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The Appreciative Way
Enabling Innovation at the Speed of Life           
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Conflict to Collaboration

Welcome to Yes!3

The Appreciative Way

The Appreciative Way

The Appreciative Way, is Rob and Kim Voyle's synthesis of:

  • The practice and philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry
  • The work of Milton Erickson and his students
  • Positive Psychology
  • Compassion as the agent of transformation
  • Contemplative Spirituality

The Appreciative Way
Discover the essentials of the
Appreciative Way in this fast
read format book by Rob and
Kim Voyle.

>>   View Contents

The Clergy Coach

Rob Voyle

The Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle is a leader in the development and use of appreciative coaching in his work with clergy.

>>   Coaching With Rob

The Career Coach

The Appreciative Way

The Dr. Kim Voyle is the Founder and Director of Pathfinders Career Services.

>>   Career Coaching With Kim

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          Yes!3 Program Format

Creating
a Life of
Yes!3
The poet Rumi once wrote:
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a meadow. I'll meet you there."

Yes!3 is designed to create that meadow,
a place of deep appreciation and gratitude,
where love of God, neighbor, and self can be manifested.
                    Purchase Yes!               

Program Design

Yes!3 is designed as a 5 week program with an all day retreat program after the first or second session. Where necessary this all day program may be divided into two additional weekly sessions. Participants will be invited to explore a variety of topics during the meetings.

A typical evening format would be:

  • Gather for a light supper
  • Engage in a brief worship and prayer service
  • Listen to a 30 minute presentation
  • Engage in small group structured conversation
  • Close with concluding prayer and blessing

Each participant is provided an extensive guide and a copy of Core Elements of the Appreciative Way. The participants guide is a personal workbook that includes liturgies for each session, presentation content notes and the structured conversation questions.

Session Outlines

Session 1: Who Blessed Your Existence

Nothing comes into existence until it has been blessed

A blessing is a way of saying an affirming and empowering yes to somebody or something. This session explores the nature of blessings and those things that we bless and are blessed by. To create a life of abundance we need to attend to the blessings in our lives and use these blessings as the foundation for building our future.

All Day Program: Finding Life's Purpose

"Appreciative Inquiry is based on a reverence for life... More than a method or technique, the appreciative mode of inquiry is a means of living with, being with and directly participating in the life of a human system in a way that compels one to inquire into the deeper life-generating essentials and potentials of existence." David Cooperrider

Participants will be led through an Appreciative Inquiry into their own life and discover those things that they do well, that they value, and that give them purposeful meaning. These experiences and values will be used by the participants to create personal purpose statements and to imagine their preferred future.

Session 2: Unconditional Love and Saying Yes!3 to God

"The challenge of this life is not to stay alive, rather the challenge of this life is to stay in love."
Chris Rankin-Williams, 9-16-01

At the heart of the universe is a heart of love that embraces us and accepts us unconditionally. This heart of love is the source of our existence and the life we have. Participants will explore their experience of unconditional love and how they can say Yes! to God, the source of their existence and life.

Session 3: Saying Yes!3 to Your Neighbor

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
Mahatma Gandhi

What kind of neighborhood and world would you like to live in? What qualities would such a world have and would the world want such a world. Participants will explore how they can help create a just world to which they can say Yes! and for which the world would be grateful.

Session 4: Saying Yes!3 to Your Self

"If you want to build a ship, then don't drum up people to gather wood, give orders, and divide the work. Rather teach them to yearn for the far and endless sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery"

Saying Yes! to self is not about violently pursuing self gratification at the expense of self and others, but rather it is about manifesting those God-given talents and abilities to the benefit of self and the world. Participants will explore what they deeply value about themselves, what they long for, and what gives them a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment as one whom God created.

Session 5: Next Steps

"You have to go to fetch the future. It's not coming towards you, it's running away." Zulu Proverb

Since the participants will spend the rest of their lives in the future, in this session they will be invited to identify resources and establish plans to ensure that the future they live in is, to every extent possible, one of their choosing and making. Special attention will be paid to creating goals that are achievable and sustainable and allow them to continue to say Yes! to God, Yes! to their neighbor, and Yes! to themselves.

From the Authors: Quotes From the Program

If you haven't found the place inside where you cannot not do what it is you do that gives you great joy, keep looking for that which you cannot not do and go do that.
If you don't, you will simply waste your true potential, rob society of your gifts, and just make your self and the world around you miserable.

 

If you try to motivate people by lighting a fire under them, all you will get is burnt butts.
A much more enlightened way to motivate people is to find the fire within them and fan it.


Since we will spend the rest of our lives in the future
we need to ensure that the future we imagine and create
is the future we would prefer to live in.


Vision without action is an empty dream.
Action without vision is mindless chaos.
Vision embodied in loving action is purposeful living.


At its heart Yes!3 simply assumes and uses the belief that we are created by a loving God for a loving purpose. It is our hope and prayer that participants will discover that purpose and lovingly manifest it in the world in a way which is a blessing to others and themselves and evokes wonder and awe of the One who created it all.

What Participants Say

Rob will enhance your ability to delight in yourself, your neighbor and God through his insightful, practical, loving, professionally grounded, appreciative and often mischievous coaching and teaching skills; and that will make you a better leader and citizen in God's creation.
Ed Leidel, Episcopal Bishop and Congregational Coach serving North America