Replying to LO25788 --
>>Is it possible that appreciation would not be needed if
>>people were fulfilling their purposes through their work,
>>the work was meaningful and they knew they made a difference?
>
>I don't believe so. For your "possibility" to be true, I would
>have to assume that people at work, regardless of preference
>or temperament, are all entirely self-fulfilling monads who neither
>need nor desire the presence of others. Perhaps this is overstating
>a bit (assume the grin here!), but I certainly know that I, and
>others I know well, are sustained and rejuvenated by the appreciation
>of others. I admit, even glory in it: I am not "complete unto
>myself." For my work to meaningful, it necessarily involves
>engagement with others; and without response/feedback of all
>sorts, including appreciation, it's not possible for me to know
>whether I made a difference or not.
>
>As readers of the list may know, there's currently a re-search-based
>approach to organizational development that's called, "Appreciative
>Inquiry," that points out the power in just what Peggy suggested
>in her original posting.
I understand Appreciative Inquiry to be different from Peggy's question,
where she asked about the need/value of communicating appreciation for the
work that people do.
If organizations made it their ideal/vision that each person, in the
course of being part of the organization, was fulfilling his/her own
purposes simultaneous with those of the organization, that the work was
designed to be meaningful and as a consequence each person believed they
made a difference, would we need to rely on shows of appreciation to the
degree we now believe it to be important (or at all)?
As I perceive it, Approciate Inquiry would be one of the tools used to
approach those three ideals, among many others discussed here. I was
asking if our reliance on expressing appreciation was a tacit
acknowledgement that we fail, in many cases, to offer people the chance to
fulfill their own purposes, that we ask them to do meaningless work and it
becomes clear that they do not make a difference.
This doesn't imply malice of forethought, only that, despite our best
efforts, too much work is still modeled after interchangeable machine
parts. That is, overwhelmingly, the parts (individuals) are still expected
to serve the purposes of the whole (the company) while the converse is
only occasionally true when it is convenient. In this context, expressing
appreciation is vital, for no other meaningful connection betwen the whole
and the parts exists.
Bill Braun
--Bill Braun <medprac@hlthsys.com>
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