Personal Impact Skills Training for Managers and Professionals

What you'll take away from this personal impact course

This personal impact skills training course will significantly improve your personal impact on people. To make this possible we'll help you discover the answers to four very personal questions:-

• 1   Precisely what personal impact are you having on others and is it the impact you mean to have? 
• 2  Precisely how are you achieving this? In other words, what are you saying and doing that has this impact?
• 3  Precisely how would you need to change your approach in order to make a more favourable impact?
• 4  What old habits of thought and behaviour do you need to lay aside if the change is to last? 

An example of how the skills you'll practice on this course will enhance your personal impact

Here's an example of someone who's personal impact wasn't as she wanted it to be. 

She was a marketing manager with lots of good ideas and enthusiasm but a tendency to get into arguments. She would argue her case and then get impatient if people didn’t see reason. She was becoming very frustrated with her colleagues because they almost always seemed to resist her ideas, which meant that her actual contribution to the business fell far short of her potential contribution. Others perceived her as arrogant, which made the problem worse because it meant that she was putting people off, and this was making them unwilling to co-operate.

Her director was concerned both about her personal impact on others and also about her own reaction. He didn’t want to lose her but he was worried that she was becoming so discouraged that she might be looking for another job. He tried to suggest she be a little less forceful in making her points, but she didn’t seem very receptive to the suggestion.

An old mental habit that was hindering her performance

She was a clear thinker and always lucid when making her points. Whenever someone resisted a point she would calmly and politely reason with them. She would often say, “Yes, but …”, or, “I hear what you say, however …”. If the resistance continued her frustration would increase and she would quite rapidly become less calm and less polite.

She was passionate about her ideas – they were usually very good ones - and so she was deeply disappointed when she failed to get others to go along with them. But since one of her strengths was that she was a persistent and determined person, her conversations would often degenerate into quite bitter arguments. 

Underlying assumptions she had to become aware of and let go of 

There were two mental obstacles to change, and both would have to be overcome if the change was to be genuine and lasting. The first was that although she had never thought consciously about it, her strongly held assumption was that persuasion works by reasoning with people – giving them facts and logic. If they resist, they need more facts and logic. This belief led inevitably to a “Yes but”  style of conversation. 

Another consequence of this was that when she was in disagreement with someone she never seemed to be aware of their concerns. This inevitably put them on the defensive. Actually she was aware of other people’s concerns. The roblem was she didn’t seem to be because she never acknowledged them. All they ever heard her do was argue her own case.   

The second mental obstacle was that she was always in a hurry to get people to agree with her, which meant that she didn't allow herself time to show that she was taking other people’s concerns seriously. In a nut-shell her problem was that when trying to persuade people she did too much talking and not enough listening.

New skills, a new approach, and much improved personal impact 

She first needed to be made aware that her habitual method of persuasion, i.e., reasoning with facts and logic, was causing her a serious problem, because it showed no appreciation of other people’s concerns. She had to become aware that it's inevitable that people will be defensive and unreceptive if they don't feel their concerns are being taken seriously.

At first she resisted this idea, but finally accepted it when she saw it for herself on a video recording of one of her own conversations. It shocked her how little interest she seemed to show in the concerns that lay behind their resistance to her ideas.

Then she needed to be shown, with coaching and practice, how to slow down and listen with empathy to other people’s concerns when they resist an idea. In this way she learned to get the balance right between putting her own ideas forward and listening with understanding and respect to other people’s issues.

What she learned she was able to keep hold of, and it transformed her relationships at work. Quite quickly complaints about her arrogance, as well as other people’s resistance to her, evaporated. Small but significant changes in her approach to persuasion totally transformed how others experienced her and saw her, in other words, her person impact. 

More reasons why you might benefit from this personal impact skills training

• A crucial ingredient in improving my personal impact is getting better feedback, finding out precisely how I come across,
• I need to be able to make more of an impact on people in meetings.
• I've been told my impact on people is sometimes negative. I need to make it more positive.
• I'd like to know how to make more impact on my boss.
• I find it difficult getting through to people, especially when they're preoccupied or worried about something.
• I would like to be able to create a better atmosphere around me at work.
• I need to be more successful at getting noticed, winning respect, being heard, communicating urgency.