Staying Positive Step 9

Staying Positive: The ability to use tactics and strategies to overcome setbacks and achieve goals.

Step 9: I look for opportunities in difficult situations, and adapt plans to use these opportunities

Outcomes

To achieve Step 9, learners will show that they can adapt their plans in response to challenging situations to keep going.

In the two previous steps, the focus was on how to identify opportunities in difficult situations – first as an individual, and then in the context of working with others. This step builds on these by introducing the need for action as a result of this analysis.

Learners need to be able to:

Review a situation to find the positives and negatives
Adapt plans to make the most of those opportunities and avoid threats

Introduction

In previous steps, we looked at how to try to identify opportunities in the middle of difficult situations. We saw how there are almost always positive sides to events, or at least things that can be done to make a difficult situation slightly better.

Skill Starter

Positive Solutions

Show learners images of sports people in difficult situations, for example, losing a tennis match, falling behind in rowing. Ask them to talk about what the sports people could do in that situation and how they could make it better.

10 mins

Group activity

Discussion

Teach & Apply

If we are going to be adapting our plans, it is important that we get as full a view of a situation as possible. One tool is called a SWOT analysis, which stands for: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
- First we identify strengths - those things that we are good at - and weaknesses - those areas not going well or that we feel we are not as good at.
- Then we think about the situation we are in, identifying the opportunities and threats.
If we are adapting plans, it is important that we don’t lose sight of what the goal of the activity is, what we are trying to achieve.
Then we can think about how we can change our plans. We can use the opportunities and our strengths to inform our plan, whilst avoiding any of our weaknesses or threats.

Optional Activity

Plan to Adapt

Pause part-way through a game/activity. In groups of 3 or 4, learners share a scenario that they found particularly difficult. Learners discuss together all possible reasons for this difficult situation.

Groups then come up with ideas to address each of the reasons that might have positive benefits and how they will adapt their actions accordingly. Take feedback and record their ideas.

Resume the game and praise learners using their adapted plans.

5 mins

Group activity

Discussion

Reflection & Assessment

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

When learners are faced with difficult situations, ask them to consider the opportunities presented and remind them to use a SWOT analysis to weigh up their approach with moving forward.

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

Use learners’ personal reflections from the activities they completed during the session.
Ask these reflective questions:
- How can we make sure we fully understand a difficult situation?
- What do we need to think about if we’re going to change our plans as a result?
- How can we use our understanding of ourselves and the situation to adapt our plans?