
INFLUENTIAL COMMUNICATION
Employees are usually hungry to make a greater impact on their organization and gain support for their ideas. Even individuals who have leadership roles prefer leaning on their influence rather than their authority to achieve results. But influence seems like such an abstract skill that most people don’t know how to start building it. When we think about earning influence, we tend to envision projecting confidence or becoming more persuasive – skills that take years to master. Instead, we can become more influential immediately just by changing the quality of our questions. The result? A questions-first culture in which employees are eager to hear one another’s perspectives and empowered to pursue their ideas proactively.
During this workshop you will:
• Think about your personal definition of influence
• Learn research about the role questions play in earning influence
• Practice activating curiosity in difficult moments (20 questions technique) and pivoting to better understand the person you want to have influence with (stakeholder analysis)
• Learn and practice the 6 key questions that improve influence: blur questions, split tracks/playbacks, scaling questions, reasoning questions, forward questions, and next step questions
• Pick a developmental focus for yourself to continue increasing your skills
After this workshop, you will know how to:
• Pivot perspective to better understand your stakeholders
• Create clarity in any conversation
• Build forward momentum and action when a conversation or project gets stuck