ResEdChat Ep 96: How to Leverage Appreciative Inquiry with Alex Baker

Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back everyone to another wonderful episode of Roompact’s Res Ed Chat podcast. If you’re new to the show, every episode we feature a variety of topics of interest to hired professionals who work in and with university housing, Residence Life, Residential Education, whatever you might call it. All are welcome here. So this is, if you’re following along, another in our series. Each year, we like to bring on all of the bloggers that have been writing over the past year on the Roompact blog on for an episode to get to know them a little bit better and talk about some of the things that they have been writing about.
So today we have Alex with us, and we’ll be talking about the other AI, appreciative inquiry. So if you hear us talking a lot about AI, it is not artificial intelligence. It is appreciative inquiry. But I feel like we might get tongue-tied if we keep trying to say appreciative inquiry a bunch of times throughout our time together here. But we’ll start it as we always do. Alex, if you want to briefly introduce yourself and give a little bit of an overview of your professional background, how you got to be where you are today, and then we’ll talk a little bit more about being a writer for Roompact and appreciative inquiry.

Alex Baker:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Dustin. I’m Alex Baker, he, him pronouns. I currently serve as the Assistant Dean of Students and the director of our student care team here at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. How I got here, I think it’s not too unfamiliar of a story. I started undergrad back in 2010, University of Central Oklahoma, where I quickly fell in love with the idea of Residence Life.
I was an RA, I oversaw some housing activities on that council. I did a lot of programming. And then I got involved with our student programming board at the time. And I was just having so much fun with it. My undergraduate degree is in advertising and public relations. So I’m not using that at all in my current career trajectory. But I just remember having a conversation with a trusted confidant and I shared, “I just don’t know what I want to do.” And she asked, “Well, why don’t you go into student affairs?” And I said, “Well, what is that?” And she said, “Look around. You’re doing student affairs.” And I got really excited at the idea of being able to do something full-time, as a grownup, as I said at the time. Just working with college students, providing unique opportunities.
And so from there, I started here at UCCS in 2015 as a residence hall manager. I cast a wide net, I think I applied to maybe 50 different jobs and just said, universe, do your thing. I’ll go where I’m wanted and needed. And just through lots of interviews, I landed here. As a residence hall manager, obviously, I got a wealth of knowledge, got a wide variety of experiences and opportunities. In November of 2018, actually, I moved over into the office of the Dean of Students where I was a case manager, really tapping into just my work with student conduct and student support. And I’ve slowly just sort of stretched and grown and now I’m the Assistant Dean of Students.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. It’s a great story. And I think, yeah, shared by many. I guess it’s always nice, it kind of normalizes or kind of affirms the journey many of us have been on being that student staff member, getting a tap on the shoulder, seeing the wider vista open up before us of the student affairs world. But the idea of what you’re saying of your undergraduate degree being in advertising and public relations. Imagining that you’re maybe reawakening some of those skills as you’re being a Roompact writer and everything, that idea of, how do you get a message out or convey ideas to people and everything? So walk me through the journey of becoming a writer for Roompact and what that experience has been like over this past year.

Alex Baker:
Yeah, absolutely. To be very honest, when I applied, I was like, well, I’m not going to get picked, right? I don’t work directly in Residence Life. But it was so fun to be able to write and just talk about my experience as a higher ed professional. There are hundreds of different areas in higher ed, I think at the end of the day, as long as we are focusing on students and student support, student growth, student retention, I’ve come to realize that, while the positions may be different, the institutions may be different, the experience of wanting to support our students really is universal.
And so I submitted my application, did a quick interview, and I can now see why maybe I was selected. And it’s just been really interesting to be able to speak from a lens of what I currently do, but applying it retroactively to what I did when I was really integrated in Residence Life. And of course, I still work closely with my colleagues in Residence Life. Especially overseeing our care team. But I think I just remember feeling a sense of shock, almost, that I was selected when I am not in Residence Life, if that makes sense.
But it’s been such an incredible journey and what I’ve really appreciated about writing for Roompact. Is really just being able to being write serious articles, write some silly articles. I did one recently about Taylor Swift and friendship bracelets. I have one upcoming about tarot cards. But it’s just been really fun to think about these concepts and ideas and put it onto paper and hopefully put a fun spin on it.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Well, I think, yeah, that’s the idea of forced creativity, like writing and doing whatever else. That idea of you got to just see what comes out the other end. And it’s like, yeah, it’s a relevant and fun, engaging thing about Taylor Swift, but there’s sort of a heart to it and those sort of things. So I’ve always appreciated that. I’ve done my fair share of all that kind of stuff over the years too. Of really earnest, serious commentary and then sometimes more just fun stuff about like, what does Green Lantern tell us about emotions? And how they whatever… Try to weave it into our working lives and stuff.
But yeah, I’ve appreciated, and certainly I guess with my closest purview, seeing all the great content that we’re putting out with the podcast and everything. And then certainly with the writers and the kuhai interns and everything, it’s an idea of valuing a wide variety and diversity of backgrounds and experiences and understanding how people can certainly get a lot out of experiences like this. Of hosting, of being a guest, of being a writer, of being an intern. And not having it be so restrictive and sort of what the classical or traditional notion of… Because I’m sure there was no shortage of eager RDs that are like, “I’ll be a writer,” and all that.
It’s like, we get our fair share of that. Let’s try to mix it up a little bit and give somebody… Like I kind of do with the preamble of this podcast. Like the folks who work with Residence Life and Residential Education and everything else. We need those partners. We need the greater and broader context for our work, whether it’s certainly our colleagues at our institution or others or just in the wider world and everything.
So I think, yeah, it’s great that you are willing and put your hat into the ring and been a part of this writing team over the past year. Bringing a little bit of a different perspective maybe than some of the other folks that we’ve had. But I think it does help with just different perspectives on leadership and teamwork and everything else. Our conversation focusing now on the topic of the day, appreciative inquiry or AI as we’ll maybe splice in here. Just in case folks aren’t aware, can you briefly explain the concept of what appreciative inquiry is?

Alex Baker:
Yeah, absolutely. So appreciative inquiry, the way I like to describe it, it’s a strengths-based positive approach to change management and problem solving. So think of it as both a worldview and also a process for facilitating change in the organization’s groups or communities that we exist in. So the assumption here is, rather than focusing on the elements that seem to be broken, let’s focus and start with what is happening that’s going right, and then let’s build upon that.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I’ve always appreciated just strengths-based anything. Just have a very optimistic, positive viewpoint on people’s potential and how do we… Because I think even just with any of these kind of things of just helping to put language to something with a strengths quest or strengths finder or whatever else. Giving sort of, okay, these are the things where it’s affirming that who I am, what I’m good at, what I enjoy is valuable and important and whatever.
So just even that undercurrent and having that pop-up in this context, I think it’s such a powerful… Like I said, just worldview. It’s not just like, “Oh, it’s for business leaders who are managers and leading teams or whatever else.” It’s like, it really can reshape the way that you just interact with people in any number of contexts. So for our conversation here, obviously, we’ll break down the two big ones of working with students and with colleagues. So how do you see appreciative inquiry being beneficial for working with students? We’ll start it there first and then go towards colleagues.

Alex Baker:
I’m going to answer the question shortly, but I think it’s important to talk a little bit about the process, if that’s okay. So with Appreciative Inquiry, they have what’s called the four-D cycle. So the first of that is discover. And so in that discover phase, what we’re really looking at is identifying and appreciating the strengths, the successes, or perhaps maybe it’s the core values within a specific system. So this can be our colleagues, this can be our student staff, this can be the students living on campus in our residence halls.
From there, we move into the second D, which is dream. So envisioning what the ideal future could look like. I think that’s probably my favorite of the four Ds for what it’s worth. The third step, the third D, is design. So you start to work and strategize on creating structures or plans or goals to achieve what that envisioned future is or could look like. And then finally, the last of that is going to be destiny, the fourth D. Which is really implementing and then sustaining those changes, really by empowering individuals and the collective team.
So I think, with students, I can really imagine this. We’re always asking ourselves, how can we improve our process? How can we improve the experience of students living on campus? And I think sometimes we really rack our brains when we should be asking the students, what is the answer to that? But if you ask a student, what would make you happier when living on campus? I’m sure we’re going to get the exact same answers. It needs to be cheaper, there needs to be more things to do, and usually thrown in there is the dining hall food needs to be better.
And it’s the same answer we’ve received this time, it will be the same answer as last time. But that also doesn’t give us really any concrete ideas of what we can do. What are tangible things? So when working with students, I think really, first and foremost, it really will allow us to build trust and engagement with students. And so I think it really creates this environment of psychological safety. I think students, when we give them the time and space to share, they feel valued. And then they also usually, or hopefully, feel motivated to participate more actively in our communities that we’re trying to build.
Anytime we open up the floor to give us feedback, “give me feedback on,” insert anything here. It’s a very fine balance, I’d like to call it a delicate dance, of opening ourselves up to getting our feelings hurt a little bit. We can put so much energy and effort, thought, care and love into a program as an example. And then, “Hey, what’d you think of that?” And we hear things that never even once we considered as something that could have or should have or would been. So really, by focusing on those positive aspects, I think it really allows folks to contribute in a way that demonstrates good self-esteem, resiliency. I mean, it doesn’t dwell on those deficiencies.
So an example of how practitioners could use appreciative inquiry with our students. I wrote about AI in an article and one of the things I suggested was conduct one-on-one, or even maybe it’s small group interviews, to ask about their most positive experiences when living inside the residence halls. And that can help us drive marketing, that can help us drive strategy. In the day and age where everyone wants data and numbers, and we use that to determine our budgets, it gives some good, concrete data I think that maybe just a survey probably wouldn’t capture.
But it also speaks to, these are the things we’re doing well and these are the things we should continue to do. So that’s how I imagine it with students. And that can also be applied to our student staffs as well. When I was a hall manager, one of the things that I found to be so interesting was, depending on the year, my staff was phenomenal. Depending on the year, we butted heads quite a bit. And just really trying to figure out, what is the secret sauce of building and maintaining a great staff? I really tried to think about, what can be universal between, there were four of us, between the four of us? And where should we leave room for autonomy and creative decision making? And so I think using this with RAs across the department could be really beneficial of creating some standards and norms for professional staff.
And then on the flip side of all of this, with our colleagues, I think anytime we have a staff that’s with us for longer than a year, it can be very easy to just fall into, well, this is working and we don’t need to really focus, or we don’t need to change or we don’t need to shift. And that may be true. And also I think sometimes we just get bogged down with the day-to-day work. We get bogged down with life outside of work. And so we don’t have a lot of energy to focus our attentions on, how can we make this better? As senior staff, I think, yes, we’re here for our students and we’re here for our RAs, but we should also be taking care of our professional staff as well.
Especially knowing in a lot of institutions, resident directors, their entry-level staff, being a hall manager was my first professional job and I had no idea what it meant to be a professional in higher ed. So just by looking at it through that lens, I think it provides a unique opportunity to set your staff, your team, your department up for success when we have new individuals who may be new to the institution, who may be new to the field, who may be new to the professional world. So those are just some ideas that I think about. But the cool thing about AI is that it can go well beyond that. There’s really no limitations to it.

Dustin Ramsdell:
I appreciate you going into everything there because I think there’s a couple of threads that I want to pull on. One, I guess the feelings that I get, having these sort of conversations, is there’s an inherent respect for people’s individuality, their autonomy, their strengths, and just the value that they bring to a team. So obviously that can apply to anyone across the board, students or staff.
And then the idea of just the inherent hope, the idea that things could be better or efficient or we can do more, we can do whatever else. Because yeah, that idea of getting inertia, getting stuck in routines, just going through the motions and everything else. That’s always going to be to the detriment to a team and a department and institutions. You just have to keep that idea that things can get better, we can make them better, we have to make them better. They’re not just going to get better on their own kind of thing.
But even that idea of, like you said, just trying to figure out… Because I think we have the negativity bias in our personal and professional lives. I just try to always whack-a-mole with problems, where just always acting like what’s going wrong or whatever else. It can be just as productive and useful and time well spent to be asking those questions about, what are we doing well? Because you got to celebrate the milestones and be affirming and uplifting and all that, as much as anything else.
But one kind of, I guess, thread on the student side that I wanted to pull on was I guess the idea of, do you see there being an application of this into student conduct? Because you mentioned, I guess, some exposure in that area in your background and everything. I guess that idea of giving some level of respect and dignity to people in the way that you ask questions or approach those sort of moments in time. Because I think, broadly, higher ed has gotten away, I think, from being overly punitive all the time with different policy violations or whatever. But I guess just curious how you see something like this showing up in the conduct space.

Alex Baker:
Yeah, absolutely. I think this provides what I believe to be a very unique opportunity to truly get some concrete data, some concrete feedback from students who maybe have gone through the conduct process. So I think what I hear consistently from many institutions is, when a student goes through our conduct process, we’ll send a follow-up survey and ask them, what was your experience with the conduct process? And guess what? Even if we have the philosophy that most of our sanctions and outcomes are educational in nature and we try to stay away from punitive sanctions or outcomes, if the student receives any sanction, they’re going to feel that’s punitive.
They maybe don’t get the distinction between educational in nature, punitive in nature. So in my experience, what I’ve seen from students who go through the conduct process and receive a survey in their email, they’re frustrated. Maybe there’s guilt, maybe there’s shame involved. And the survey data usually does not indicate a great experience for the student. And so thinking about AI and student conduct, I think you still run the risk of students providing their very honest and sometimes hard to hear feedback about our process and procedures.
But by framing it through this positive lens, it doesn’t give as much space or room for someone to say, “This process was awful because I still received an outcome that is something that I didn’t want to do.” And so I think the point of it all is that it really shifts the focus. It flips the script on receiving feedback. And it talks about the good that was embedded in what we’re doing. So I think it is very applicable to conduct. And I think it would be a very fascinating case study or experiment to use it through the conduct lens.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, because I think it’s that idea of trying to remediate people, or I think that… I’m going to really muscle in this metaphor, the first one that came to mind, that idea of using honey rather than vinegar or whatever. The idea of, “Okay, I want you to get here. I’m going to give you something sweet or whatever, I’m going to give you something that you want that’s maybe relevant or productive or engaging or useful to you, and hey, you’re going to spend your time or something.” And the idea that it doesn’t feel like, well, I’m just checking the box and I did it because I was told to or I had to, or whatever else. How can we get to a place of empathy or whatever else?
They’re threading the needle or making a more pointed application of appreciative inquiry in the context space, I think does honor a lot of the work that I’ve come to understand has been happening over several years of trying to get away from just fines and punitive things. And very much feeling like, well, you did something wrong, so you need to be punished. I don’t know, just kind of scaring people straight or something. In terms of like, “Well, you better behave in the halls or else,” whatever.
Yeah, and I think it’s interesting just, I guess, a couple of things that people are bringing up in the back and forth of the idea too, like you said, we are so much in a data-driven world or quantitatively-driven world. There’s this highly qualitative approach and everything. So I think for one reason or another, it might feel either not as intuitive or there’s maybe friction or whatever else.
So I guess for all those reasons, and I’m sure others, what advice would you give for folks utilizing this approach? Because I feel like it could be maybe somewhat new for people, just in its entirety or just certainly very new for maybe their team, their department, their institutional culture and everything. So just any advice from your reflections and your background and everything?

Alex Baker:
Anytime there’s newness involved, folks, including myself, there’s resistance to it. And it’s like, “Well, I don’t know. Why put in the effort? Why put in the extra time and energy on something that I’m not even sure it will be beneficial?” So if you’re at all me, I think one of the best things to do is just start really small. So I talked about visioning workshops or these group conversations, and those all sound and likely are big. There’s a lot of planning effort, energy, getting buy-in. But start really small. So when you’re having conversations with your student staff or your colleagues, a great example is, what’s one success from this week that you’re proud of?
And in really listening for what they’re saying and not just the language they’re using, but what’s the heart of the message they’re saying, right? So I think about when I was a hall manager, I asked versions of this question to my student staff and I was able to really understand some of my staff really had a good understanding of the Residence Life policies and Handbook. And this was communicated by… I was able to do a roommate mediation and I felt really good about it because everyone was on the same page by the end, and that’s what they would say. But what I would then hear is, the training that we did, the effort that you put into really understanding, what is roommate mediation, what are the policies? Where is there flexibility, where is there not? That is what sets you up for success. And then you can take that to the next level.
So the mediation went well, can you share some specifics about why you think that’s the case? And then just jot those notes down. Because at some point we’re start talking about RA training, and if we already have this nice repository of information, why don’t we focus our training on what we know is successful with what we’re hearing from our students? So starting small is really critical.
Active listening, that’s a huge one in appreciative inquiry. So I know we always train and talk and say, “Let’s use active listening.” But it’s easier to say than to do. So really be intentional about practicing that active listening. Because that is AI at its core, active listening. So those are just I think two really simple things that we can do in our day-to-day interactions that will set us up for success if we go the route of visioning group or like a workshop, things like that.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I appreciate those pieces of advice. Because I think for anything when it’s a new initiative, new anything, because like how you were saying, “start small,” it’s just the idea of start somewhere. Because I think, yeah, it can feel daunting, depending on what it is and the scale and scope and all that. But that idea of if you start getting into the routine and the habit and start to see improvements or impacts and outcomes and everything, it’s just going to, I think, inspire more effort and everything.
Because that is the idea. People obviously we’re always just being like, “Well, you should be like an active listener and all that.” And something like this grounds it into… Because I’m sure some people were like, “Well, yeah, so what? Yeah, of course I’m going to try to do my best.” But it’s like, “And this is why it’s important,” is it enables all these other things of really a sort of cohesive approach and how you interact with people, support people.
If you can’t do that, then it’s like we can’t get all sort high minded about all these other concepts and things like that. You’re not even going to get what you’re looking for from people if you can’t do this sort of basic building block and kind of enabler of appreciative inquiry. So as we wrap up, certainly folks can hopefully get started with those pieces of advice that you shared, and you’ve written on appreciative inquiry for the Roompact blogs. We’re certainly direct to that. But if there’s anything else that you would want to specifically call out as any resources to share, is there anything that comes to mind?

Alex Baker:
I learned about appreciative inquiry, just someone had mentioned it, and I did sort of like a deep dive self-study on it. So there’s lots of tools, information out there. One thing that I think is interesting that I would also encourage folks to do a little bit of digging into. You’re likely going to run into some naysayers. There are going to be people who are skeptical of this. It’s very seemingly very fluffy, and we’re not going to get good information from it.
One of the things that really helped me in sort of selling this to others and utilizing it is understanding the positive emotions of psychology. And knowing that essentially it takes three positive emotions to outweigh a single negative emotion. And so what this means is we’re constantly facing an uphill battle when we are trying to just exist in this world around us where we have little to no control. And so framing it from, if we go into this and say, what could be better? We’re already starting at a deficit of getting this information because we’re saying, we’re communicating or we’re insinuating, what we are doing isn’t good already.
So by flipping that and really being able to talk about, let’s look at the positive impact, the positive emotion of this, that is a scientifically-backed way of really understanding why maybe it is more beneficial for us to maybe have a positive spin or a positive approach on getting feedback. So definitely learning a little bit more about the psychological positive emotions. And then also, I mean, truly there’s just a wealth of information on the internet. I think the first time I searched it, I searched like appreciative inquiry, what is it? And then from there I was able to pull and tease out.
And then you joked about it earlier, but also using AI, not appreciative inquiry, to come up with some questions that are open-ended and positive. Maybe you have an idea. Utilize AI to your advantage and get some good, reframed questions. If you’re trying to find a way to improve facilities on your campus, use the tools that we have available to us. So I think those are two specific things and one more theoretical thing that folks can do to learn a little bit more about it.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Great. Yeah, we’ll certainly link out to your posts and ways to connect with you and everything. But yeah, just appreciate this topic so much because I feel like it’s something that can really make sometimes the smaller change that is really impactful in everyone’s everyday lives. But also really broader existential change as well. Which sometimes feels loftier. But it sets you at least on that path and everything. So I just appreciate you embracing this philosophy and coming on to talk all about it and write for the blog about it as well. So just appreciate you so much.

Alex Baker:
Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.