Gautrey Unleashed

Exercise: Influencing Skills Development Priorities

by

If you are interested in becoming more influential, you can use the dimensions of influence explored in the Influencing Skills Survey to focus you attention where it will yield the greatest result. There is no point spending lots of time developing a skill if you it will not help you in your career. Even better if you've also been able to get some feedback from others!

With Influencing Skills Report

Use this part of the exercise if you have obtained a copy of an Influencing Skills Survey report. If you don't have one, you can get one at The Gautrey Group. If you haven't got a report, don't worry, just scroll down to view another exercise.
  1. Get a good overview of the Read More

Exercise: Organisational Risks and Opportunities

by

This is another opportunity to stimulate your thinking about the risks and opportunities that might have an impact on what you are working on. Unless you have a clear view (albeit perhaps a little vague), you will keep your head down and try to deliver on your project objective, rather than become more influential and successful.

Take a few moments to brainstorm Read More

Exercise: Risk and Opportunity Action

by

Without doubt, this is probably the key skill which will save you from making big mistakes in the project and influence game. This exercise will help you to understand what your options are based on the risks you face and perhaps, the opportunities you may be missing! NB: Don;t forget to print out (or draw) the diagram below and map out your risks and opportunities. Think carefully Read More

Analysing Risks and Spotting Opportunities

by

One of the dangers of focusing on people and relationships in the Stakeholder Influence Process is that it draws attention away from events which could happen. High impact events are fairly evident, but not always anticipated, or planned for. Quite often, events pass by without being noticed for their potential to help or hinder the project you are working on. For this reason, taking at least a quick glance at this potential could show ways to accelerate your project, or move out of the way of things which could damage your progress. To avoid over-complicating things, a risk is an event which could have a negative impact on your objective and an opportunity is an event which could have a positive impact. The greater the impact (positive or negative) and the higher the Read More

Leaders: Bullies by Nature or Nurture?

by

Many of the behaviours exhibited by leaders can easily be classified as bullying behaviours, especially when many of them converge to form the essence of a leader’s style. In a recent article, I cited 31 behaviours which could be viewed as legitimate yet prone to being misconstrued. Of the more innocent you have…
  • Demanding things at short notice.
  • Telling people what to do and how to do it.
  • Cancelling meetings at short notice.
  • Closely monitoring work ― micromanaging.
  • Asking people to do things without giving them a reason why.
Do you know any leaders who do these things? Of course you do. Now, what if you add a few less innocent ones into the mix? Read More

Business Partners: How to Influence the Relationship

by

NB: This is a large guide and will take you quite a while to work through all the elements over several weeks. When I say business partners, I am referring to many different types of relationship, including outsourcing providers, suppliers, and internal teams. In fact, any type of relationship which has many people on each side who have to work together. These types of relationship are often problematic for a number of reasons...
  1. There are so many different people involved.
  2. Lines of communication often get tangled, forgotten or frankly, abused.
  3. Each team will often have conflicting agendas (we'll talk about partnerships later).
  4. High levels of pressure are exerted on both sides to deliver results.
  5. One side is often in a subservient position (despite equal dependency).
A poor relationship is untenable, albeit highly likely. It is untenable because as supply chains become increasingly fragmented, disparate groups of people have to work Read More

How to Influence Senior People without Looking Stupid

by

With so many people trying to influence the senior people in big organisations, it pays to look smart and highly competent. This can pay huge dividends, literally. The opposite is also true — looking stupid in front of an important audience is like making a gift to your opposition. Here is a short tour through some of the most cringe worthy mistakes made by the unwary. Make sure they don't let these slip into your next influence attempt, because they will quickly erode your credibility, influence and make your confidence fly out the window.

Speaking the wrong language

Using your own jargon, acronyms and inside jokes rather than tuning into their world. Although the primary language may be the same, you can easily appear worlds apart. You may think that Read More

How to Manage Your Stakeholders

by

The Stakeholder Influence Process is central to becoming more influential. It is a simple process which will keep you thinking about the things  you need to think about in order that you can accelerate progress towards your goals. It will also help you to face up to the sometimes difficult meetings by providing you with an extra level of confidence - because you've thought it through. Often, just spending an hour on this can provide the insight necessary to achieve your goals. Here are the key steps in the overall process and the links you need to delve deeper while learning how to influence using this approach.

The Process

Below we have each step and the key links which will help you to learn how to use the process. Some of these links lead to other guides which go into more detail., others to further resources to stimulate your thinking. Read More

Terms and Conditions

ALL CONTENT PROVIDED ON THIS SITE IS FOR GENERAL INFORMATION ONLY. YOU REMAIN FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ACTION YOU TAKE.

View Terms and Conditions

Footprint

We help professionals in organisations such as:

Accenture | AXA | Bank of America | Barclays | Citigroup | Clifford Chance | Credit Suisse | EDF | Ernst & Young | Fiat Chrysler | Fujitsu | GE | Goldman Sachs | GSK | IBM | Lloyds Bank | NHS | O2 | Orange | Pfizer | SAP | Shell | Tesco | UBS | Unilever | Zurich