When a team needs to make progress, the instinct is usually understandable:
Find the problem.
What is not working? Where are we falling short? Why are people disengaged? What keeps breaking down? Who is responsible?
Those questions are not useless.
Organizations need to see reality clearly. Teams need to confront obstacles. Leaders need data, accountability, and the courage to address what is not working.
But when “What is broken?” becomes the only doorway into a conversation, it can narrow the room before the work has even begun.
People become defensive.
They protect their departments, their decisions, or their image.
The group spends its energy explaining the past rather than creating a future.
And the people closest to the work may leave believing that their primary value is to name what is wrong instead of helping shape what could be possible.
There is another place to begin.
When have we been at our best? And what made that possible?
That is not a denial of the challenge.
It is a way of locating the capability already present in the system.
A strengths-based beginning is not naïve
Some leaders hear strengths-based inquiry and assume it means avoiding hard truths.
It does not.
It means that before a group tries to repair its future, it takes seriously the evidence of its own resourcefulness.
Every team has moments when it was more connected, more creative, more responsive, or more effective than usual.
Maybe it was the project that crossed departmental lines without endless escalation.
Maybe it was the launch where people had enough clarity to make decisions quickly.
Maybe it was the difficult season when colleagues stepped up for one another and delivered work they were proud of.
Those moments are not exceptions to dismiss.
They are data.
They reveal the strengths, relationships, values, conditions, and choices that helped the system work.
A generative conversation asks the group to study those moments. The point is not to recreate the past, but so to build from what is already alive.
The question changes the quality of participation
Compare these two meeting openings.
Opening one: “What's wrong with our collaboration?”
Opening two: “Think of a time we collaborated across teams in a way that made you proud. What did we do differently, and what conditions made that possible?”
The first question may surface useful problems.
The second question surfaces capability.
It invites people to remember what good work actually feels like. It makes room for stories rather than accusations. It helps a group identify patterns worth amplifying.
And it does something else that matters just as much:
It gives people a reason to participate.
People are more likely to contribute when they can bring lived experience, insight, and hope into the room instead of a list of failures to defend.
From inquiry to action
A strengths-based question is not the whole strategy.
It is the beginning of a better sequence.
In my current study of Appreciative Inquiry and the SOAR framework, I have been reflecting on the value of moving a group through a more intentional arc:
Initiate: Name the opportunity clearly. What matters enough to gather around? Inquire: Discover moments of strength, success, and possibility. What is already working that we can learn from? Imagine: Create a shared picture of what becomes possible when those strengths are expanded. Innovate: Turn the aspiration into choices, experiments, and practical design. Inspire to implement: Identify ownership, commitments, and the conditions that will keep the work moving.
This is not positive thinking disguised as strategy.
It is disciplined hope.
It asks a group to face reality without becoming trapped by its deficits.
It insists that people can be honest about the distance between where they are and where they want to be; while also remembering that the capacity to move already exists somewhere among them.
One question for this week
Before your next planning conversation, resist the urge to open with a gap analysis.
Try this instead:
“What is one moment from the last year when we did this work in a way we would want to repeat? And what made it possible?”
Let people think quietly first.
Invite stories before conclusions.
Listen for the patterns beneath the stories:
What strengths showed up? What relationships made a difference? What conditions supported good judgment? What did leaders make possible? What should we carry forward as we design what comes next?
Then, and only then, ask what needs to change.
You will still find the challenges.
But you may find them inside a more capable, connected, and hopeful room.
Closing reflection
The future does not become more possible because we become better at cataloging what is wrong.
It becomes more possible when we learn how to notice (and build from) what is already strong, meaningful, and ready to grow.
So the next time your team faces a hard question, begin here:
What is working that we have not yet learned how to build on?
That question may not solve the problem by itself.
But it can change who people become while solving it.
— Dwight Spencer Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker, ICF-ACC, and Certified xchange Guide Helping creative leaders beat imposter syndrome and lead visibly Host, For the Love of Creatives Dallas, Texas dwight.authenticcreative.coach