Influencing Skills

There's nothing mysterious about influencing skills - they can be practised and developed just like any others. Do your colleagues really understand the influence they already have?
Would they like to acquire the interpersonal skills needed to improve their influence, and with it, their personal power?
Successful people are skilled in establishing rapport and gaining commitment from colleagues and customers. These 22 activities give participants the skills to achieve this. Each activity has an introductory section with background information and advice, so you can use the proven activities with confidence.
Authors: David Cleeton and David Sharman
Pages: 362
'OK to copy' pages: 115

ContentsDEVELOPING A NETWORK OF INFLUENCE

1. Building Your Network
This activity is an important building block in any workshop or activity on influencing skills. It is designed to help those who need to understand how to develop and use influence within an organisation. It can also be used as part of training programmes on interpersonal and personal organisation skills.

2. Sources of Power - Positional and Personal
This activity covers an essential topic for any workshop on influencing skills. The material can also be used to support training courses in assertiveness or conflict management. It is very useful for people who want to be more influential in organisations that emphasise positional power and authority.

3. Building Trust
This activity is an exploration that can be used to enhance the value that participants place on the interpersonal skills of power and influence. If trust is a cultural issue for the group, for example in blame cultures, this can be a very valuable session. Its usefulness will largely depend on the appropriateness of this topic to the participants, but it is of particular benefit to those who wish to move away from using authority as the means for making things happen.

4. Overcoming the Swamp - Strategies for Influencing Others
This activity is most useful at the end of a training programme just before the final review. It gives participants a clear plan of what to do next within their organisation to implement a change which has already been identified as important. It helps trainers to build into any training programme an opportunity for participants to work through new ideas or plans they have developed during the training by applying them to a real problem. It is particularly effective if there is a review or follow-up day planned during which the results of any action taken since the training programme can be discussed. This is an exercise to help participants to focus on situations or problems; it is not about interpersonal skills.

5. Power Plus - Perceptions of Power
This is a short module which can be used to bring people back to concentration after a break. Both the activities in this module complement the Positive Influence model in Module 6. In addition it can very suitably be linked to Module 2, Sources of Power - Positional and Personal.

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS FOR INFLUENCE

6. Positive Influencing Behaviour
This module introduces the foundation skills required for influencing others and provides a useful base from which to launch any programme of training in interpersonal relationships.

7. Listening Actively to Influence
This session can be used as part of any interpersonal skills programme. It links well with Modules 8, 9 and 10 of this Training Resource on Establishing Rapport and Engaging Skills.

8. Establishing Rapport 1 - Influencing a Client or Sponsor
This module provides essential training for those who want to influence or communicate more effectively. It would normally come near the beginning of any extended session on influencing skills. It can also be used as part of an interpersonal skills training event such as customer care.

9. Establishing Rapport 2 - Pacing and Leading to Influence
This is an important observational skill for people who want to influence others in a wide range of situations. It can be applied in any situation where it is necessary to communicate more effectively. It would normally come near the beginning of an influencing skills event and can also form part of a programme of interpersonal skills training such as customer care or sales. It is recommended that this module is used together with Module 8, Establishing Rapport 1. It should not be used on its own unless the group is very familiar with the concept of rapport in work situations.

10. Influencing Others - Engaging Skills
This module provides useful material for people wishing to develop their influence skills in meetings, interviews and other forms of discussions. This activity can be used alongside others if there is a need to explore listening and body language in more depth. It is most effective when used in conjunction with Module 11 of this Training Resource on Channelling Skills.

11. Influencing Others - Channelling Skills
This session is principally for people who wish to develop both the verbal and non-verbal aspects of channelling skills in meetings, interviews and other types of discussion. Channelling skills are the hard influencing techniques and it is recommended that this module is used in conjunction with Module 10 of this training resource, which covers the soft influencing skills of engaging.

12. at Meetings - The Skills of the Chairperson
This exercise can be used as a team-building exercise, as part of a team-building event or as part of a team leadership or management skills programme.

13. Managing Conflict - Key Skills for Influencing Meetings
This activity can be used for groups that want to improve the effectiveness of their meetings and is also very useful as a team-building activity. It can follow on from Module 12 of this Training Resource as it deals with similar skills.

14. Dealing with Conflict - Techniques for Releasing Tension
The techniques used in this session are sometimes included in assertiveness training programmes, but they are equally applicable to training in the skills of influence. They are suitable for anyone who meets conflict in the workplace. This activity can be used to supplement assertiveness, customer service or conflict management training, in a wide range of different interpersonal skills programmes.

PLANNING AND PREPARATION FOR INFLUENCE

15. Building Enthusiasm and Commitment
This exercise can be used as a light-hearted introduction to training in team-building. It highlights the value of setting objectives and getting organised in order to generate commitment. It also shows the value of integrating new members into an existing team quickly.

16. Planning to Influence - Hard or Soft?
This module provides valuable advice when planning for interviews, meetings and discussions. It is recommended that participants should be familiar with the concepts of engaging and channelling skills which are covered in other modules within this Training Resource before they undertake the activities in this module.

17. The Sunflower Analysis
This module is especially useful for anyone who needs to make changes in organisational situations where the first steps to initiate a change are not clear. It introduces influencing techniques based on the two well known concepts of Open Systems Theory and Force Field Analysis. It does not include any interpersonal skills development.

18. Upward Influencing - Exploring Expectations
This module provides an essential set of skills for anyone wanting to influence their manager or someone in a position of authority. It would normally be used during an extended session on influencing skills. The module can be used in conjunction with Module 19 in this training resource and can also be used with other interpersonal skills training courses.

19. Upward Influencing - How are We Working Together?
This module can be used in conjunction with Module 18 of this Training Resource. It introduces participants to the analytical skills necessary for anyone who wants to influence their manager or someone in an authority position. It would normally come towards the end of any extended session of influencing skills. It can also be used in conjunction with other interpersonal skills training.

20. Influencing Difficult Situations
The activities in this module are most useful when the participants already have well developed interpersonal skills and some knowledge of conventional strategies for influencing. It is likely that the participants are facing a specially difficult or challenging situation where they need to use everything they know to get another person to behave in a new way.

21. A Working Contract - Assessing Your
The material in this module can be used as a set of assessment instruments for self-development of the influence skills applied to establishing a working contract. It can also be part of a programme for participants who are required to help others in counselling roles, developers acting as internal consultants or managers wanting to conduct performance management reviews.

22. Achieving Positive Outcomes - Dovetailing
This module provides a useful approach to influencing strategy that can be applied in any situation. The activities in this module are helpful for anyone who needs to apply influencing skills when negotiating.