 I have seen more receptivity and more interest in people talk to me about appreciative inquiry in the last six weeks than I have probably for quite some time. I live in a beneficial place of being at wonderful Champlain College in our Cooper Writers Center. So most people that knock on my door are kind of interested in appreciative inquiry or know or are curious and stuff. And I think that it's like in the classic like organizational development since like the Kurt Lewinian, like this sense of like change happens, like we freeze and then we unfreeze and then we like refreeze, right? There's been like this global unfreezing that has happened of this realization that we often talk about with appreciative inquiry and in strength-based change. This reminder that, you know, we have created our organizations together, right? We've created our systems, we've created our organizations, we've created our teen structures, we've created our norms together and we've kind of had become frozen in those, right? Like we had concretized them as these things separate from us and oftentimes the work that we do in appreciative inquiry is that invitation to let, we can reimagine things together, right? We can reimagine, we built that. And if it's not working for us, if we're not getting the results and the outcomes that we want anymore, we can change it and it's better if we change it together. That's one of the approaches in appreciative inquiry, this sense of the wholeness principle that it's not about one or two people, you know, in a back room coming up with things for us to do and the magic solution. Solutions really come when we bring the wisdom of everybody together. Hello, like that is what the world, if the world has not, you know, invited us for that very approach because I think people are recognizing the fact that we can literally not do the processes and the ways that we have done our organization, just our daily organizational work of having meetings, right? And, you know, and thinking about, oh yeah, maybe we don't need SATs for the let people into college, all the things, right? All these assumptions that like we have long held onto as these real concrete things have just, you know, kind of been, we've been untethered from them because we've had to be untethered from them. And so if anything, like I said, I see people are now like, you know that stuff you're talking about that appreciative inquiry stuff? Hey, how about you bring that over here? How about we talk about whether that is from a team literally? Like how do we now create, you know, remote learning spaces for our students? You know, we're doing that at Champlain College. I'm doing that with my own 10 year old and 13 year old at home to team, right? How are we gonna work remotely effectively? And so there's this real hunger and desire of like, how do we, and we know because there is so much negativity happening and it's not about ignoring that, but it is how do we lift up what's working? And people are hungry for that, more hungry for that now than ever, I think. You know, so let's talk about what are our best practices, not just for Zooming, but for also not getting Zoom fatigue, right? And all of those things. So yes, that's a very long-winded answer to your beautiful question of, oh yeah, but there is, I see this realization that people have of not only like, can we not do it that way? And this realization we don't wanna do it that way. So this sense of, you know, people are talking when we go back to normal, I really see people also pushing back on that, this sense of, you know, what is normal and do we wanna go back, you know? And so this sense of, it is from a generative perspective, what do we wanna create new? Because I think the world, as we know, we don't know what tomorrow's gonna quite look like. And so how do we, you know, how do we build it one day at a time, but then this sense of like, together, how do we bring the voices of everybody together to do that, so. So I listened to a podcast last week that was about the five dysfunctions of the team, of a virtual team, and I was thinking, for me, I would rather talk about the functions of it, like what is functional about the team and how can we build on what works well? Exactly, exactly. And I think, I mean, that is the spirit of appreciative inquiry, right? At its heart, you know, people have lots of different definitions in thinking about, you know, but when we talk about, when I talk about appreciative inquiry, it's simply what you just said, Lauren Glenn, it's simply put us to the search for what is life giving and possible in the people in the world around us. It's about intentionally asking, what do we wanna accelerate or grow with the realization of what we appreciate, appreciates, right, or grows in value, the sense that that economic sense of the term to grow. And you're exactly right. When we know a lot about the dysfunctions of a team, we knew a lot about that before COVID came along and disrupted us even more, right? But we're realizing, you know, what we need now more than ever is that, what's functional and what is functional in this context, right? And so we can't even lean on our best practices or the dysfunctions before because it's a completely new context now, right? So the sense of, again, what do we appreciate, appreciates and so how do we exactly sort of that intentional inquiry into, okay, when we have been a well-functioning team, what were the circumstances that led to that, you know? How did you contribute to that? How did I contribute to that? How did we contribute that together? And it's less about, I'll say it's not even less, it's not about positive or negative, right? And I always say this about a push of inquiry. It's not about, it's not called positive inquiry for a reason, right? This word appreciative and this economic sense of the term to grow and value. And so it isn't about what's positive. It's about what's generative. It's about what's generative in a team. To your point of like, you know, what are the five best functions of a team? It's like, it's not about, do we not have conflict in this team, you know? And somehow it's not, how do we deal with conflict in a generative way? That can be a very life-giving thing, right? And so how do we inquire into those things that give us energy, that help us to move forward together? Again, it's not about ignoring, it's never about ignoring problems or the fact that, you know, we are grieving as individuals and as a society, but we can ask questions about how do we support each other as we do breathe? How do we support each other in a virtual space when we can't physically come together? Just even that, just noticing the words that people are using. I'm very excited from my appreciative perspective of, you know, when this all first started coming out and we're like, we're talking about social distancing and stuff and I was in an early conversation with some colleagues from all around the world talking about this appreciative inquiry in this pandemic sense. And they're like, you know, the words that we use matter with each other. Words create worlds. And so being very mindful of, actually it's not social distancing, it's physical distancing that we're doing. And so how do we know we wanna be socially connected now more than ever? We realize our social interconnections now more than ever as individuals and as whole, you know, systems of education and business and healthcare and all these things. So I was really excited when we saw that the World Health Organization, just even a couple weeks ago, actually came out with sort of a bit of a retraction of saying, you know, it's not actually social distancing, we're talking about it, it's physical distancing. And in fact, we need to be talking about social connections, because that really matters, right? The fact that like we were talking about, yes, how do we remain socially connected while we physically distance from one another is a very different conversation than how do we stay socially distanced, right? So I see that that people are getting very intentional with the words and, you know, if I see the word unprecedented one more time, I mean, you probably like how many times are we, and so I've been even playing with that of like, again, this sense of from an appreciative perspective that words matter because they focus our attention, they invite us to think about stuff. I've been really playing with, what is my adjective for this time? I've been playing, you know, it's people are like, it's murky times, it's challenging time. You get emails all the time, right? Thinking of you in these challenging times. For me, they're clarifying times, right? It's bringing us, it's inviting us to have a sense of clarity and this word about essentialness, right? So we talk about essential workers, we're talking about, you know, essential services and people are getting very sort of, you know, existential, like what is essential? And so to me, they're not murky times, they're actually quite clarifying times for us to sort of lean into people really recognizing what is important and what do they value and what do they don't? So to me, those things give me hope in times that, you know, it is very, and it is heartbreaking. We're just getting ready to have a virtual convocation at Champlain, a graduation. That is not how, you know, I wanted to say goodbye to my seniors. You know, we know friends in our community that have been sick. We know, you know, people that have, you know, family members that have died. So it's not about, we're all grieving. And, and I think that there's this invitation that's happening before us too, to, you know, how do we come together, both in ways to support us through this time, but also to really come together to dream and not just dream, but to create what we want our organizations and our communities to look like that really serve everybody, right? So even changing that question from why is everybody buying the toilet paper? Oh, is the question like right on everybody's mind at the beginning. And really the question that we really care about is how do we ensure that the needs are met for everybody in our community, especially those that are marginalized or that don't have access in the same way or don't have the same privilege that you and I do. And so that shift of getting that intentionality of the questions that we're asking helps us to move forward to create the answers together to those questions. Are you seeing examples of applied appreciative inquiry with folks that you've worked with in the past that now are using the skills that they've learned during this, what I would call my term is this special period? This special busy, that's a grinsy. I'm gonna use that, Lauren Glenn. This special for me, it's a special clarifying period. Right? Yes, what I'm seeing, and just even to go back to your wonderful example of teens, I'm seeing that with my own colleagues even at Champlain and with organizations and with colleagues that I work with around the world of this sense to your very question about teens and sort of how are we gonna work remotely together in a way that doesn't crush us and zombify us and zombify us. And so I see that people are starting to use those skills to turn them inward, to have that very question of, well, when, again, when have we worked effectively a team? What are the resources and tools that we have before us? When and how do we even need to have meetings? How do we need to be in communication with each other? So even challenging the assumption that we have to have meetings in the same way that we had before, right? So what are the, literally what are the communication structures that we wanna have in place? So I see that that's one of the, I think most common ways that I'm seeing, again, even from my coworkers to literally people working in different organizations, cause that's just such the forefront of what people are dealing with right now is sort of this new way of interacting with colleagues and coworkers. And then I'm seeing a lot of people too, and probably because I've been involved in a lot of these conversations, again at Champlain and beyond, but this sense of how do we also cultivate resilience has become a big topic for people. I mean, it's always, it's been on people talked about resilience for a long time and there's lots of different science and the neuroscience of resilience, but I really see that now, because again, it's that immediate need that's in front of people wanting to like, how do we bounce back and stuff? But this realization too, that this is not a one and done thing. This is not, and I think I see that too, this shift again that people realize that yes, this is a major event, but in and of itself it's not an event, right? It's an ongoing, like I said, it's an ongoing, unfreezing and changing of our global scene in ways that we just don't even know yet. And so I see this that people are starting to lean into also, again, what I see is very generative questions. So using that the skill of asking themselves questions of lifting up what is working, right? How do I take care of myself, starting with myself, put your oxygen mask on first. I see people using those skills and recognizing that we're in a marathon, not a sprint here, right? And so I see people sort of leaning into the self-care and that though extending in the good ways that I see in terms of empathy and compassion for others. Again, things that we've long talked about is being generative things in organizations, but it's somehow people's like humanity is kind of like getting woken back up or whatever the right metaphor is to recognize that, yeah, we have to be kind to ourselves, be kind to others. It's like all the stuff we learned in kindergarten, it's all of this stuff, right? All of the like the basics of humanity is sort of coming back out. But those skills of noticing, lifting up what is working and then asking intentional questions about not just what do we want less of, but actually what do we want more of? What do we want to grow and appreciate? I see people doing that more naturally now than ever before, which is exciting to me because I think that that is gonna help to move us forward and creating whatever we want tomorrow to look like. So. So how do you align people on a team whose brains work very differently? And well, first of all, I think it's a wonderful thing to write. So it's first of all, it's a recognizing and the celebrating that brains work very differently. And that is in fact why we need a team. So you're exactly right. And so it's first and foremost, when I work with teams is just starting with that place from an appreciative space of recognizing, what is it we're trying to accomplish together? So getting that clarity of that future vision, again, from whether that's from an appreciative perspective, we talk about the anticipatory like this, but what are we trying to create? What is success gonna look like? Let's define that. And when we collectively define that, we can talk about it, superordinate goals, whatever it is, there's all that science behind it, but getting clear, what are we trying to create? Whether that is, how are we gonna pull off of virtual commencement to how are we gonna ensure that people can go to the grocery store and get the basic things that they need? Like that all takes teams, right? So but getting clear, what are we trying to do together? And then really sort of coming from this place of recognizing and letting people to voice what are they bringing to the team, right? So this is where we're trying to head together. And then doing that from a strength-based perspective, letting people and giving space for that sharing, both individually, but also inviting people to see in another, what do they see as the strengths that other people are bringing? It helps to both, you know, you feel valued, but it also is sort of helping to train you to see and appreciate the differences that people bring to the team. So, and then there's lots of great activities around, you know, like best team, you know, reflection. So we can also then look at, how do we bring our best learning from our prior team experiences into this one? So when you have worked effectively on a team before, what did that look like? Let's talk about communication structures. Let's talk about accountability. You know, how have you, you know, successfully held yourself and other people accountable? What are the different tools we can use? What are the different methods we can use? But again, it's about then that the team is having that conversation always toward what they're trying to create and that they're co-creating it. So it's not necessarily about me coming in like, here are the five great functions of a team, or here are the five dysfunctions of a team. It's like, you know, the wisdom is there. The wisdom is there because their brains work differently, because of that they come with different strengths and stuff. And so it's about creating the container or the space for them to be able to lift those up and from this appreciative space of recognizing, you know, we need someone that is highly, you know, in the details, in the weeds, great. You actually like doing that. Let's make sure that you're, you know, that you're the one that's doing the spreadsheet, right? You actually like, you know, like working on marketing stuff, great. Let's make sure that, you know, so then it's about how do we take those strengths that we've sort of discovered together? And now let's look at like, what are the tasks that need to be done? Again, always toward this, what are we trying to create? What are we trying to do so that we're always keeping that task sort of front and center of what we're trying to accomplish together? So how are you keeping the network together? I saw you had some presentations and workshops and you've got a whole series of coming up. I know, and it has been, again, we kind of just leaned into this. We have, yeah, there's a global community of practice of people who've push up and doing and have been doing a push up inquiry for 30 years all over the world. And it wasn't, you know, at first, just like everywhere, we were like, oh, you know, we were planning in-person gatherings and stuff like everybody were. And we're just like, you know what we need to do? We just need to start gathering virtually. And that's what we did. So we put together, like literally in a weekend, we put together a webinar series, an interactive webinar series, invited some thought leader colleagues doing stuff around appreciative resilience, doing stuff around how do we have strength-based conversations in times like these? How are the stories and the narratives that we're telling right now so important? How are, let's talk about emergence. How do we deal with ongoing emergence? And just kind of, you know, I think the beauty of this time too is people are realizing we don't have to be perfect about stuff. It is just about putting stuff out there in a well-intentioned way. And we did, and we had over 650 people from 20 countries come to these global sessions. And in fact, it's opened us up to start thinking about the next world AI conference and different things. And how might we actually, how do we lean into this, you know, new remote space? Because what we're seeing is of course we miss being together in person, but what is opening up is the ability for people to connect that never could have connected before, right? You can't buy a plane ticket to come somewhere. You don't have the ability to take off three days to do something. Well, guess what? We don't need to do that in order to connect and connect in meaningful ways. And so Zoom, you know, love it or hate it, it is kind of a, it's a tool that we have right now to be generative and like using breakout spaces in Zoom. The first, the very first session that we had was like one of the first time I experimented using breakout sessions in Zoom. And it was so beautiful because immediately people could be, we were in a room of like, you know, there's like a hundred people online and then you're like in a group of five and there's somebody from France and there's somebody from Germany and there's somebody from, you know, the United States and recognizing that what people are also hungry for social connections. In fact, right, we're hungry for these social connections and that so much of our life right now is scheduled on Zoom. And so you don't have a lot of opportunity to meet new people right now. And so this was a beautiful, this we've found sort of this beautiful way of just creating these spaces for people to come together to, again, share, let's do some of, let's do our own appreciative inquiry in ourselves. Where are we seeing, you know, people innovating and coming together in new ways? How are people being resilient, right? Let's do our own discovery of what are the things that are helping us to be resilient so we can lift them up to others. And so leaning into this virtual stuff has been actually really, I don't wanna say, I know people are very excited also to see each other in person again eventually. And I don't think we'll ever undo the fact that now we have this taste of, we can bring 500 people together online and it can be very generative and very meaningful and it can actually be more inclusive than sometimes in-person events let themselves be. So yeah, we've been really excited to just, we're continuing to put out some more and again, making them, as we can this series was free. So it's about, yeah, again, even that, how do we reduce all the barriers to entry? We can, we realize we still have to overcome people having an internet access. I know that's something you and others are working on. How do we sort of ensure that in this time when connectivity is a barrier to entry to conversations? Let's make sure that we're doing that but we can even have generative appreciative conversations around how do we do that. So yeah, it's been very exciting. It's been very exciting to bring people together virtually. Is there a simple way to explain the concept of emergence? Emergence, the simple way to explain the concept of emergence, I know you can get into all different theories on it. I mean, I guess simply put it is, I liken it to a metaphor sort of like, it's an organic metaphor, right? This sense of, on the other end of the spectrum we have like command and control, right, is the way. And so emergent sort of being this other way that we think about from an organizing perspective of how do we lean into sort of the natural organic ebb and flow of human system organizing. So recognizing that we, like I said, sort of this idea that we don't have to, not that we don't have to have processes but that we don't have to get stuck in them. And so it's not about emergencies and about not having processes or having structures but it's about sort of remaining in a flexible space with those processes to recognize that we're constantly sort of looking at what is the need? What are, again, what are we trying to accomplish? What is the need? And then how do we need to flex and ebb and flow and let emerge in order for those goals to be met? So that's not probably a very simple definition as an emergent, but it is from an, I take it more from like from a nature perspective almost like the biomimicry work that invites us to look at how does nature knows how to survive and thrive and evolve? So how are we continually looking at how do we need to change sometimes around the edges and sometimes fundamentally around in our core in order to be able to move forward? Sounds like that, and this is what you've been saying but just to underscore that being open and creating the conditions for a process of emergence to take place is necessary during this time. I mean that that's the opportunity. It is. And I think it's the opportunity exactly now and how do we continue to curate that space even when it feels like some of the immediacy maybe and the immediate crisis has sort of subsided hopefully a bit, right? How do we continue to create the conditions that led us to continue to flex and evolve and to change with the same speed at which we changed like literally, right? Like Friday the 13th and like things shut and then it's like, we've lived through. People are right now living through their own case study of resilience and emergence. And so it's like the greatest human experiment that we never signed up for ever but everybody is living their own case study right now and it's like how do we hold these and again lift up the lessons from this to create exactly like you're saying to create that container because guess what? We're gonna need it tomorrow. We're gonna need it six months from now. We're gonna need it six years from now regardless of what happens. How do we keep holding that space that lets us to again not get stuck in thinking that because this is how we did it. This is how we have to do it. How are you teaching people appreciative inquiry during this period? You're offering classes online. How are you doing it? Well, so we had, believe it or not, I don't know if we're a foresight or what but we had already started putting things online. We had already started, we have a four week sort of appreciative mindset that class was designed to just like introduce people to the underlying theory and science and principles of appreciative inquiry. We actually are in the process right now of evolving our, we have a certification program that has been mostly in hybrid. It's been an in-person and then sort of virtual and then in-person and we're actually in the process of even creating a what would that look like all online? For folks still from a very, and again, I love Champlain College. They've been in the online learning business for before it was cool and before people had to do that. And so there's a great, they have a great strength in thinking about online and it can be highly still interactive, experiential learning space for people to, again, to learn about appreciative inquiry. So for us it's the whole gamut of from the come to a one hour webinar and sort of like see what people are talking about to sort of taking more formal courses on it. And again, what I'm seeing too is that people, I see organizations are starting to be like, hey, I want some of that, but I want, we need some more of that. How are we again, fundamentally, how are we asking questions differently? How are we lifting up what is working and figuring out how to do that collectively? And so those are some of the fundamental skills that we teach and there's great ways to do that online now too. So you've been wrapping up a semester maintaining a worldwide empire and... I don't know that I have an empire, Lord Glenn. I'm excited. And you've been educating your two children at home. How's that been going for you? So overall things have been going, I keep saying like they're good as good can be. Same thing, ups and downs in those moments where I'm just like, what? If I spend too many minutes on the news, it's just like, what is going on? And recognizing, trying to practice what we preach especially in our household, even thinking about words. So like I'm kind of refusing to use the words like I'm not homeschooling because that's not what I'm doing and I don't have a school in the schools. So we've been leaning into like home, personal learning curiosities and all of these things that you will know from your own daughter's Montessori background and stuff. And so every day we as a family sort of create what is our schedule look like? What do we want it to look like for tomorrow? Now recognizing that, yes, I know there's assignments and stuff my kids are getting and how do we work those in? But it's been like, what are you guys curious about? What do you wanna? Oh, you're interested in the history of my 13-year-old history of basketball, the NBA? Well, let's dive into the history of the NBA. My daughter has standing reading dates with both of her grandmothers. They're doing reading together, reading time together. It's so sweet. And so yeah, I'm trying to very much still, again, walk the talk and it is a practice. It's a practice. I always teach this like working with David Cooper, writer who's like the founding thought leader from a personal background, like I'm really appreciative of all the time. And it's a choice, right? It's a choice in every interaction we have and the beautiful thing is life keeps giving you more opportunity to use the practice. So again, trying to be very intentional from literally the words that I'm using with myself and with my children to the questions that we're asking around the dinner table. We have a standing question of like, what did you learn today? What excited you today? Because they, again, the idea that what we ask about, we actually find and we actually create it. So those are the things we're doing. And then, and we do just have, there's just, it's the Mr. Rogers quote, right? So of the, I love the Mr. Rogers quote that he would always say, right? When I was a boy, I would see scary things in the news and my mother would say to me, look for the helpers, you'll always find people who are helping. And I just believe that that's like one of our principles in the prison of inquiry, the poetic principle that, you know, it's all there for us to find, definitely, right? If I wanna look for breakdown and horrible things, there is, the news is like, you know, that's the business of selling me that. And there have been stories upon stories of people doing beautiful things from huge scale things that our healthcare providers are doing to like one of my colleagues has become the bread fairy. And we'll say that's just delivering homemade bread to people, you know, it's all there for us to find. And so it takes sort of that intentionality to like, how are we seeking out those things that do help to rejuvenate us so that we can keep showing up tomorrow, trying to hopefully help other people. Well, Lindsay Godwin, it's just been a treat to talk with you as always. I'm very inspired and excited to get on to the next thing with my refreshed feeling of appreciative thought, how to build on the strengths that we have. Good, well, thank you for inviting me and for continuing to lift up exactly what you're doing, just lifting up these stories of what are the work that people are doing in our community. And so thank you for inviting me and yes, thank you. Thanks.