Exploring Crucial Influencing
Change rarely happens because people are simply told what to do. Creating meaningful, lasting change requires understanding what motivates individuals, what influences their behavior, and what conditions help them succeed. At an organizational level, lasting change also requires creating a culture that reinforces the behaviors and decisions needed to achieve the organization's vision, mission, and values.
Description
Based on the principles presented in Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, this course equips professionals with practical strategies for understanding and influencing behavior at both the individual and organizational levels. Participants will explore the factors that motivate individuals and shape their choices, recognizing that different people may respond to change in very different ways. By developing a deeper understanding of what drives people, professionals can move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and use more effective strategies to encourage engagement, accountability, and behavior change.
Participants will examine the multiple sources of influence—including personal motivation, personal ability, social influences, structural factors, and incentives—and learn how these influences interact to shape behavior. They will apply these concepts to real-world situations, identifying the behaviors that are critical to achieving desired outcomes and determining what may be motivating or discouraging those behaviors.
The course then expands these concepts to the organizational culture level, exploring how leaders and professionals can intentionally influence the systems, relationships, expectations, and everyday behaviors that define an organization's culture. Participants will consider how culture can either reinforce or undermine an organization's vision, mission, and values and will learn strategies for creating greater alignment between what an organization says it values and what people experience and see modeled every day.
Through interactive activities, discussion, and practical application, participants will develop an influence strategy that can be used to encourage individual behavior change, strengthen team performance, and contribute to a culture that supports the organization's strategic direction.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify the specific behaviors that drive desired individual, team, and organizational results.
- Understand the different factors that motivate individuals and influence their behavior.
- Recognize that individuals may be motivated by different needs, values, experiences, and desired outcomes.
- Identify barriers that may prevent individuals from adopting desired behaviors.
- Assess whether a challenge is primarily related to motivation, ability, social influence, or the environment.
- Apply strategies that increase personal motivation and ability.
- Leverage relationships and social influence to encourage positive behavior change.
- Create environments and structures that make desired behaviors easier to adopt and sustain.
- Develop tailored influence strategies that address multiple sources of motivation and behavior.
- Understand how individual and team behaviors contribute to organizational culture.
- Identify ways organizational systems, leadership behaviors, policies, practices, and informal norms influence culture.
- Recognize gaps between an organization's stated vision, mission, and values and the behaviors that are actually rewarded, tolerated, or reinforced.
- Identify opportunities to influence culture by aligning everyday behaviors and organizational practices with the organization's vision, mission, and values.
- Create strategies that reinforce desired behaviors and make the organization's values visible in everyday work.
- Build conditions that support lasting behavior change and a strong, values-aligned organizational culture.
Intended Audience:
This course is designed for professionals who are responsible for leading, supporting, or influencing change, including leaders, managers, project leaders, change practitioners, educators, and other professionals who need to influence behavior and culture without relying solely on formal authority.