Get in shape for influencing

Happy New Year! In the spirit of having a frenzy of improvement in the New Year, here’s our tips on how to get better at preparing to influence (so why not choose someone to practise on right now!?)

Following on from our last blog about preparation for conversations in general, these tips will give yourself the best chance of success when you want to influence someone, or are going into a negotiation, especially if you feel nervous:

Prepare good notes and have them with you, along with plenty of paper to write on. Make sure your notes are easy to glance down at – don’t write out every word you are going to say. Make a checklist of things you must cover and tick them off. Highlight things that musn’t be missed. If appropriate, pre-circulate figures so everyone has a copy to work from.

Control the environment: Find out where you’ll be meeting so you can visualise it better. You may want to go and see it beforehand. Whenever possible, arrange to meet on neutral territory. Arrive early and arrange the room how you want it. Have water available or note where it is. This can be handy if you need to walk away for a break during deadlock. Try to sit at 45 degrees to someone else, it feels less adversarial. If you want to influence where they sit, pull out that chair very slightly before they arrive.

On the phone: Book a meeting room, and set up a handsfree so that you are free to write notes and sift through your papers. Stand up for difficult conversations!

Our next Influencing Skills course is running at Exeter International Airport on 10th & 11th February 2010.

All our courses are now eligible for Train to Gain funding – many of our clients can now claim back up to £1000 for our courses! For more information, call us on 01392 82 6127.

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Conversational Skills

This is the beginning of our learning & development web log, or blog, as it is now commonly known. We’ll be previewing different skills on the blog as we go along, but first of all, some thoughts about conversational skills in general.

For all conversations that are more than just normal chat, you should be doing more preparation outside of the room than you might think. If the amount of preparation is represented as a wedge shape – we tend to do a small amount of preparation (the thin end of the wedge) before the conversation and then expect ourselves to do masses of preparation once the converation is underway (the thick end of the wedge), and we are trying to speak at the same time. This is the time when you think, “now, what did Celia say about negotiation skills?”.

That is making life very hard for yourself! Your preparation time should be, as a general rule, 3:1. 3 hours preparation for a 1-hr negotiation or influencing skills meeting, for example. 1 hour for a giving a 20-minute seminar, and that’s if you are already very familiar with the content. So, dig out those course notes the day before and give your brain a head-start.

Mark Twain said, “I was going to write you a short letter, but I didn’t have time, so I wrote you a long one instead.” The shorter the presentation or meeting, the more efficient you have to be, and the longer you will have to prep.

If you would like help preparing for a conversation or presentation, I see people individually for coaching. Just give me a call on 01392 82 6127.

See our website for more on us at www.delaneyandhart.co.uk

All the best & happy prepping,

Celia Delaney

Seminar

Thanks to all those who came to the seminar today: The People Factor in your Business. We will think about doing it again, so please let me know if you would be interested in coming along.

Hello world!

Welcome to the first blog from Celia Delaney, Director at Delaney & Hart Limited in Devon, UK. As I am rather new to this, there will be something of a learner driver element to this at first…but hoping to dispense pearls of learning & development wisdom in due course….All the best, Celia