Influencing & Personal Effectiveness Skills

Developing your personal influence and impact skills

Most MBA type programmes major on the functional skills associated with strategy, finance, marketing and information technology, but they fail to address how people will utilise and leverage that knowledge through the art of effective influence. In today’s high performance organisations technical and problem solving skills are seen as a given – they are simply the ticket to entry and will only get you so far. The reality is that high performance executives differentiate themselves by possessing a superb range of people and influencing skills. It really is the big differentiator in our leaner, flatter and matrix type organisations.

This Masters Programme in Influencing and Personal Effectiveness Skills is an extremely concentrated programme of personal development and will enable you to improve – and to practice – the impact you have on those around you. You learn how best to make truly effective contributions to key decisions in your organisation. This exciting skills-based programme aims to place people and influencing skills at the heart of the Mini-MBA curriculum. It will help you develop your asset base in this most critical skill area. However in contrast to classic MBA programmes, the case studies we use will not be academic, but rather will be based on you and your own priorities.

What this programme will do for you

1 Provide a comprehensive review of YOUR individual effectiveness in influencing and impact on people in the modern workplace.

2 Deliver a unique experience to get expert and peer feedback on how other people see you in a business environment.

3 Present a highly practical and business focused skills development – The programme is centered on the business context – How we operate in:

• Presentations
• Meetings
• Negotiations
• Performance management scenarios

4 Combine insightful input on personal drives and motivations together with intensive real life business scenarios.

What this programme will do for your organisation

After 4-days this programme will deliver you back to your organisation with a full compliment of people management techniques that will significantly improve both your performance and that of those around you, including the ability to:
1 Help you utilise your full asset base of influencing skills
2 Deliver presentations with conviction, belief and influence
3 Influence and persuade others in meetings and project teams
4 Understand your personal drivers and those of your team and peers
5 Handle difficult people situations with confidence
6 Deal with conflict in a positive and constructive manner
7 Secure commitment of others to a given task
8 Manage your team to high performance
9 Negotiate win:win deals

Who should attend?

The programme will appeal to key executives who:

• Want to assess and to improve their effectiveness in influencing others
• Are technical specialists moving into a more generalist and people intensive management role
• Wish to develop greater flexibility and variety in the way that they deal with others
• Are successful but who sometimes have a problem in carrying other people along with their ideas
• Want to undertake a full review of how they impact and influence others
• Want to manage their individual strengths and drives so that it attracts rather than pushes people away
• Feel frustrated that their ideas and strengths are not getting heard in meetings and other situations
• Find it difficult to say “No” to others
• Feel that they are not always getting the credit they deserve
• Get frustrated when they see others getting credit for using their same ideas

Consequently the programme is applicable to specialists and managers of all levels and experiences including:

• Directors
• Experienced line managers and leaders
• New managers
• Project or team leaders
• Functional or department heads
• Supervisors
• Technical support specialists

Indeed we welcome a mixed range of experiences as it reflects the reality of the real world. Directors need to appeal to supervisors and managers need to push back against tough directors sometimes. We use that dynamic to help people learn and grow.

Day 1 – Understanding your personal brand and communicating to get the brand you want!

ARE YOU A PROJECTOR OR ATTRACTOR?

• Understanding your basic influencing drivers
• Understanding what drives other people
• Learn about the Compliance and Commitment Continuum
• Avoiding the “Judgemental” trap! and liberate yourself in dealing with others
• Thinking about your brand!

PRESENTING YOUR BRAND WITH INFLUENCE – THE BRAND YOU WANT OTHERS TO SEE

• Discover the image others see of you
• Learn about the factors that really contribute to personal power and influence
• Projecting that crucial first impression
  • the first four minutes
• Looking and sounding more confident
• Establishing effective personal contact
• Understanding ‘the autobiography of how you move’
• Recognising that you can not NOT communicate
• Managing your self image and personal brand
• Getting feedback about you and your style

UNDERSTANDING SELF AND OTHERS – INFLUENCING AND IMPACTING ON OTHERS

• Understand the notion of preferences
• Understanding what motivates and influence others
• Seeing the world as the other person sees it
• Calibrating your antennae and radar screen
• Communicating on different bandwidths to achieve what you want
• Learn about the choices you have
• Develop your flexibility
• Explore the difference between who you are and your effectiveness

Day 2 – Meeting strategies and negotiations – making sure you get noticed

SEEING MEETINGS AS A SHOP WINDOW FOR YOUR BRAND

• Achieving real influence in meetings
• Understand what successful people do
• Learn about the essential do’s and don’ts
• Developing a new set of meeting strategies
• Strategies for maximum impact in meetings
• Getting your ideas across
• Handling awkward situations – frustration, anger and other emotions

DEVELOPING YOUR RANGE OF INFLUENCING SKILLS

• The fundamentals of successful negotiating skills
• Learn about strategies and tactics
• Negotiating scenarios – one-to-one, team meeting, commercial and third party
• Planning routines which increase the probability of success
• The classic behaviours of a successful negotiator
• Assessing individual negotiating styles – how can I improve?
• Dealing with difference styles
• Conflict evolution

Day 3 – Managing people performance – The differentiator for a high performance manager

UNDERSTAND YOUR INTERNAL DIALOGUE AS A DRIVER OF SUCCESS

• Learn how your internal conversations drive your behaviour
• See the linkage between what you do and how you see yourself
• Identify your positive and negative belief patterns
• Apply it managing yourself and others

GETTING READY FOR MANAGING A DIFFICULT PEOPLE SCENARIO

• Identifying assertive, passive and aggressive behaviours
• Recognising the emotional triggers you respond to
• Recognising where I am – too strong? Too soft?
• Learning to be assertive
• Saying ‘No’ without feeling guilty
• Applying strategies to manage other non-assertive behaviour
• The toolbox of effective assertiveness techniques

REAL LIFE CASE SCENARIOS

• A safe low risk and confidential environment
• Working on your people management challenges!
  • The problem is my boss?
  • The problem is my colleague?
  • I have got a difficult customer?
• Analysis and skills practice
• Practical improvement strategies
• Feedback review

Day 4 – Pulling it all together – Making it happen

• Recognising your values – what it is you want in life and career
• Feedback consolidation
• What I have learnt about myself and others
• Where you are now – and where you want to be!
• Key learning reviews
• Overcoming obstacles and reaching your goals
• Making it happen – Action planning
• Programme summary and review

FACILITATED WORKSHOP
The last day session is driven as a facilitated workshop/review to enable people to reflect on their learning and feedback and develop real commitments to moving forward. The trainer will spend time coaching the participants, one-to-one and in groups to ensure they have successfully identified their strengths and weaknesses.

They will consolidate the learning from the previous three days to build an effective action plan that will enable them to employ the tactics and techniques developed back in the workplace to overcome difficult people situations, apply maximum influence in meetings, presentations and negotiations and ultimately become a high performance manager.

Expert training faculty

Mark Thomas is a successful international business consultant who has worked with some of the world’s major businesses in the fields of strategy, change management, human resources and individual executive development. He is a highly experienced speaker and business presenter who has worked in over 40 different countries around the world. As a consultant he has successfully sold major consulting projects and development initiatives. In addition to his consulting work Mark has authored several books on his key specialist people skills areas.
Prior to becoming a Partner with Performance Dynamics, he worked for several years with PriceWaterhouse Management Consultants in London. He has advised on the business and organisational change issues arising out of strategic reviews and both private and public sector re-organisations. This ‘Mini-MBA’ in People and Interpersonal Skills is a source of pride to him in the way it really helps individuals to understand how they can operate.

Nick Kelly has worked as a consultant, coach and trainer in management development since 1999 within many organisations at a senior level. Nick began his career with Price Waterhouse and then joined Towry Law as its first HR and IT Director just prior to flotation on the London Stock Exchange. He then went on to work at director level in several financial organisations. Since 1996, Nick has managed HR teams for five companies across 27 countries through one public listing, three business divestitures, two acquisitions and one merger. He brings real experience of corporate change to his consultancy practice.

Positive Persuading and Influencing Skills

The Mini-MBA

Essential HR Duties for People Managers

This course qualifies for the following CPD programmes:

• Cert: 0.00 hours

• Addax Petroleum Services Ltd
• AlSalam Bank
• AXA Liabilities Managers
• Bayer HealthCare
• Centro
• Cummins Inc
• Estee Lauder Cosmetics Ltd
• European Broadcasting Union
• European Central Bank
• European Patent Office
• Ingram Micro Europe BVBA
• Innova Capital
• ITA
• Knowledge Pool Group Ltd
• Logitall AB
• MacIntyre
• Nagy Es Trocsanyi Ugyvedi Iroda
• Nomura International Plc
• Overseal
• Premier Oil Far East Ltd
• Reckitt Benckiser Italia S.P.A
• Sanger Associates Ltd
• Shire Pharmaceuticals
• Single Buoy Moorings
• Telenor doo
• Toyota Financial Services
• Tyco Electronics UK Ltd
• United Therapeutics Europe Ltd
• Wintershall-Libya
• WRAP