Getting Results Without Authority

Develop your capacity to negotiate, influence, and persuade more effectively in every professional context.

Who Should Attend:

This course is designed for professionals who need to achieve results through others, whether that means persuading a colleague to support a new direction, motivating a team without formal authority, or gaining buy-in from senior leadership and key stakeholders. Regardless of your title or role in the reporting hierarchy, the ability to earn genuine respect, shape the thinking of others, and cultivate lasting cooperation is one of the most important drivers of career success.

In this practical skills course, you will focus on the three core levers of influence: personal power, persuasion, and negotiation. You will learn to build your authority and credibility using the Personal Power Model, apply the principles of exchange and reciprocity as the foundation of the influence process, adapt your communication style to build trust and credibility with different audiences, apply a proven framework of discovery, preparation, and dialogue to persuade effectively, and master the essential components of principled negotiation.

You will practice persuasive communication and influencing techniques from the very first session through the final activity, deepening your learning through video analysis, structured exercises, assessment tools, and rich group discussion.

How You Will Benefit:

• Establish or recover credibility so that people are genuinely open to your influence
• Use your power base deliberately and effectively to persuade others
• Understand the person you are trying to influence and persuade through authentic give-and-take
• Build and deepen relationships across all levels of your organization and beyond
• Create a more collaborative work environment that produces faster, better results
• Turn communication differences into advantages rather than sources of friction
• Sell your ideas successfully and lead others through change
• Build trust and reciprocal relationships up, down, and across the organization
• Influence others while projecting genuine self-confidence without coming across as pushy or manipulative
• Adapt your approach fluidly to the specific person and situation you are addressing
• Apply negotiation techniques that consistently lead to win-win outcomes

What You Will Cover:

• Understanding your personal power base and how the principle of reciprocity drives influence
• Identifying the behaviors that characterize the most effective influencers
• Building your personal power base and creating strategic partnerships
• Adapting your communication style to connect with and influence different people
• Applying credibility, logic, and emotion in the persuasion process
• Customizing your persuasion approach for specific audience members and contexts
• Understanding the nuances of conflict and how to work through it productively
• Giving and receiving constructive feedback in high-stakes influence situations
• Achieving better results through principled negotiation techniques
• Practicing the key steps of the negotiation process in realistic scenarios
• Applying the principles of soft negotiation for more collaborative outcomes

Course Outline:

Learning Objectives

• Determine your personal power base and understand how to expand it
• Analyze your current influencing approach and learn when and how to adjust it
• Identify the fundamentals of exchange and reciprocity that underpin all effective influence
• Develop and apply practical persuasion skills to a range of real influence situations
• Improve your core interpersonal skills of listening, questioning, and constructive feedback
• Recognize the value of constructive conflict and learn how to work through conflict when influencing
• Identify the key steps of principled negotiation and promote win-win results

Lesson One: Personal Power and Your Power Base

• Understand the Personal Power Model and how to apply it to build your power base
• Identify the behaviors that signal effective influencing
• Define practical ways to develop the platform for your personal power base
• Understand how exchange, relationships, and partnerships form the foundation of lasting influence
• Identify your exchange portfolio and the value you bring to relationships
• Define and apply the principle of reciprocity
• Build relationships upward, downward, and laterally within your organization

Lesson Two: Communication Styles and Persuasion

• Recognize the importance of personal styles when attempting to influence others
• Understand and identify the major personal styles you encounter in your organization
• Identify your own preferred style and those of the people you most need to influence
• Understand the impact of the negative attribution cycle and how to break it
• Apply credibility, logic, and emotion strategically in the persuasion process
• Evaluate where your audience stands on key communication and personality dimensions and develop a tailored approach
• Follow the key learning steps of discovery, preparation, and dialogue to persuade more effectively

Lesson Three: When Conflict Gets in the Way

• Understand how unmanaged conflict undermines your ability to influence and get results
• Identify the full range of conflict management responses available to you
• Provide constructive feedback that addresses the conflict rather than adding to it
• Select and apply the approach best suited to each specific situation

Getting Better Results Through Negotiation

• Master the key preparation and process steps of effective negotiation
• Apply the principles of soft negotiation for more collaborative and sustainable outcomes
• Integrate influence, persuasion, and negotiation skills in a full negotiation simulation