Each year the tech team of an international insurance company – with more than 70 offices- and approximately 13 thousand employees around the world – goes on a team retreat. Part of that retreat is always a special activity and this year they chose to enrol into the Positive Power and Influence Programme®.
“I wanted to help my people improve the way they interact because we, as a team, basically don’t have a lot of positional power within the company.” To get things done and reach their team goals, the team leader was looking for a way to get his team trained on techniques that would help them win over and mobilize people.
“This is a training I always wanted to attend when I was working for a big multinational, 35 years ago. I left the company before I could take on the Positive Power and Influence Programme®, but I always heard good things about it. And now I thought: this is something I can use for my own team.”
Exceeded expectations
The expectations that the participating head of the team had for this training were high. He heard that participants learned to adapt their communication style dynamically during the programme and that they would become more effective in their communication and negotiation skills. The results exceeded his expectations. “It exceeded my expectations. I didn’t anticipate that we would be using the Influence Model® in right away in our daily routine, basically the following Monday! Usually you go to a training, you remember all those things you learned and then it is difficult to apply them. With the Positive Power and Influence Programme®, we could utilise it immediately. The model is very robust, very practical and the certified influence trainer of your company was a genius.”
“Every participant is spreading the recommendation within the company now, because this is a training programme that all people should do. I would recommend this training as a standard. It helps people to become more effective.”
Simulating the critical situation
During the training the team learned all about the Influence Model® and simulated a few scenes to get the model into their system. The team was eager to work with their own work situations. “We hijacked the training a little bit, I must admit. We had a very delicate, difficult negotiation within the company, so we wanted to simulate that negotiation and take in to practice how we apply the new influencing skills we learned during the Postive Power and Influence Programme®.”
They went on with this situation and gave each other feedback on their communication styles. “The eye opener during the training was that you constantly need to monitor yourself on which style you are using, which style your negotiation partners are using and then adapt accordingly.” Eventually, the team applied the learned knowledge to the specific situation they used during the training in real life and they won the ‘battle’.
Active development
Beside that specific situation, the team leader and his team are using the Influence Model® in all kinds of negotiations and communication. “It’s kind of funny because within the team we are saying: would you please stop asserting now? We use the language of the model. I think everybody in the team is busy using the learnings in a very active manner.”
Not just his team members developed their communication skills during the training. The participating head of the team himself is most aware of the knowledge the training gave him. “I am negotiating in a different way than before. Very often when you are in negotiation, you try to win people over and you have far fewer differences than you think. To be able to reduce the discussion to what is really up for debate is difficult. Sometimes people drag on a discussion for far too long about totally irrelevant topics before coming to a solution. I am more efficient now.”
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