there, you’ve got work that’s never completely ever finished, to go back in after the kids are in bed or to start early morning before the rest of your house wakes up and put in extra time. And I just am going to encourage you from a wellness standpoint, set some boundaries.

You know, whatever time you would normally either start your commute or actually be in the office, tell yourself, that’s when I am gonna start. And it’s time, at a certain time in the night, you’re gonna turn off the lights in that workspace that you have and you’re gonna give the other part of your life the intention and the attention that it deserves. So be kind to yourself. Your company may not tell you that. So we’re gonna tell you on The JoyPowered® Workspace, be kind to yourself.

JoDee Curtis (28:34)
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And one other thing I would add to that as well, too, is that I would have continual conversations with your boss or your manager to ask, you know, how is it working for them? Sometimes we’re hesitant to ask for that feedback because we’re afraid they might not like it, right? Or that it might give them the opportunity to say, yes, this isn’t working for me. But think about it from a perspective of, you know, I do think this is a privilege or I’m so grateful to have this opportunity and I want to do everything to make it work. But maybe “everything” is not working, like you said, you know, outside of your boundaries or trying to be available at all times as well, too. So keep the conversation going on it.

Susan White (29:38)
That’s a great point.

JoDee Curtis (29:40)
Yeah, yeah. And now for our in the news. In a September article by FlexJobs.com, their analysis revealed five emerging industries with 30 percent or more growth in hybrid job postings. And those jobs included communications, insurance, sales, environmental positions, and legal jobs.

Note that these were the fastest growing. Categories that already lead the hybrid job market include computer and IT, project management, accounting and finance, marketing, and customer service. So among the five fastest growing categories for hybrid careers, communications has led the way with posting more than doubling over the past six months. Insurance, sales, environmental ,and legal roles followed and they each increased by at least 30% in hybrid listings.

So interesting, I felt, because we are hearing so much about people being called back to the office, but there’s a good number of roles where at least a hybrid environment is still available.

Susan White (31:07)
If you’re SHRM certified, you can get credit for listening to this episode. To get the code, go to getjoypowered.com/SHRM and fill out a short evaluation. When you finish the evaluation, you’ll get the code and a link to a proof of participation certificate. The code will expire on November 17th, 2026. Again, that’s getjoypowered.com/shrm to get the code and it’s going to expire on November 17th, 2026.

JoDee Curtis (31:44)
Thank you for listening today and thank you for your dedication to the HR profession. Please tune in next time and make it a JoyPowered® day.

Susan White (31:55)
Thank you.