exercise · all tools
Appreciative Interviews
Depth · what it can open●●○○2 — reflective
Holding · facilitation2 — facilitator
Trust · group readiness★any
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
Instructions
- Where
- liberatingstructures.com/appreciative-interviews — Liberating Structures, open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Henri Lipmanowicz & Keith McCandless — Liberating Structures; rooted in Appreciative Inquiry (David Cooperrider)
In this directory via Liberating Structures
status: checked · added 2026-08-25