Vancouver Community Seeks to Bloom Child-Rearing Transformation

The DalaiLama Centre for Peace and Education is joining with a Vancouver, B.C. community service agency to explore how the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) methodology can bring the community to life around creating compassionate, co-operative and confident children.

AI is a choice solution because such a change process has to operate from an intrinsic motivating place, as opposed to an extrinsic motivating place, says Gervase Bushe, a renowned AI thought leader, consultant for the effort and Simon Fraser University professor of leadership and organization development.

The transformation has to be self-generating, both for it to “take” and be effective, and because when the action container is a neighbourhood, there is no one with the authority to demand it happens.

Convening a large cross-section of the community to share high points, dream of what could be and then design a path forward, AI can produce new options for acting in ways people never thought of.

Inspired by the large-group dialogue and collective energy and vision, participants are compelled to act in those new ways.

Bushe admits he isn’t sure about the tipping point, or at which size the network effects kick in, but says a lot of the system must be in dialogue, agreeing on a new direction.

Noting that what often holds us back from preferred action is the socio-normative structure, Bushes says the power of the large-group intervention is its ability to begin to shift those structures.

“Those are the kinds of experiences we’re trying to create, where you have a large group of people all looking in the same direction, saying, that’s really what we ought to be doing,” he says.

As group members share their agreement with and excitement over the new direction, desire to act grows.

The community transformation happens in an organic and improvisational way.

“I’m always operating on exactly that premise, that what we want to do is generate a situation where change will be improvisational, as opposed to implementation,” says Bushe.

He notes his research has shown when that happens, change is much more rapid and more effective than if there’s a reliance on action plans and teams, parallel structures and accountabilities.

While the latter have use in system-maintaining change or “getting better at what we already do,” when the goal is transformation of a system they fall short.

Bushe qualifies his recent research is showing that to sustain a transformation, institutional processes that create and maintain culture need to also be hooked into the change process.

For instance, if religious leaders also have a compelling vision of what it means to create compassionate, confident children, and preach that message, they can play a crucial role in the longevity of the transformation.

-- More to Come

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