How to Influence People

“Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy”

Aristotle

Have you ever felt that you could have performed a lot better after you had a conversation with someone? Did you wonder why you didn’t handle it better? Have you ever said ‘Yes’ to someone’s request when what you really wanted to say was ‘No’? You deal with people professionally and personally everyday. Any new skill that improves your communication with your colleagues, bosses, clients and your family can have profound effects on your self-esteem, personality and subsequently your productivity. We all know how miscommunication can lead to inefficiencies and cost us dearly.

Influencing is a skill that we simply learn as we grow up by copying others around us or based on our experience in life. However, this can be limiting as we may never come across certain techniques and fail to understand that there could be an easier way to influence others. Fortunately, a systematic training such as this course can significantly help individuals to become better at this skill.

The ability to influence others is an incredibly important skill. Business environments can benefit from the existence of people who are well versed in the art of influence since they can handle situations better, are more emotionally skilled and can mitigate conflicts or difficult situations quickly.

Why Influence Others 

You can:

• Sell your ideas or products to others more naturally
• Lead others more effectively
• Teach or train others more easily
• Become more productive as a results of better communication with others
• Persuade others to follow you for a cause 
• Change people’s opinion to match your desired state; change a “No” to a “Yes”

An Example

Let’s consider an example.

Suppose a supervisor wants to get a member of his staff to come to work on time. The first attempt may go like this:

Supervisor: “Jane, I want you to be on time when you come to the office!”

Jane agrees, makes an effort to be on time next time, though after a couple of weeks falls back to her original habit. The supervisor calls her again and says,

Supervisor: “Jane, this is not acceptable. We had a chat about this and you agreed to sort it out. If you are late again, I have no choice to reduce your salary or you need to find yourself another job!”

Jane is completely taken back by this. She simply didn’t think her behaviour was so serious or that it deserved such a harsh reaction. Although she is put off by it, she starts to think that maybe she is not in the right job after all. Perhaps it is time to move on and show this unforgiving supervisor that this is not the right way to handle people.

As you can see, this story did not have a happy ending. A mishandling by her supervisor (along with other inefficient communication skills he might have had) led Jane to decide that this company was not worth working for.

This situation could have been completely reversed if Jane’s supervisor was aware of many other influence techniques he could have used in this scenario. In this example, he used “Logic” and then went straight to “Force” which is a last resort influence technique to be used only when all other techniques have failed. He could have employed many other techniques in between these to achieve his objective of correcting Jane’s behaviour while keeping her happy and motivated. It turns out that it is actually easy to use these range of techniques and we only need to train ourselves to be constantly aware of them and do not let emotions to take over our decision making process. This course systematically teaches the delegates about these techniques and prepares them to face real-world situations armed with these influence skills.

To become better at influencing, delegates need to learn and practice the skills over and over again until the skills become second nature. This course contains theoretical content along with many exercises designed to help the delegates to achieve this and understand that there are many ways to influence others.

In this course, a variety of psychological techniques are presented and discussed. It includes a range of role plays and group discussions that will help delegates to learn how to change opinions, avoid conflicts through positive influence and simply be in control.

In this course delegates will learn:

Strategy

• What is the best strategy for long term influence on someone else?
• What is the importance of goals and how does this affect your influencing strategy?
• What does it mean to be diplomatic and how does it help you to influence others?

Influence Techniques

• How to gain commitment without using power, position or status
• Use a variety of diplomatic techniques when talking to deliver your messages softer and more positively
• How to influence others without resorting to force or authority as soon as you receive some resistance
• How to use 9 powerful influence techniques suitable for a range of situations to positively influence others

Influence Principles

• How to take advantage of empathy and listening skills to gain the trust of others and take steps to build a long term relationship
• What are the 6 universal influence principles and how to use them?

Interacting with Others

• How to increase your presence and make it easier to influence people
• How to give feedback and expect to get results
• How to influence others positively or negatively using the three primary influence dimensions
• How to boost others and motivate them
• How to make people feel better if they are depressed or are down
• How to say No to people on your level, below you or even above you
• How to praise others to encourage them strongly in the direction of your choice

Getting What You Want

• How to phrase a request
• How to ask others for what you want
• How to use emotions to get the attention of others and use this to deliver your message for maximum effect