The workshop includes the famous Radical influencing exercise – how to free your hostage!

After hiking towards a glacier in Denali National Park Alaska, we were making camp near a small dreary lake. Suddenly I heard my friend saying: “Michael there’s a bear here, it is on this side of the lake”. And there he was, a 250 pounds Grizzly not more than 10 feet away…frightened to our underwear we followed through with the recommended protocol for bear encounters in the wild…we waved our hands and begged him not to snack on us…years later I had a similar bearish encounter with a CFO at a fortune 100 company; this time waving my hands above my head was futile; our team had to come up with an influence approach fast!

There is no right way, nor is there only one way to influence others. Your job requires you to influence just about all of the time. It may take the form of gaining support, inspiring others, persuading other people to become your champions, engaging someone’s imagination, creating relationships. Whatever form it takes, being an excellent influencer makes your job easier.

This one day training provides practical hands on experience of influence, primarily in a matrix organization; where informal power is the driver for success. We equip you with relevant best practice tools: you will be involved in recreating and re-running real interpersonal situations using the learning to discover specific behavioural patterns, relate to them, investigate different approaches and learn how to influence without authority.

Based on OODA loop framework, developed by military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd; we learn Michael’s model of the 4 components to Influence without Authority:

· Situation (Observe)

· Perception (Orient)

· Decision (Decide)

· Strategy (Act)

Each component is presented, discussed and synthesized through a hands-on pair or team activity.

Workshop objectives: 

1. Learn best practices for leading and influencing without authority;

2. Identify skills you need to effectively and ethically influence others;

3. Explore the persuading and influencing scale;

4. Practice energy/style/behaviors of influencing – push, pull and reduce;

5. Learn the power levers of influencing;

6. Experiment with the formula to saying NO!;

Who should attend? 

·  Engineers and developer, architects and business analysts, required to persuade others in teams and in business;

· Project, Program and portfolio managers who need to gain support from business and development;

· Product owners, Scrum masters and teams looking to further their ideas in a collaborative environment;

· Generally – those wishing to learn how to perform their job better by enlisting the support of others

Based on Michael’s bestseller :

Project Influence and Leadership: Building Rapport in Teams

What do participants receive? 

· Course slides handout – printed

· Best practices to influence without authority

· Pair interaction practices to impact influencing styles

· FREE downloadable PDF of influencing styles

· How to Influence a Polar bear – Radical influencing one page summary downloadable PDF