Learners Recommend Persuading and Influencing Course
100% of learners would recommend the workshop
Personalised feedback and developmental action plan
Summary
The Persuading and Influencing workshop is designed to help learners build rapport, improve communications, and conduct challenging conversations within the workplace. This workshop also includes a practical section with actors, which challenges learners to try out their influencing skills using real-life scenarios. The actors push the learners to get the most out of the workshop and provide personal feedback which gives them a development plan to take away for the future.
Course Structure
- Insight into a range of influencing styles and analysis into your own dominant style
- Increased confidence in the application of the appropriate influencing and persuasion techniques at the right time
- The confidence to respond (rather than react) to difficult situations
- Developing and using assertiveness in any situation with any individual
- A simple five-step model to plan, structure and present your case
- A personal development plan, with clear actions to maximise your own effectiveness for future success
“The client wanted a simple, effective and interactive workshop where participants had some practical experience as well as new models and theories. This is the way I love to work, to increase the actual takeaways from a workshop”
– Alison, AHC Learning Ltd.
About The Client:
They provide independent assurance and work with over 220 public sector organisations.
Challenges
For an organisation like this, the need to build relationships and gather data is of paramount importance. Being able to engage clients to gain clear and insightful information can be challenging. However, with the right approach and technique, it can also be very rewarding.
This particular workshop was aimed at all levels and role types within the organisation, from new recruits who were lacking in confidence, to others who had years of experience. Many of the learners in this workshop had client-facing roles, which have changed in recent years, particularly around engaging people to capture the information required for reporting, and sometimes dealing with challenging behaviours.
In the past, gathering this information was very structured with a checklist of questions and protocols to gather the necessary information. However, we know that successful businesses now rely on building relationships with clients and in the workshop we discuss how to maintain positive relationships while still being assertive.
Other learners within the workshop had internal roles, either within facilities or corporate services such as graphics, project management etc. For the client, it is imperative that all team members within the business have excellent persuading and influencing skills. One example of this is the way the audit reports are written and this was one of the points that were raised in the workshop in 2016. Previously, a report would simply have been a long text, whereas now there is the technology and expertise available to produce graphs and charts, social media and interactive graphics. This change has meant some internal challenges while adapting from the old way to the new way, while still balancing the quality of the information presented in the report. And that’s where persuading and influencing comes in again.
What We Did
When the client reached out to AHC Learning Ltd., they were keen for team members to have a better understanding of how people might react to the things they say. They wanted to be able to improve communications both internally with other team members, and externally when dealing with outside organisations and clients.
In this workshop, we had a range of roles from reception colleagues to senior management. This worked well for us, because it reflected the real-life scenarios within an organisation, where staff may be interacting with people who are at different levels. Although the client is part of the public sector, they also build proposals for business alongside private organisations, meaning they compete at a corporate level. The way they persuade and influence directly drives the quality of the reports that they produce.
“Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted… Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?”
– Dale Carnegie – How To Win Friends And Influence People
Results/ Feedback
For the Persuading and Influencing workshop, we used actors for a role-playing scenario based on real-life situations. In this case, the introduction of actors was particularly useful because people can often be too nice when role-playing with their colleagues, or else they become quite challenging; whereas we really want to focus on persuading and influencing. The actors are able to push the delegates to practice the tools they have learnt.
In addition to the actors, the workshop also offers peer-to-peer feedback of the role-play, which allows the delegates to learn things about themselves that they don’t already know. This taps into a theory known as Johari’s Window – a technique used to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others, and learn how others may observe or perceive them.
At the end of the workshop we have an action plan called “stop, start, continue” which looks back at all the material covered and asks the delegates what behaviours they are going to stop doing, start doing, and also the continue section where it’s important to recognise what people are already doing successfully.
“Alison is very knowledgeable and has a great delivery style. Fantastic trainer”
“Great at bringing out the best in people”
“One of the better courses that I have been on. Can really see lots of areas where this can be used in my role. Great delivery and information.”
“Really valuable day – great to get personally-adapted feedback and discussions. Much better than just learning theory”
- 100% of learners would recommend the workshop
- Average feedback score of 92% from the evaluation questions
“Our workshops aren’t about pointing out where people are doing things wrong; it’s about recognising where they are already doing it right, leveraging those strengths, sharing them internally and using them to enhance business relationships.”
– Alison, AHC Learning Ltd.
Does your organisation need to improve its persuading and influencing skills?
Since 2001, AHC Learning Ltd. have excelled in delivering personal and professional learning and development workshops. We aim to make a real difference while forming true and lasting partnerships with our clients, enabling us to deliver the right solution at the right time.
Contact me today for a chat about how I can help your business achieve its goals.