As part of a training course, I need to cover influencing skills and provide participants with a chance to practice. Their work situation is slightly unusual in that the people they need to exert influence over have little commitment to ensuring deadlines are met. Could anyone provide me with content for a training exercise that show participants how they can influence someone to meet a deadline even if they have little commitment to do so?
Sally Henderson1
3 Responses
Influencing the un-committed!
Sally
This sounds rather a tall order! Some are clearly unlikely to come to the party if there is really no benefit for them to be there!
But it isn’t necessarily all bleak. I use a mixture of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, to show how different ‘types’ will be most likely be influenced, FIRO-B to explore our varying psychological needs for inclusion, control and affection/openness, often some strategic planning tools with the right audiences to explore underlying goals and objectives, and some more personal motivational analysis where this appears to be at odds with the organisation.
Without more detail, I hope this gives you some useful food for thought.
For more senior teams, I also like to use some time to explore the psychology of change; attitude, behaviour and personality, and which of these we can realistically and ethically manage; and case study. Many managers have little formal understanding of these concepts and the people they manage/’influence’ – and usually find this basic understanding particularly helpful.
Best wishes!
Jeremy Thorn
Chairman QED
Doncaster
01302 761222
I’m interested too!
I’m interested in this too – with the additional complexity that we are often having to influence people from different cultures who do not have the same work motivations as we do. I’d like to improve the influencing skills of managers so that they are better able to motivate their staff. Any help greatly appreciated, Philippa Forsyth
commitment annd influencing skills
How did you get on? Do let me know? I’d be glad to help further if I can.
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