Staying Positive Step 5

Outcomes

To achieve Step 5, learners will show persistence in the face of setbacks, and also be able to positively influence the emotional reactions of others.

In earlier steps, the focus was on how learners focus on their own emotional response to things going wrong. This next step focuses on engaging with others and supporting them to manage their emotional responses too.

Learners need to be able to:

• Recognise others’ emotional responses to something going wrong

• Cheer up others when something goes wrong

Introduction

• Often our immediate reaction to things going wrong is to feel sad, angry or scared.

• We should expect that other people might have a similar set of reactions to something going wrong. 

• We might be able to use clues from their facial expressions, behaviour or things that they say to help us to understand what they are feeling. 

Teach & Apply

• As well as reading facial expressions and body language to understand how others are feeling, there are other factors to think about when something goes wrong:

  • They might react based on what the consequences of that might be.

  • They might also look to blame someone or something else for what went wrong.

• When thinking about what will cheer other people up, it’s important to start by thinking about how they are feeling. If someone feels sad, you might listen to them; if angry, you may give them a chance to calm down; if scared, you can reassure them.

• The better you know the other individuals who are involved, the easier it usually is to think about what will be most effective in getting them back into a positive emotional state.

Reflection & Assessment

Embed these strategies across your teaching and coaching to help learners apply what they’ve learnt.

• This step lends itself well to reinforcement in activities where there are opportunities for learners to work together. In these cases, there will inevitably be setbacks or things that go wrong, and these provide opportunities for learners to apply their skill of being able to cheer others up.

Use these ideas for ways of assessing this skill step to help you check learners’ understanding and confidence.

• This step can be assessed through a hypothetical exercise where learners are presented with different characters displaying different behaviours and either discuss or write about how they might cheer them up after something has gone wrong.

• Ask these reflective questions:

  • How do you think other people feel when something goes wrong?

  • How might you be able to tell?

  • How can you cheer other people up when something goes wrong?