Positive Persuading and Influencing Skills

Course overview

Why you should attend this seminar

How well you relate to other people and use a wide range of techniques to influence them will decide your level of corporate success.

New management techniques focus on collaboration across boundaries, improved communication, negotiation skills, motivation and teamwork. In addition contemporary organisational life is changing from a fixed hierarchical approach to loose networking with a wide range of people from different disciplines and a variety of cultures. Furthermore, the common theme affecting most organisations is CHANGE and all that this implies: competition, increased economic upheaval, reorganisation, remote working, instability and potential conflict.

In order to achieve success in this climate, leaders and managers need three things:
1 Improved inter-dependent working across functions and even cultural boundaries
2 Increased self-awareness – how they come across to others
3 Great communication, self-projection and influencing skills
This programme is aimed at helping individuals to improve in all of these areas in a concentrated workshop environment.

Who should attend?

This programme has been specifically designed for all those who need to raise their profile, make an impact, improve visibility and influence people to achieve business goals, especially

Department heads
Managers
Team leaders
Supervisors
Management assistants and PA’s

What are the objectives of this seminar

Attending this seminar will help you:
1 Understand and define behaviours, which lead to effective interpersonal communication at different levels inside and outside the organisation
2 Provide insights into human behaviour at work
3 Identify some of the more challenging obstacles to effective communication in the organisation
4 Learn how to prepare for one-to-one and one-to-group communication
5 Develop a personal effectiveness ‘action plan’ for the future
6 Acquire and practise communication skills which lead to improved relationships with customers, bosses, colleagues and subordinates
7 Explore strategies for handling difficult people and situations
8 Learn how to work with individuals from different functions and cultural backgrounds
9 Explore techniques for working with individuals and teams in remote locations
10 Record and evaluate progress and performance

Programme

Introduction

Defining personal effectiveness (scene setting, terms of reference – behaviour and personality – group work and discussion)
Understanding the business climate and how this impacts on personal effectiveness

Behavioural influences (self-awareness)

Factors which influence human behaviour at home and at work
Family and parents – genetic, gender and generation influences
Culture and ethnicity
Understanding the difference between negative manipulation and influencing with integrity

Understanding the diverse forces which influence motivational response

Mindsets
Gender
Generation and age
Nationality and regionality
Behavioural styles
Leadership and management styles

Communication models that work

An introduction to EI (Emotional Intelligence) – EI self-mapping tools
How to read and interpret other peoples’ behaviour
Calibrating – pacing and/or leading – Neuro Linguistic Programming concepts and skills
Defining and distinguishing positive and negative behaviours
Examining and exploring passive, aggressive and assertive behaviour
Techniques for assertiveness
Analysing behaviour patterns – self-others using the people mapping and behavioural toolkit

Communication skills workshop

Developing communication strategies that work – The 4 Boxes Model
Planning communication: starting, maintaining and ending discussion
Techniques for involving others
Listening skills: theory and practice – open and closed questions, summarising and clarifying
Learning to: ‘say no’, handle criticism, express criticism, make requests
E-Persuasion and influencing – using IT tools such as email and teleconferencing to persuade and influence from a distance
Dealing with difficult customers, colleagues, bosses and staff
Managing conflict and aggressive behaviour – dealing with anything from veiled threats to abusive outbursts
Techniques for ‘self-projection’
Working with non-verbal communication
Managing conflict and stressful communication – response vs. reaction
Evaluating performance and planning for improvement – follow-up

The expert presenter

The expert trainer

Robert Hersowitz is a highly experienced trainer who has worked extensively with many organisations covering a wide spectrum of professions and disciplines. He has been involved with both private enterprise and the public sector, helping large and small scale organisations to radically improve their managerial effectiveness by helping individuals to acquire, transfer, refine, apply and build new skills and techniques in the workplace.