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ALP The Affective Leadership Plan Hello, my name is Maria Paviour, I am an Occupational
Psychologist; a trainer; an author; a corporate and a life coach and I have developed this
plan called the ALP Plan, or the Affective Leadership Plan, and in this little bit of
film I am going to show you what itís all about and explain the basic principles behind
it. Affective Leadership is about understanding
that everything I do is going to have an emotional affect on another person and that I am also
going to be emotionally affected by anything that anyone else does and if we can approach
leadership understanding that basic, very simple principle then that will lead us to
look quite differently at the way that we behave at work with our peers and with our
reports and with all of our colleagues and clients, so what I am looking at here are
the factors that drive emotional commitment at work and thatís a key part of Affective
Leadership because for leadership to be affective it needs to behave in such a way that it creates
true emotional commitment in others ñ that they feel totally emotionally committed. Now
this is really important because it goes beyond engagement. Engagement is something that I
can have with a task without actually being in love with my organisation. What we are
talking about here is emotional commitment: that I feel emotionally committed to the organisation
for whom I work; emotionally committed to the team and the people that I work with and
emotionally committed to my leader and these are the factors that make a difference to
that and I have put them onto a grid as you can see.
OK, so they are the basics but the grid also identifies how a lack of Affective Leadership
can lead to negative results and what I am going to show you next is how this can create
potential negative outcomes. So letís look at the possible negative results
from a lack of Affective Leadership: so taking the first box ñ the current situation; the
working-day situation and the emotional environment that people might be within. If that emotional
structure is not affective then it will result in a sense of insecurity; lack of trust; poor
communication and this will be expressed by the individuals so that their self-expression
may be incongruent; insincere; it may be manipulative; fearful; could be even deceitful; guarded
or hostile. Now when you look at that current situation you can often see how gossip; rumour;
innuendo and lies can thrive in an emotional environment that is not affective, where there
is insecurity; lack of trust and poor communication. So taking it then to the forward pathway of
the organisation ñ if your organisationís forward pathway is not affective ñ in other
words it is not responding to the emotional needs of the people in the organisation then
this can result in a sense of decent; non-cohesion; disowning - and if youíve ever been involved
with trying to implement change and youíve had people who are awkward and who wonít
support it or who show negative attitudes towards the change then you will probably
know what I mean because this is often what happens when the forward pathway is not affective
ñ itís not responding to the emotional needs of the individuals. And the way individuals
can respond to this is demonstrated through potentially boredom; apathy; maybe even stress
and at the very extreme it can result in mental health issues: people can end-up feeling depressed
or stressed in the extreme and having to have time off as a result of it and that may be
as a result of the overall picture and particularly how they view themselves in the organisation
with regards to that forward pathway. Now itís really important to note that even
with Affective Leadership there may be negative results and this is why the leader has to
carry out a two-pronged approach to Affective Leadership. They have to be active and responsive.
They have to respond actively so that they create the environment; create the approach
to the forward pathway and they have to be responsive by dealing with the individuals
on an individual basis. Now one of the things about leadership theory is it tends to have
this view that if you apply this theory itíll work and what we are saying with Affective
Leadership is we are dealing with peopleís emotions - there isnít an absolute when you
are dealing with peoplesí emotions so what we are saying is you have to be prepared to
deal individually with the issues that arise ñ you create it and then you have to deal
with the situations that come out of it ñ because, as I say everybodyís emotional response
is going to be different and to be an affective leader you have to be looking at ëHow am
I affecting the emotions of another personí and ëHow is that person affecting the emotions
of others around them ñ including myselfí and ëHow will I therefore handle that; respond
to that and take that forward positively.í
So now here you can see the same grid but as you can see at the top we are looking at
the active behaviours and the responsive behaviours and you can see how they fit into the grid:
so the active behaviours are looking actively at the environment ñ current and future ñ
and the responsive behaviours are looking at the individuals and how they respond to
the current and the future environment. So letís just summarise the graph with all the
information on there so that you can see: the current and the future; the active and
the responsive. You can see how the leader has to model the right behaviours in the current
situation and how by modelling ñ when it isnít working or where it needs fixing the
leader needs to analyse. Analyse and then work with the individuals cognitively; interrogatively.
And then if you look at the future pathway the leader needs to create the emotional future
pathway for the individuals and having done that the leader can then orientate the individuals
in terms of perspective and in terms of being adaptive. And if you get all of that right
you will go along the shaky, wobbly path of Affective Leadership because it is shaky and
wobbly because the fact is it is an emotional journey but then everything in life is an
emotional journey and at least on this emotional journey, using this plan you can make it an
emotional journey of joy and positivity. So, most theories, as I say, of leadership
are based on the concept that if the individual follows the process itís going to work. Affective
Leadership works on the basis of emotions and so how people feel affects their responses
and that is what this entire programme is built on. Built into this programme is how
to set-up the approach to Affective Leadership and the solution to individual difficulties
in making it work and for this reason, because we build both of these in we guarantee the
programme. I developed the ALP plan by building on the
traditional and the established concepts in leadership, such as: Herzberg; Reddin; Blanchard;
Adair; Belbin and many many more and combining what we already have established and accept
with the new and most up-to-date research from authors and researchers such as Daniel
Goleman; Martin Seligman; Philip Zimbardo; Brene Brown; Daniel Pink; Pamela Meyer; Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi; among others and what Iíve done also is Iíve used models and strategies
ñ some of which are quite new ñ transformational leadership; developments in transactional
analysis; cognitive behavioural therapy; neuro-linguistic programming and resilience among some - there
are others two. I suppose this whole process began ñ more
than 10 years ago - in 2002 I published a book which I had started writing in 2000 called
ëChanging Vampires into Angelsí and that was a part of this view that I had that in
organisations there are certain things that people wonít talk about and thereís one
four letter word that people wonít use - itís the only one that I can remember and itís
LOVE - and I found it frustrating that, although we are all motivated by love often more than
anything else ñ we wonít even admit to it in our working lives which is the vast amount
of time that we spend living and breathing and when I speak to some people at work and
I say to them: Do they feel emotions at work? They often deny it and say: No, they donít
have any emotions at work and if I say to them ëHave you felt angry at workí they
go ëOh yeah, of courseí and I have to remind them that anger is indeed an emotion.
We tend to have a strange idea about what emotional behaviour is and what it is not
and we also seem to have the view that to be emotional at work means to behave in a
way that is unacceptable. Every one of us, every decision we make comes from our emotions.
As Edward de Bono says you know ëYou are going to have an emotional reaction to this
so why donít you get it out there first.í It might not be logical but you need to get
it out there otherwise it actually impacts on everything that youíre trying to do. So
Iím trying to drive forward this revolution in bringing Affective Leadership into the
workplace and taking us all on a journey to joy because when we have that experience it
makes the world better for every single one of us: whether we are workers; whether we
are peers; whether we are leaders; whether we are customers: we all feel better when
we are surrounded and bathed in the joy of life and that is absolutely possible with
Affective Leadership. So join me on this crusade and Iím afraid that I havenít been able
to tell you all of the detail about the plan but you are welcome to join one of my free
programmes ñ I do run some FREE days on the ALP programme and you can find out much more
there ñ so have a look on the internet and check out my website ñ www.isynergize.co.uk
and if you want to call me then you can call me on my mobile so go onto my website and
find my number because I would love to talk to you if you have any thoughts or views that
you would like to share or if, indeed, you would like to get involved in this emotional
revolution too. I really look forward to speaking to you soon and thank you very much for listening.
Iím Maria Paviour, goodbye.