'Secrets of successful influencing' with Phil Lowe

In the modern organisation, where hierarchies are steadily blurring or disappearing altogether, it is an almost daily occurrence that you need someone to do something for you over whom you have no formal authority: they most likely work for a different boss, in a different team, in a different part of the business; they are time poor and overwhelmed with their own priorities. Why should they take notice of you?

Secrets of successful influencing will show you how you can influence without taking authority, by taking more care in planning the conversation and bringing more flexibility to the way you conduct it.

 As a result of attending this 3-hour workshop you will:

• Have a reliable framework to guide and plan your influencing
• Know what you want to achieve from an influencing conversation
• Be clear about the different styles you can use to influence, and understand your own preference for one over another
• Experience a sense of mastery over the dynamics of an influencing conversation.
  Be able to influence in any medium: face to face, virtually, or by email.

Specific problems the workshop addresses are:

• Opening your mouth to start influencing and realise you've given no thought to how you are going to structure the conversation
• Doing all the talking, hoping to bludgeon the other person into submission
• Having no flexibility within the conversation when you don't seem to be getting your point across successfully, behaving like an English tourist ("You don't seem to understand what I'm saying to you - I'll just keep saying the same thing louder until you do")
• Holding onto a position, with the only escape route appearing to be "split the difference"
• Thinking you've got the other person to agree, then finding later they haven't done what you expected
• Firing off emails without taking time to ensure they get your request across in the most productive way
• Worrying that because you're not in the office, you have no chance of influencing successfully

If you apply the tools covered in this workshop you will find it easy to get other people to understand your perspective and to allow them to see how doing what you are asking is in their own interests as well as yours.

Your trainer - Phil Lowe

Phil gained an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from the University of London and has spent 28 years in the field of leadership development. He previously held people development roles at PwC and Goldman Sachs. He is a faculty member of London Business School, and a former faculty member of Henley Management College and Management Centre Europe.

He has co-authored two books on management development, and was co-deviser and writer of seven series of the business-based panel game The Board Game for BBC Radio 4. He has featured as a pundit on BBC Breakfast (BBC1) Today (Radio 4) and Newstalk (Radio 5 Live).

Phil holds a BA (Hons) in English from Cambridge University, an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from London University and an MA in Screenwriting from University of the Arts London. He is licensed in the use of the Myers-Briggs Types Indicator, Insights Discovery, The FIRO measures, the Strengths Deployment Inventory, Thinking Styles, and the EQ-i measure of emotional intelligence.

The next 'Secrets to successful influencing' open workshop will be announced soon. Tickets are £25 + VAT per person.