Positive Political Skills in the Workplace
Duration: 1 Day
Objectives
After this session, participants will be able to:
- Recognize the difference between ‘office’ politics and ‘positive politics’
- Identify their sources of personal and organizational influence (power)
- Develop their ‘referent power’
- Organize their lives to optimize opportunities
- Use specific communication skills to manage situations involving power
- Handle difficult situations and people more effectively
Outline
- Politics and Power
- What it is (influence)
- Sources of power in the workplace
- Ways to gain it
- Ways we give it away
- Concepts and principles
- Negative and positive use: continuum
- Influencing within our organizational culture
- Transparency: advantages and disadvantages
- Personal Planning
- Work and Life Goals: priorities
- Gap Analysis (A= Strengths and Skills required to achieve my goals) (B= Strengths and Skills I now have) (C= Strengths and Skills to acquire and develop)
- Order (7 S’s: Sort, Select, Save, Sweep, Sanitize, Systematize, Store)
- Guarding our mental and physical health
- The Skills
- Basic communication
- Political sensitivity and assessment of the climate
- Checking perceptions and assumptions
- Reading nonverbal signals
- Questioning and listening
- Assertive communication
- Persuasion skills
- Positive language
- Managing information and resources
- Building rapport and relationships
- Solving problems
- Collaborative decision-making
- Inspiring and motivating others
- Negotiation skills
- Difficult Situations and People
- Payoffs “difficult” people get from their behavior
- Some types of difficult situations and people
- Handling conflict
- Practice scenarios
- Managing stress and anger
- Personal Action Plan for improving our positive politics