Workshop on Appreciative Intelligence Conducted By Thatchenkery at TISS

The Workshop on Appreciative Intelligence was organised by C Lab, School of Management, TISS, on Januray 6^th at the TISS Conference Hall. C lab is the place and process which involves in conducting research activities, providing consultancy services for companies to develop capabilities among managers especially in the field of Human Resources.

Prof. Tojo Thatchenkery, Ph. D. is a professor of Organizational Learning at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA. He is the author of several books and articles on change management, and has consulted with many international organizations, including IBM, Lucent Technologies, the American Red Cross, British Petroleum, and the International Monetary Fund. He has propounded the concept of “Appreciative Intelligence” to capture this newly identified intelligence. He recently coauthored the book with Carol Metzeker titled “Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn”. The book will be released in March – April 2006

The workshop began with defining Appreciative Intelligence as “The ability to perceive the positive inherent generative potential within the present”. The essence of the workshop was that each one of us has been using appreciative intelligence in our daily lives. The participants were encouraged to identify such success stories in their working lives and share it with the rest of the participants. From each of these stories, the different elements and aspects of Appreciative Intelligence were identified. Finally different techniques were shared with the audience to improve their appreciative intelligence and to increase the success stories in their lives.

As Prof. Tojo puts it “Appreciative intelligence provides a new answer to what enables successful people to dream up their extraordinary and innovative ideas; why employees, partners, colleagues, investors, and other stakeholders join them on the path to their goals, and how they achieve these goals despite obstacles and challenges. It is not simple optimism. People with appreciative intelligence are realistic and action-oriented—they have the ability to not just identify positive potential but to devise a course of action to take advantage of it.”

HR managers from L&T;, NHDSL, Wartsilla, Patni Computers, Mudra Communications etc attended the session. Some of the students from Tata Institute of Social Sciences also had the opportunity to participate in the event.

The workshop was interactive and used data from extensive research that Prof Tojo had done in various firms in India and USA. The participants said that it was indeed new experience.