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Affective Skills

The affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom, Masia, 1973) includes the manner in which we deal with things emotionally, such as feelings, values, appreciation, enthusiasms, motivations, and attitudes. In the course of your work, you will be expected to:

• Display affective skills such as being flexible when things do not go according to plan, demonstrating emotional maturity and awareness of inner emotional experience;

• Negotiate differences and handle conflicts, including acknowledging own role in difficult interactions

• Provide effective feedback to others; accept, evaluate and implement feedback from others, including your supervisor and multi-disciplinary team

• Manage difficult communication, including seeking clarification in challenging interpersonal communications

• Tolerate your client’s and even their families’ feelings, attitudes and wishes, so as to maintain and/or promote therapeutic dialogue

Adapted from: American Psychological Association

Here are some ideas and resources to spark your learning and thinking: 

How to manage a conflict

You may be guilty of blaming others in conflict first before examining your own contribution to the conflict – no matter how small. If so, you are just like how most of us manage conflicts. Yet as psychologists, you would also be aware that when we take ownership of our reaction to others’ actions, we can be free to be happy and productive, no matter what they do.

In this short article - When Faced with Conflict, Try an Introspective Approach, the author provides a few tips to help with adopting an introspective approach:

1. Clarify exactly what happened

2. Explore why it triggered you

3. Address your own fears

4. Communicate with clarify and compassion

How to give helpful feedback

Giving feedback might be one of the most challenging activities we will need to navigate at the workplace – be it delivering feedback to your peers, your supervisors or other professionals. We found a free online course to give you the confidence to deliver both negative and positive feedback successfully and to leave the person receiving feedback with their dignity. 

In this course - Giving Helpful Feedback, you will cover the seven essential skills of giving helpful feedback:

·        Skill 1: Focus on Specific Behaviour

·        Skill 2: Keep it Impersonal

·        Skill 3: Keep it Goal-Oriented

·        Skill 4: Keep it Well-Timed

·        Skill 5: Ensure Understanding

·        Skill 6: Make Sure it is Controllable

·        Skill 7: Tailor the Feedback to Fit the Employee

Write reflective narratives

Writing reflective narratives invites you to look at what you did and how you did it, and perhaps accept that you did it well – or that you now see how you could do it better next time. One model to consider is the Gibbs’ Model of Reflection.

Gibbs’ Model of Reflection is commonly used in education, healthcare and psychology. The 6 stages of Gibbs’ Reflective Model starts with: 1) Description; 2) Feelings; 3) Evaluation; 4) Analysis; 5) Conclusions; and 6) Personal Action Plan.

In this qualitative study, the authors concluded that using Gibbs’ reflective model for reflective narratives is an unconventional, innovative method to learn the necessary competencies in the affective domain, with particular reference to empathetic clinician, communicator and professional.

Wisdom can also be learnt by reflection on dilemmas that are encountered in practice and that by using reflection-on-action practitioners can continue to develop their practice. This reflective transfer enables the learner/practitioner to carry some explicit theory to new situations where it can be tested, found valid and interesting, or reinvented. Find out more in this article.