Diversity Training: Expand on Strengths or Focus on Deficits: Exploring the Diversity / Inclusion Ethos: Should We Focus on Past Failure or Expand on Previous Success?

Focus on pro-social success or antisocial missteps in diversity/inclusion? This work shares the effort to explore strength-based thinking versus deficit-based thinking as the ethos for directing diversity and inclusion. Appreciative inquiry (AI) poses a subtle, compelling, sea-changing query for the diversity and inclusion practitioners, critical thinkers, consultants, and leaders. In light of the growing interests in positive psychology, does a more efficacious path to inclusion exist? Can we find a new orthodoxy in a different approach for achieving inclusive results and pro-social behavior in human systems?