By contrast, if we are engaging an Appreciative Interlude, we choose to enter into an interpersonal relationship with a positive mindset. We interact with the other person from a strength-oriented perspective. Within this appreciative setting, the other person is likely to relate in a positive manner toward us and be as productive as they can. Though the Appreciative Interlude is closed looped, much like the Diminution Interlude, this Interlude produces constructive interpersonal perspectives and behaviors. The appreciated person has the greatest chance of fulfilling our positive expectations and validating our original frame of mind.
To help a manager notice what expectations he might hold (and no doubt act out) towards a colleague he perceives as under-performing, a coach might ask her client:
- Be honest with yourself: are you sharing information generously with this person, or sometimes withholding it?
- Are you available or unavailable to this colleague when they need your guidance?
- Do you appreciate their work product and encourage their good accomplishments, or are you primed to look for errors and disappointments?
- Do you give them feedback and coaching, or are you withholding your input, leaving them in the dark?
- Is your body language and tone of voice with them open and receptive, or curt, impatient or even punitive?
The work of Erich Fromm (1947) and Elias Porter (Porter, 1976; Phillips, 1991) suggests a different kind of strengths-related dynamics. On the one hand, we can view a person’s strengths, and they, in turn, exhibit these strengths. We can focus on their weaknesses, and their weaknesses are manifest. On the other hand, we can redefine a person’s interpersonal weaknesses as simply being his strengths used inappropriately or in excess. This person is highly articulate and forceful in their presentation of self. This is a strength. However, this forcefulness can lead to this person being a “bully” in a setting in which they should be less active and more supportive of other people. Conversely, a person who is quite thoughtful and reserved might be of little value if this results in their failure to contribute to an important conversation.
An Appreciative Interlude can be created where micro-coaching inquiry focuses on the appropriate use of the client’s strengths. The first step in establishing this Appreciative Interview is to acknowledge that a weakness is also a strength that produces positive results for us under most conditions. The client must also acknowledge the secondary gains obtained from existing behavior patterns, much as in the case of reframing goals. Thus, rather than attempting to “eliminate a weakness,” we need only modify the extent to which it is being used or the setting in which it is being used. This is a central feature in the engagement of masterful micro-coaching: focusing on a client’s abilities and helping a client recognize and perhaps create the settings in which these strengths are fully and appropriately deployed.
The CEO of a non-profit, for instance, who is an excellent speaker and socializer, is ineffective in working with troubled members of her local community on a one-on-one basis. Her verbal skills help her in the first situation, but not in the second. She is rewarded for being verbally active when working with many people, but not when she is expected to be a quiet and sympathetic listener in attending to complaints from members of her community. She could try to improve her ability to work one-on-one. This would be a first-order change. A second-order reframing by this administrator could involve a shift in her job assignment. She could assign the responsibility for meeting with individual members of her community to other members of her staff, reserving more of her work with these constituencies for large team gatherings. Rather than focusing on her weaknesses, this administrator is encouraged by her coach to focus on her considerable skills in working with large teams and groups. In recognizing that these skills are distinctive and appropriate in most settings, she may become less nervous about being quiet enough in the one-on-one setting, and with the reduction in anxiety and in the frequency with which she works with other people, she might eventually feel less need to be highly verbal. It is within an Appreciative Interlude, when a coaching client does not have to feel threatened, that she is most inclined to open up to alternative behaviors.
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