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SOAR Leadership

Business and IT
Faculty, Research

SOAR invites representatives of all stakeholders into the conversation about an organization’s Strengths, what the organization does well; Opportunities, what are the possibilities, innovations; Aspirations, what gives people purposeful work that reflects what they value.

An article written by Professor Jacqueline Stavros of LTU’s College of Business and Information Technology has been named a “feature choice” article in the scholarly journal Appreciative Inquiry Practitioner: International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry. The article details Stavros’ SOAR approach to strategic thinking, planning, and leadership at organizations. SOAR stands for strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results. It is a method of creating strategic plans and strategies through shared conversations, collaboration, and commitment to action by all stakeholders—it engages everyone in an organization along a mutually agreed path. It differs from the traditional SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), which is typically a topdown approach. SOAR builds on an organization’s strengths and produces greater results than spending time trying to correct weaknesses, Stavros says.

In the article, Stavros chronicles where and how SOAR emerged, and how it is being used all over the world for disruptive change, particularly in the era of COVID-19. Three case studies from SOAR strategic planning exercises are also cited, including one Stavros led on LTU’s campus in the summer of 2019 for the United States Army’s “Team Warren” ground vehicle operations. In August 2020, she did it again with her co-facilitators and co-designers, Toni Benner and Keith Schweizer—this time virtually, with the support of LTU’s eLearning Services department and the videoconferencing application Zoom.

Appreciative Inquiry is an organization development model invented in the 1980s, based on the idea that organizations are created, maintained and changed by conversations, and claiming that methods of organizing were only limited by people’s imaginations and the agreements among them.

Stavros is one of the field’s leading practitioners, and the co-author of several books on the topic, “Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement,” and “The Thin Book of SOAR: Creating Strategy that Inspires Innovation and Engagement.”

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Use Your Cell Phone as a Document Camera in Zoom

  • What you will need to have and do
  • Download the mobile Zoom app (either App Store or Google Play)
  • Have your phone plugged in
  • Set up video stand phone holder

From Computer

Log in and start your Zoom session with participants

From Phone

  • Start the Zoom session on your phone app (suggest setting your phone to “Do not disturb” since your phone screen will be seen in Zoom)
  • Type in the Meeting ID and Join
  • Do not use phone audio option to avoid feedback
  • Select “share content” and “screen” to share your cell phone’s screen in your Zoom session
  • Select “start broadcast” from Zoom app. The home screen of your cell phone is now being shared with your participants.

To use your cell phone as a makeshift document camera

  • Open (swipe to switch apps) and select the camera app on your phone
  • Start in photo mode and aim the camera at whatever materials you would like to share
  • This is where you will have to position what you want to share to get the best view – but you will see ‘how you are doing’ in the main Zoom session.