Online ReporterEmployee Relations
Dr Request Machimbira
It is strategic planning season again.
Across boardrooms, management retreats are in full swing.
SWOT analyses are pinned on walls, challenges are listed, gaps are circled in red and the familiar question echoes: “What is wrong with our organisation and how do we fix it?”
HR is expected to bring solutions for a myriad of organisational challenges.
But what if we have been looking in the wrong direction? What if the most powerful solutions are not far away in expensive benchmarks, new policies or consultants, but right inside our organisations, in moments when we were at our best? That is the promise of Appreciative Inquiry. Developed by David Cooperrider, Appreciative Inquiry is a strengths-based philosophy that shifts the organisation from problem-solving to possibility-creating. It argues a simple, but profound truth: organisations grow in the direction of what they repeatedly ask about.
If we constantly ask “why is performance low?” we get stories of low performance. If we ask “when have our people performed at their very best and what made it possible?” we get a blueprint for excellence. It is a deliberate choice to focus on positivism rather than negativity, on what gives life rather than what drains it. For HR, Appreciative Inquiry is not just a tool for a workshop. It is a strategic HR philosophy that can be applied end-to-end across the human resources value chain as follows:
Talent acquisition: Hiring for strength, not just filling gaps
Traditional recruitment starts from a deficit: We have a vacancy. We have a problem. Appreciative Inquiry reframes it to: “We have an opportunity to bring in more of what makes us great.”
In practice, this means before we advertise, we DISCOVER. We interview our best performers in that same role and ask: When have you felt most alive and effective here? What strengths did you bring that made you succeed?
The answers give us more than a job description; they give us a success profile rooted in reality. When we DREAM with hiring managers, we ask: If this new person becomes our star performer in 12 months, what would they have achieved? This changes interviews.
Instead of only interrogating gaps in a CV, we use appreciative questions: “Tell us about a time you turned a difficult team around. What strengths did you draw on?” We recruit for potential and positive core, not just qualifications. Organisations that hire this way do not just fill posts; they amplify their culture.
Integration and maintenance
The first 90 days decide whether an employee stays or leaves. Most onboarding is administrative, that is, forms, policies, dos and don’ts. Appreciative onboarding is relational.
Instead of starting with “Here are our rules” we start with “You were chosen because you have strengths we value. Let us discover them”.
In integration, we pair new employees with positive mentors, not just technical buddies, to share stories of peak moments in the organisation.
We ask new hires in week one: “From what you have seen so far, what are our strengths as a team that we must not lose?” In HR maintenance, instead of waiting for grievances, we create platforms that systematically discover what keeps people. Stay interviews replace exit interviews: “What makes you stay? What do you value most about working here? When have you felt most supported?” The data from stay interviews is gold for retention strategy. Wellness, too, shifts from fixing stress to amplifying well-being. We ask, “When have you felt most energised and well at work?” and institutionalise more of those conditions, be it recognition, flexibility, or belonging. Maintenance becomes about protecting the human spirit at work.
Performance and development: From appraisal to appreciation
Nothing kills morale faster than a deficit-based performance management system where employees are judged by their weaknesses once a year.
Appreciative Inquiry offers a radical alternative: performance development as a discovery of best self. When emphasis is placed more on goalkeeper Onana’s errors, he will not get better.
In setting performance goals, the manager and employee co-create a DREAM: “What would exceptional performance look like for you, building on your top strengths?”
Feedback becomes feed-forward. Instead of “You failed to communicate”, we ask, “I recall a time your communication was excellent during Covid-19. What enabled that, and how can we replicate it?”
Learning and Development also shifts. Traditional training needs analysis asks “What skills do you lack?”
An appreciative training needs analysis asks “What are you exceptionally good at, and how can we make you a master? Where do you want to grow?”
This builds careers around strengths. It creates masterclasses where internal high performers teach others, turning tacit knowledge into organisational capability. Performance becomes less about fixing people and more about growing people.
Staff transition and separation: Leaving with dignity and legacy
Even exits can be appreciative. When staff retire, resign or separate, we often conduct a hurried exit interview focused on what went wrong.
An appreciative separation asks: “What are you most proud of having contributed? What strengths of this organisation should we preserve? What advice would you leave for those who continue?” This gives the departing employee dignity and leaves the organisation with institutional memory, not bitterness. Alumni become ambassadors, not adversaries. For this to work beyond a once-off event, Appreciative Inquiry must be institutionalised as an organisational agenda, not an HR project. It must be part of how we do strategy.
Dr Request Machimbira is the executive director of Proficiency Consulting Group and the International Wellness Institute. For feedback, email request @proficiencyinternational.com or phone +263772693404.
How do we do that? Through deliberate organisational structures and platforms. First, leadership must model appreciative language. Executive meetings must start with appreciative check-ins.
There is a receptionist who has never received a compliment. Strategic planning must have a discover phase where we celebrate the best of the past year before we list challenges.
Second, we must create platforms for inquiry: monthly appreciative dialogues, Wellness Champion forums, Culture Cafes, and digital storytelling walls where staff share peak experiences.
HR must train managers in appreciative interviewing, the art of asking questions that bring out the best in people.
Third, we embed it into HR systems: appreciative questions in our recruitment interview guides, in our onboarding packs, in our performance review forms, in our stay and exit interviews and in our engagement surveys.
The system drives the behaviour.
As we enter strategic planning season, let us pause.
The solutions we are searching for are not always out there. They are often already in here, in that branch that never loses cashiers, in that supervisor whose team always meets targets, in that mine shift that has zero injuries.
Appreciative Inquiry invites HR to become the curator of those bright spots and help the whole organisation learn to do more of what already works.
Organisations do not change because they are told they are broken. They change when they discover they are capable of greatness.
Dr Request Machimbira is the executive director of Proficiency Consulting Group and the International Wellness Institute. For feedback, email request @proficiencyinternational.com or phone +263772693404.
