The 7 Literacies Guide
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Seven new literacies for living and leading in our times
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Welcome to Season 2 of the Positivity Strategist Podcast
Appreciative Voice & Choice
About This Podcast Season
Seven new literacies offering us greater choice to strengthen our individual and collective appreciative voice.
Our World is Relational
In each episode, we focus on a specific literacy to help us all lift up our appreciative voice and give us greater choice in experiencing the relational nature of our respective worlds. The literacies, which go beyond skills and competencies are grounded in the theories and practices of Appreciative Inquiry.
Stories and Questions
We define each literacy and its relevance. We talk about how we make sense of it. Each literacy informs the others and helps us form new habits of voice and choice. We invite reflection on various applications and share our own stories and learnings. We ask lots of questions, too, in anticipation of your responses.
Global Conversation
We'd be so thrilled if you'll join us to start a global conversation about how we already have the capacity to connect to our appreciative voice, guiding us to make choices that lead to our collective well-being globally and locally. Our show notes page for each episode will invite you to become involved.
Appreciative Voice and Choice: The Episodes
Season 2 Introduction: Appreciative Voice and Choice
A short episode to welcome you to Season 2.
We introduce the Season’s topic and focus, Appreciative Voice and Choice: 7 literacies for living and leading in our times. We provide an overview of how we have structured the Season to give you a taste of what will follow.
What peaks your curiosity on this topic of Season 2?
Meet the Literacies for Living and Leading in our Times
We set the scene in this episode for what’s to come. We talk about the origins of Appreciative Voice and how the seven literacies evolved.
The intention of these literacies is to enable us to bring all voices into conversations. There are many choices to be made. They include inviting all perspectives, focusing on the collective and the relational world we are responsible for co-creating. They include our need for belonging and connection, and you will make your own connections with the content.
What do you already know about this? What do you want to find out about?
Inviting Inquiry Questions: A Core Choice for Appreciative Voice
The literacy we start with is Inviting Inquiry.
It is central to all the Literacies, and it’s core to Appreciative Voice. The principles of Appreciative Inquiry inform us that we move in the direction of our inquiries, i.e. the questions we ask of ourselves and others. Inquiry stimulates curiosity. Inquiry starts movement. Inquiry keeps us open to possibilities and enables us to engage in further dialogue.
What are you curious about now? What information and stories might you seek?
Reframing Reality: Appreciative Ways to Shift Perspective
This literacy opens us up to our own perspectives (frames) on the world.
As we widen our frames, we begin to understand and appreciate the perspectives (frames) of others. Having this literacy to frame and reframe enables us to shift perspective and opens us to possibilities and solutions we may never have even considered if we stayed comfortable with our blinkers on within our existing frames, which may be keeping us very small.
How can I widen my perspective and position? How can we do that together?
Kindling Kindness: Raising our Capacity for Cultivating Compassion
This literacy taps into our willingness to feel with and for others.
It surfaces our compassion, empathy, and positive regard for self and others. It encourages us to train our hearts and minds to stay open and offer our best to others. Growing our understanding of difference, attending to small ways to connect with other, developing our own inner resource to be of service are some of the habits of this literacy.
How many acts of kindness might you practice in a day? How does kindness show up in your work place?
Powering the Positive: Fusing Strengths for Flow, Energy and Connection
This literacy invites us to experience the goodness in ourselves, one another and our world.
Paying attention to and magnifying the positive in people, communities, and networks help us flourish. Among the benefits of knowing our strengths include finding more flow and meaning in work; feeling more energized than drained; and seeing our relationships improve by coming from a place of greater ease.
If we are able to combine our strengths, what might we be able to accomplish here?
Welcoming Wholeness: Embracing the Fullness - The magic of Multiplicity
This literacy embraces mutual worthiness: you and I belong here.
We need one another to make sense of all that is going on around us. We can make meaning together. A true invitation to collective dialogue builds on the belief that the answers to important questions walk into a room in the form of participants. In coming together, our combined intelligence, and intent enables new wisdom and solutions to surface. In relationship with others, when we are welcomed we taste the fullness of life.
What brought us all here? Who belongs in this conversation?
Connecting the Collective: Dynamics, Dialogue, Decisions
This literacy focuses us on living into the “we.”
Connecting the collective is the work of hearts and minds. This literacy focuses us on living into the “we.” Connecting and belonging are the life-blood of human organizing and relationships. Starting conversations that are real and inclusive lifts up our appreciative voice. When we acknowledge the wisdom available to us and put greater value on that which the collective offers us, we open up to new insights about dynamics, dialogue and decisions.
What behaviors do we want more of together?
Finding the Future: Anticipating what is Possible and how we Fuel It
This literacy is the invitation to acknowledge change is constant, the future is unknown and unknowable, yet, we can learn to find ourselves into the future in caring, compassionate ways.
To get new results, we engage in a dance between honoring all that has gone before and disarming that “field” so that new energy can flow in. The more the continuous and the novel can be explored together, the greater the opportunities for spiraling to the next level of understanding and action.
What do we want more of? What outcomes do we want? What choices must we make?
Changing Beliefs About Human Capacity
To sum up this Season, we bring it all together.
These episodes have embraced the worldview of Appreciative Inquiry and the guiding Principles. We are indebted to our teachers and our experience of Appreciative Inquiry to enable us to create the seven literacies. These literacies offer us more choices to help us find our appreciative voice to build capacity for increased well-being in life and in leadership roles. We introduce four new assumptions about changing belief about human capacity.
What has emerged for you in developing greater insights into Appreciative Voice and Choice with 7 literacies to help you live and lead in our century?
Meet Your Co-Hosts
Season 2 of the Positivity Strategist Podcast is co-hosted by Robyn Stratton-Berkessel and Sallie Lee, both seasoned practitioners, trainers and published authors in the transformational change methodology Appreciative Inquiry.
Robyn Stratton-Berkessel
As a designer and facilitator, known as the Positivity Strategist, I experience our common humanity daily. I witness over and over, when people find their their voice, just be ready to step back and allow passion, leadership, joy, and productivity to flourish.
Sallie Lee
Heading up Shared Sun Studio since 1994, I’ve had the good fortune to serve as a thinking partner, facilitator, coach and strategist for a global client base. Appreciative Inquiry has made that work easy and meaningful, showing me everyday the power of Appreciative Voice in the choices we make.
The "Appreciative Voice"
7 Literacies Guide
This Guide provides an overview of our work with Appreciative Voice and Choice and the seven literacies for living and leading in these times. On the following pages, you'll find each literacy with its definition, a brief description, and some ideas for daily use. We hope you will enjoy it!
