Affective Management in a Challenging Environment

Affective Management in a Challenging Environment

I.Desired Learning Outcomes

Participants will enhance their ability to assess the affective stateof a group.
Look at it as a process – being detached from the case study was helpful
Analysis and looking for root causes
Process – analyze conditions and inventory the causes of those conditions and align the tools with the causes and not the conditions themselves
Treat the disease not the symptoms
Participants will learn tools/techniques to manage affective behavior.
Don’t know the tools and techniques to use
Making them generalizable and transferable was our growth
Conflict resolution, facilitations, assessment, training, preparation and collaboration, consensus building
Participants will learn how to shift management of affective behavior to the group they are working with.
Team 3 shifted the management to the group
Shifting the management to the group would have elevated their performance sooner, skill-development
Transitions to conditions, to causes, to tools. As you get engaged in cognitive activities it addresses the affective state.

II. Activity: Case Study Presentation with peer assessment

Critical questions (20 minutes)
What is the current state and the three root causes of the affective behavior?
What do you see as the positive future state (goal state)?
How do we leverage the current state?
What are the stages from the present state to the target state, and what are the tools needed to facilitate change?
Presentations (5 minutes per team)
Peer Assessment: Transferability of tools to other contexts (2 minutes per team)

Closure Activity: What are the common principals (2 minutes)?
Resources
Constructive Intervention p. 83-90 (Binder)
Accelerator Model p. 95 (Binder)
Assess team and individual performance p. 176 (Binder)
Provide constructive interventions based on process, not content p. 176 (Binder)

CASE 4 – music at church

root causes: strong opinions (disgruntled board member) – music outside comfort zone

music director (lack of appreciation for his art)

board chairman - facilitator

future state: everyone agree on a shared vision of musical worship

leverage current state: invoke higher expectations for behavior in church setting

resolution plan: invoke higher principles to detach from emotional state

Assessment:

S: tracing emotions to root causes

S: used activity questions to format report

I: Tools—facilitation & conflict resolution => align tools to root causes, conditions confounded with causes makes it difficult to transfer; cause was lack of respect based on differing values that were not identified

Insight: defining roles can illuminate different causes/patterns that can be used to enrich problem solving/conflict resolution

CASE 2– community service project

root cause: fear of saying something because they would look stupid (students)

students did not trust teacher with respect to project (students)

instructor did not provide performance criteria for students (facilitator)

instructor was impatient and proceeded too quickly

future state: students are excited, engaged, prepared, creative and implementing plans

leverage current situation: use rephrasing of quest speaker, clarifying expectations, clearly connect activity with course requirements

tools/techniques: engage passions of students – looks good on resume

provide learning objectives & performance criteria for project

make a follow-up assignment on WEB CT

teacher divide group into teams with specific tasks

use preparatory activity

Assessment:

S: Root causes are fairly orthogonal/independent allowing for mapping of tools to causes

S: Analysis of tools available for ‘repair mode’

I: Collaboration between spokesperson/recorder for better flow of story and explanation of discoveries leading to better understanding of opportunities for transferability

Insight: Skills used in managing challenging situations are similar to problem solving but involve a host of other skills from the affective domain (conflict management requires more than just raw problem solving ability)

CASE 3 – City Council participation by HS students

root causes: city council members prejudging students (interpret lack of attendance as apathy), students not able to attend because of inconvenient time/place of council meetings

future state: teacher wants to see students actively participate in city council meetings, like other civic stakeholders

tools: conduct gap analysis, train stakeholders, switch to assessment mindset, engage in scheduling/planning to insure desired outcome

Assessment:

S: Problem well-stated and analyzed leading to several tools that can be easily transferred.

S: Using values: leverage current set of values to produce buy-in, this can move mountains

I: Changing behavior (on part of students) must be brought about through some knowledge acquisition, not just a change in attitude

I: Asking an entity to do an assessment without training or performance criteria may not be value-added

Insight:Adopting an assessment mindset is a good catalyst for shifting a paradigm

Assessment => desire to improve quality; openness to change

Debriefing Session:

S: Engaging Participants: setting up compelling scenarios that teams found enjoyable

I: Engaging Participants: increase frequency of interaction (join tables)

S: Responsiveness of Participants: open to interactions, listened to discussion, provided clarification

S: Responsiveness of Participants: body language that welcomed participants

S: Communication-strong communication of activity outcomes and clear instructions for group activity => high group productivity

I: Communication: check spelling to avoid distraction

S: Communication: Tone of voice telegraphed confidence and relaxation in role

Insight: Once criteria are defined this leads to better discipline that is associated with participant relaxation