Inquiry of the Heart

I'm in Nova Scotia for a visit and with travelling yesterday I spaced on writing. So today I'm writing a longer post than usual.

I devoured a number of articles on the plane, including one on theories of change embedded in appreciative inquiry by Gervase Bushe. 

Al Etmanski's statement that in order to open up our minds we must first open up our hearts rang true to me and it was the intention I set walking away from Tamarack's Deepening Community Gathering. This article helped to put some meat on that. 

I thought I had been familiar with appreciative inquiry (AI). As with many other things, a concept gets twisted the more "fashionable" it is. For appreciative inquiry this has meant that anytime something is framed in a positive light it gets the label AI. 

Bushe defines AI as the inquiry of the heart. For him it means before he asks a question or makes a statement he locates his consciousness in his heart region and notices how his thoughts and questions are shaped and lets those be what he says. He notes that Jung identified that inquiry with the head only can never heal as the head is concerned with analysis which only serves to cut things up and examine them in parts. The heart, however, is concerned with bringing things together and wholeness and it is from here that inquiry can be healing. 

Bushe challenges us to think about if analytical forms of action research attending to all the "problem" and "deficiencies" (based on the theory of the researched/consultant) ever hope to really heal a system; to make old wounds go away and add health and vitality to the relationships in that system? Do we stand a better chance with appreciative inquiry if we approach it with an open heart?

Bushe also presents language and words as the basic building blocks for social reality. As an active agent in the creation of meaning. This got me thinking about language in the non-profit world.

I wrote about Momentum's CEO calling the non-profit sector out for using the word impact. That we have chosen a word associated with bombs, meteors and car collisions to describe the ultimate end of our work.  Is our use of the word impact being manifested in the way we do our work? As Cormac Russell outlined "when we do change to people they experience it as violence, when they do change for themselves they experience it as liberation." We also often use the word client to describe individuals that we seek to have this impact on. The Greek root of client means one who is controlled. 

Have we chosen the right language in non-profit? Are the words we're using congruent with the reality we hope to realize in the end?