exercise · all tools

Appreciative Interviews

Depth · what it can open●●○○2 — reflective
Holding · facilitation2 — facilitator
Trust · group readinessany
Disclosure · what is sharedoptional

In pairs, people interview each other for a success story — a time they worked on a challenge and are proud of what happened — then quartets distill the conditions that made success possible and the whole group harvests root causes of success. Builds forward from what works instead of backward from what's broken.

Practical

Time
55-75 min
Group
2 · pairs, small-group, large-group
Settings
in-person, online
Materials
Chair pairs face to face; flip charts
Mechanisms
dialogic-encounter, narrative-identity, cognitive-reframing
Change scope
state · repeatable

Origin & where it lives

Henri Lipmanowicz & Keith McCandless — Liberating Structures; rooted in Appreciative Inquiry (David Cooperrider)

Instructions: open online · CC BY-SA 4.0

In this directory via Liberating Structures

status: checked · added 2026-08-25