Appreciative Leadership:
The Path of Integrity

To be on the path of integrity is to be moving, growing, and evolving toward wholeness; and to be supporting and enabling others to do the same.  Appreciative Leadership, wherever it is and whatever its purpose,  holds a broad view. It is mindful of long- and short-term forces; global and local forces; and human, ecological, technical, and financial forces. It employs holistic approaches involving mind, body, emotions, and spirit to engage diverse groups of people, to support the authentic expression of human potential, and to foster the design of life-affirming products, services, and organizations.

Whitney, Trosten-Bloom and Rader
Appreciative Leadership: Focus on What Works to Drive Winning Performance and Build a Thriving Organization

Integrity – the final strategy – includes practices to bring competing, conflicting, and/or contradicting forces into awareness and harmony through inquiry, dialogue, and collective reflection. It establishes priorities and engages with others to design and build social habits, processes, and institutions that are life affirming and sustainable.

In particular, knowing that relationships are at the heart of our identities and communities, Appreciative Leadership willingly and consciously strives to foster right relationships, and to make conscious choices to  empower self-love and “principled performance” in themselves and others.  At a personal level, this includes such acts as expressing one’s creative spirit, making value-based decisions, making the most of mistakes, being honest, and keeping one’s word.  At an organizational level, it involves measuring performance according to the triple bottom line and using  resources—communication, money, technology, education, and social networks—to further the well-being of the whole.