Consulting & Influencing

All leaders and consultants, in whatever discipline, face the fundamental challenge of using their knowledge and experience to motivate and help others to do what is needed. This programme addresses that challenge. The consultancy approach to leadership demands a mastery of influencing, advising, and supporting others, without necessarily invoking managerial authority or direct power.

An understanding of the complexity of human systems is essential, and the consultant will need a corresponding range of abilities. They will need the skills to facilitate organisational change at all levels. This means managing resistance, generating clarity and understanding, intervening in a style appropriate for both client and situation, moving between emotional and rational responses (and knowing when to do which), and throughout, maintaining a healthy level of flexibility and resilience.

This programme can be linked to specific targets for organisational performance. It emphasises the need to understand the consulting process and its dynamics, and the importance of building a close working relationship with the client group. It addresses the strategies required for achieving essential change objectives. It also stimulates rapid personal development of the participants themselves as agents for change.

Objectives

Participants will have the following opportunities:

• to acquire theoretical and practical frameworks to manage the consulting process
• to understand the key elements in creating effective client-consultant relationships
• to broaden their awareness of the impact they have on others
• to practise using core skills, tools, and techniques of consulting
• to appreciate the congruence between their personal development and the progress of change within the client system
• to produce appropriate behavioural change
• to develop their working practice to more effectively help clients achieve their objectives
  

Structure

Stage One
A one-to one interview with each participant
Stage Two
3 day residential event
Stage Three
Follow-up by arrangement

Who would benefit?
Those in leadership, sales and marketing consultants, all internal or external consulting roles, senior advisers, managers of strategic support services, business analysts, and managers of any unit wishing to evoke strategic change.

In-house programmes available.