Influencing Skills for Engineering Professionals |
Arup is a global firm of designers, engineers, planners and business consultants. Outstanding solutions, innovation and value characterises their work. They have a vast pool of technical expertise across the world, enabling them to achieve the best possible results for clients. Arup has over 10 000 staff working in more than 90 offices in 37 countries. At any one time, they have over 10 000 projects running concurrently. They recruit some of the most talented engineers and technical specialists and invest highly in their continuing professional development-both in their technical skills and their personal skills.
The Need
Arup have long recognised the importance of high level influencing skills for their professionals. In addition to their technical expertise each professional needs to be able to get their case across effectively, to persuade the various stakeholders in a project and to develop effective relationships with individuals who may have different agenda, needs and personal styles. Our client decided to offer an Effective Influencing Skills module as part of their Short Course Programme to give their people the processes, skills and practice to help them influence more effectively and invited Greenbank to design and deliver the programme.
The Solution
A two-day workshop was designed to help these exceptionally bright, technically qualified professionals to develop their influencing skills. The group size was kept small-maximum 8 participants so that everyone would get the opportunity during the workshop to practice as much as possible and to receive specific feedback, supported by video review, on two separate occasions so that they would have the opportunity to see how they developed during the course of the 2 days.
Before the workshop participants completed a Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaire which is used to give a language or framework to understand ourselves and other people. This knowledge is built upon during the workshop to help decide what influencing style and strategy is most effective with different people. For instance, engineers often said they had difficulty communicating with and influencing architects - they seemed to them to be coming from a different planet. MBTI helped them see that there was a reason behind the different approaches and that understanding this could help them be far more effective - and less stressed in the process!
During the workshop participants also had the chance to review their own style of influencing using the Greenbank Influencing Styles Questionnaire, to look at a range of strategies and tactics and use a 4 step Planning Process to help them prepare effectively. Throughout the workshop involved small group work, influencing exercises and video review and feedback.
The Result
The Effective Influencing workshop was such a success that it has been running for more than 5 years and there is a regular demand for the programme with a waiting list of participants always ready for the next scheduled date. Feedback continues to be excellent.
