Strengths Based Approaches

November 18, 2008

to Evaluation, Consulting, and Everything else…

What to expect?

Designed to be 20% presentation and

80% participation, making meaning of informationby talking with each other

Warning –could be hazardousto your paradigm or

world view

Goals for the day

1. To leave with an understanding or a deeper understanding of what strengths based approaches are

Goals for the day

2. To have an opportunity to experiencesome strengths based tools

3. To leave with some ideas on how you might apply strengths based approaches and your new learning to your own work individually and how we might apply it collectively

Who isin theroom?

people focusedtheir attentionon….

What can be doneinstead of what can’t be done

What

might be

possible if

rather than problems

more than weaknesses

Morning Agenda

Overview

Exploration of definition of strengths based approaches

Activity to identify what we are already doing that is strengths based

Panel on strengths based evaluation

Lunch At 12:00 Noon

Afternoon Agenda

Keynote Darian Rodriguez Heyman,Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation

End at 4:00 pm

Small Groups what have we learned, what more do we want to know and how can we apply what we’ve learned?

Next What question do you want answered today?

Write your question on a card

Share your question with a neighbor

What might be some possible meanings of the phrase“strengths based approaches?”

What is an example of some you know about and/or have used?

Write on the back of the card

a neighborShare with

One definition

Strengths based approaches are based on the identification and development of the strengths of an individual, organization, community, and system. Strengths based approaches start with what is working, where you are strong, successful, and passionate. They are based on and align with the research on resiliency, positive psychology, asset based thinking, and whole system methods.

What are whole system methods?

Whole system methods such as

Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space

Technology engage people from all

parts of a system in creating change.

They help you initiate high leverage,

sustainable, and transformational

positive change in organizations,

partnerships, communities, and

systems by tapping into the collective

intelligence.

Based on how the brain works

What are wealready doing that is

strengths based?

We are going to explore this question using a strengths based approach called Appreciative Inquiry

Focus What we are doing

that is strengths based – through storytelling about

specific experiences

Awkward QuestionsEdgar Allen Poesaid that there is no exquisite beauty without some sense of strangeness in its proportions.

What if awkward question(s) are meant to tilt us off balance just long enough to gain a new perspective

The awkward question is that strangeness that invites a richer perspective of our inner beauty.

It pushes up against a sheltering egothat keeps our lives small and our

actions trivial based ongrandiose images

of the world.

of ourselves as uniquely shaped to givethe world just what it needs at this point and time in life? -- Jim Roussin

In a moment, you’ll pick a partnerand intervieweach other –

The

questions

someone that you don’t knowFind a Partner –

Part 2Record notes about what you are doing on…

Worksheet to hand in AndHalf sheet to hang up on wall

"New frameworks arelike climbing amountain — the larger view encompasses

rather than rejects the earlier, more restricted view."

- Albert Einstein

Focus on evaluation

Evaluation

What is the purpose of evaluation?How is it different from measurement?

Evaluation: Prison or Prism?

Who among the readers of Out Loud is not up to their eyeballs in program and organizational evaluation schemes?

If we’re not careful, evaluation can become a prison – a straightjacket – of metrics, forms and community indicators that we ask our community partners to adopt in assessing their performance. Time and again, we hear from community agencies, advocates and volunteers who say they spend as much time filling out some funder’s evaluation "matrix" as they do working with people in their community. People end up counting and accounting, rather than doing and learning.

Instead, evaluation should be a prism – a means of dispersing light into its constituent spectral colors, or a rainbow of perspectives. Prisms are also used to reflect light so we can study its components with different polarizations and determine how they interact, or even how to reorient and reposition them. We should reflect on the light of evaluation together, weaving the language of counting and accounting with the language of local knowledge, stories, history and shared cultural mores and rituals.

Lunch – be back at 1:00 pm.

Open Space Technology

Open Space Technology Design

4 principlesWhoever comes are the right peopleWhatever happens is the only thing that couldWhenever it starts it startsWhenever it is over it is over

Law of 2 feetButterfliesBumblebeesHosts

Strengths Based Approaches to Evaluation, Consulting, and

Everything else…

November 18, 2008