Influencing Skills

Workshop Details

Objectives in training in influencing skills

	Better understand the concept and dimensions of influence, and how they apply in your work (and life)
	Identify elements of influential behaviour
	Consider how you could use these elements to enhance your own influence
	Choose some of the attributes of influence and develop a plan to to use them in normal workplace circumstances, including when:
	There is indifference or opposition to the objectives you need to accomplish Communicating in both written and verbal form. This includes Framing and re-framing Giving feedback Having difficult conversations Debriefing Managing clients through the change process (and grief cycle) Dealing with negativity in many forms
	Develop personal strategies to become more influential in the longer term and particularly
	Become more proactive in your relationships with your clients Understand more about power and its abuse
	Become more effective within your organisation. Appreciate that effectiveness is more than having the right technical approaches

Material prepared to be highly relevant to client situation and delivered experientially using the principles of Action Learning and Adult Learning. All participants prepare action plans for implementation of their selected strategies and actions after the workshop.

	For internal and external consultants - we don't have any power but we may have some influence - in fact, influence is all we have
	Relevant to anyone who works with others!

1. Understanding influence - the big picture - then focusing in on your situation

• The concept
• The basics - rapport, body language, conversation
• Influential writers on influence - Aristotle, Carnegie, Maister, Cialdini
• Positive communication
• Attributes of influential people
• Self-awareness, Emotional intelligence
• Power vs Influence -
  • - sources of power
    - extent and limits of each
    - use and abuse
• Identifying and managing the politics on internal consulting
• My immediate 'sphere of influence'
• Moving from the technician to the Trusted Advisor

2. Practical applications - using influencing skills in specific circumstances

• Cialdini's 'weapons of compliance'
• Framing
• Managing relationships

  Characteristics of relationships & building trust

  Your relationship maintenance program

• Setting and clarifying client expectations
• Client meetings - key features
• 'Tricky situations'
• Tactics:

  Settings: time and place, environment
  Body language
  Verbal language: what to say, what not to say

• Assessing client / audience perspectives
• Preparing for persuasion

3. Difficult Conversations

• Delivering and receiving feedback
• Managing de-briefing - self and group
• In the context of the grief cycle

  - delivering bad news
  - dealing with complaints
  - dealing with 'difficult people'
  - managing the change process
  - dealing with resistance

The Next Step

For a discussion on your requirements, please contact Ian Benjamin at Consultant Training Australia.
Telephone: 03 9593 1678 or 0419 593 167