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SeCtion one Four key approaches to change
Manager A he was initially vague about what happened and then when pressed became upset. Manager A was empathetic but maintained that a further session would have to be organised. She suggested that the next week they discuss the Thomas-Kilman framework for understanding how people deal with conflict and that the deputy manager should consider what different approaches to use in the next training. At the following supervision session they considered how the deputy manager responded to conflict and identified that if possible he would choose to avoid it. They talked through how he could develop greater confidence and respond to different potential conflict scenarios in the next training session. He had decided to try and apply an Appreciative Inquiry approach within this and build on the few examples in which staff members did involve people who lived in the home.
Sustaining the change
Following the Appreciative Inquiry process there was enthusiasm for the agreed changes to happen and current strengths to be built upon. However, it was not clear how to implement these in practice and what had been tried previously would just be repeated. Manager A therefore decided to introduce the Plan Do Study Act cycle as a means to encourage the project groups and the staff team as a whole to pilot new ways of working and learn from what worked and what was less successful. Following a training session at the staff meetings, the deputy managers then explained the process to the project groups and took a lead in facilitating the Plan Do Study Act cycles that built on their ideas. One example was in trying to involve people more actively in their own reviews. It was recognised that each person would require a tailored approach for them (i.e. an individual Plan Do Study Act around each person’s engagement) but that there was also general learning for how the staff as a group engaged (i.e. a group cycle that combined the learning and innovation from the individual Plan Do Study Acts).
One year after the implementation began Manager A repeated the ‘Discovery’ phase to review what was going well to date and to refresh the shared ‘Dream’. Renewing the vision together enables the final stage of Appreciative Inquiry, ‘Destiny’, to be achieved and Manager A noted that those who participated seemed more comfortable with the approach than the first time they had been asked to contribute.
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