Friday, May 04, 2007

Themes Emerging for a Hedgehog

These are some themes that folks are noticing as we use ABCD or ABT (assets based thinking). These come from different conversations.

General focus on positiveness
Focus on specific assets people hold within the community.
ABCD seems to be about leveraging the specific assets within the community.
Generally interpreting it as a strengths based approach.

I wondered how an assets based approach can exist while we still address poor performance. My latest thinking is this: Yes, I acknowledge your strengths and I’ll help you leverage those strengths to meet all your performance expectations. But, there are no excuses to not meet performance expectations.

Michael

2 comments:

JBL said...

I think an asset based performance focus could be a huge strength of ours. Somehow we need to address issues that detract from the mission. So, we can focus on strengths and where those can bleed into areas of weakness and raise the weakness to at least a tolerable level that's great. If not, then we help them identify a different setting (job) where their assets can be leveraged and their weaknesses are not an issue.

dan_in_colorado said...

in terms of abcd in working with those we supervise... i have always struggled balancing management (crack down) with coaching (more supportive) and keeping ABCD in mind. It's much easier as a coach.

i also wanted to share an ABCD listserve you can sign up for:

http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/abcd/abcddiscussgroup.html