Who is this training for?
Managers, supervisors, team leaders, and professionals called upon to influence without direct hierarchical authority.
Training objectives
- Analyse their organisation from the perspective of formal and informal political dynamics.
- Identify key actors, their interests, areas of influence and interdependencies.
- Carry out a preliminary mapping of their political network.
- Evaluate their personal levers of influence (credibility, visibility, relationships).
- Adapt their political style according to the contexts and the interlocutors.
- Choose and apply relevant influencing approaches to support their ideas and projects.
Summary
"In organizations, power and influence are not anomalies: they are inescapable realities that must be understood rather than denied." Jeffrey Pfeffer, Managing with Power
Course outline
Definition of political meanin
Knowledge of one's environment
- Issues/orientations/priorities
- Formal and informal rules
- Knowledge of the actors
The political network
- Definition and mapping
- Practices for developing and maintaining one's network
Managing rumours and one's image
- The importance of managing one's image
- The three types of rumours
- Practices for managing one's image and having an impact
Political styles
- Two poles : Promotion of ideas and content and emphasis on people and their concerns
- Dangers of extreme positions • Developing one's ability to adapt
Levers and the exercise of influence
- Personal power, credibility and visibility
- Approaches to influence
- Methodology: analysis of actors and choice of the approach to influence
Approach and methodology
The training is based on an interactive and reflective approach, combining conceptual inputs, group exchanges, analyses of real situations and practical exercises. Participants are invited to transpose the concepts to their own organisational context in order to foster learning that is directly transferable to professional practice.
Recommendations
Before the training, participants are asked to reflect on one or two real-life professional situations in which they have had to exert influence, or currently need to do so (e.g., advancing an idea, gaining buy-in, navigating resistance, dealing with informal dynamics).
