Going Beyond the Blue Dot
For me, it kept coming back to a blue dot in the center of a blank space. Dr. Mark Chupp showed this image to all of us who were participating in the Appreciative Inquiry for Social Change workshop, which he co-lead with Carolyn Colleen over three days last week. He asked us, “What do you see here?” “A blue dot,” someone said. “A black ring around a blue dot,” someone else said. “I see a 4,” someone chimed in, noting the slide number at the bottom of the screen. “Very observant,” Dr. Chupp said. But what were we missing? We were missing most of what the image before us showed: a blank, white space surrounding a relatively small blue dot with an even tinier black outline. Instead of seeing the entire picture, our eyes were drawn to one focal point -- all of our attention and effort went there, with the only exception being a page number. But what about the rest of it? What could we see if we took it all in? Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a strengths-based met...