Annual meetings

Frame and Goals
Meetings List

 

Frame and goals

 

 

Appreciative Inquiry

by Linda Hartling, August 2004

In our meetings we aim at creating a humiliation-free, collaborative learning environment characterized by mutual respect, mutual empathy, and openness to difference. The perspective of "appreciative inquiry" is a useful frame of our work. Our HumanDHS efforts are not just about the work we do together, but also about HOW WE WORK TOGETHER. At appropriate points during our meetings, for example at the end of each day, we take a moment to reflect on the practices observed that contributed to an appreciative/humiliation-free learning experience.

It is important to emphasize that an appreciative approach is not about expecting people to agree. In fact, differences of opinion enrich the conversation and deepen people's understanding of ideas. Perhaps, this could be conceptualized as "waging good conflict," which means practicing radical respect for differences and being open to a variety of perspectives and engaging others without contempt or rankism. As we have seen in many fields, contempt and rankism drains energy away from the important work that needs to be done. Most people only know "conflict" as a form of war within a win/lose frame. "Waging good conflict," on the other side, is about being empathic and respectful, making room for authenticity, creating clarity, and growth.

 

Appreciative Being

Donald C. Klein, August 2004

The term "Appreciative Inquiry" and the approach to organizational consulting and inquiry was developed by David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University. The approach is gaining wide usage among people doing organizational consulting. My work overlaps with David's approach. I am using the term "Appreciative Being" to describe a way of relating to life events via our human inherent capacity for experiencing awe and wonderment at being part of the universe.

 

Appreciative Caring

Evelin Lindner, September 2004

The Jean Baker Miller Training Institute recently hosted a conference about Creating Relational Possibilities, with its last session about Holding a Vision of Hope. I think that both headings are also important for our group and our meetings. We are not motivated by financial rewards or by wanting to have a job. Our motivation is provided by our values and goals and the enthusiasm and hope we can create in our group. We want to contribute to building "a better world" and this is what drives us.

Thus, the inner cohesion of our group must be our priority, otherwise none of our activities will have any grounding and we will fail. This is, incidentally, also the cutting edge guideline in corporate sector consultancy ("hire for attitude, not for skill!" Kjell A. Nordström, Stockholm). In other words, it applies even to ordinary companies that need to make profit. Therefore, nurturing the relationships among ourselves, caring for each other, keeping our spirits up, must be the object of our primary attention.

This entails many details. Whoever holds a job for financial rewards and finds broader meaning not within, but outside the job, easily develops a host of attitudes and behaviours that might be damaging to our group, if displayed there. Many companies are afflicted, for example, by fragmentation. Out of frustration, employees may be tempted to try building alternative power bases for themselves among their collegues by blackening others ("don't tell X that I think that X is wrong in doing x, y, z..."). We have to guard against this kind of fragmentation. Or, perceived failings and disappointments among colleagues often lead to rifts ("take me off her team"); in our group such disappointments require that we all engage in healing activities. Deutsch's Crude Law of Social Relations is central as well, which indicates, in short, that "cooperation breeds cooperation, while competition breeds competition" (Morton Deutsch, 1973, p. 367).

Long is the list of new relational skills which we need to learn in order to build a cohesive group of mutual enrichment, which only then can contribute to building "a better world." Appreciative Inquity, Appreciative Being, and Appreciative Caring, all three need to be combined so as to achieve social relationships of equal dignity (that are void of humiliation), which in turn enable us to do constructive work in and for the wider world.

 

Meetings List


7th
July 2003
NY

  2003 Annual Round Table of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies at Columbia University in New York, convened by Morton Deutsch.

12/13th September 2003
Paris

 

2003 Annual Meeting of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies convened by Evelin Lindner in Paris [Read the Meeting Notes ].

16/17/18th September 2004
Paris

 

2004 Annual Meeting of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, convened by Evelin Lindner at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris. The third day of this meeting, the 18th of September, represents the first of our film days, where Dharm Bhawuk shows films of our World Films for Equal Dignity project. [Read the Meeting Notes ].

18/19th
November 2004
NY

 

2004 Annual Round Table Workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict, 2004 Annual HumanDHS Meeting in NY, convened and organized by Evelin Lindner, Andrea Bartoli and Judit Révész.

15/16/17th
September 2005
Berlin

  2005 Annual Meeting of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies in Berlin, convened and organised by Eric van Grasdorff, Véronique Lingfeld and Evelin Lindner.

15th/16th
December 2005
NY

  2005 Annual Round Table Workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict, 2005 Annual HumanDHS Meeting in NY, convened and organized by Evelin Lindner, Andrea Bartoli and Judit Révész.

2006
September

   2006 Annual Meeting of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies

2006

   2006 Annual Round Table Workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict, 2005 Annual HumanDHS Meeting in NY