Influencing Skills for HR Leaders: Build Your Power Base, Enhance Your Reputation and Boost Your Business Impact

As a Human Resource department, how well do you influence your company's direction? Contribute to the corporate discussion about customers, products, and strategy? Are you a participant in senior-level meetings? Do managers seek your opinion? Are you seen as a trusted advisors and strategic partner to both operations and senior management?

Some people still think of Human Resource as those guys that just do the “people stuff,” shuffling contracts and recruiting new hires. In fact, there is a disconnect between how the HR function is perceived in many organizations and the often-untapped potential it offers in a business climate that is fueled with change and transformation.

Simply put, most business leaders understand the basic function of HR, but they don't see the bigger opportunity of utilizing Human Resources expertise to impact  their company’s productivity and profitability.

The focus of this webinar is to provide insights and techniques into the dynamics of power, politics, and persuasion so that HR professionals and leaders can get their voices heard and their recommendations acted upon as well as play a greater role in contributing to the company’s business goals- not from a compliance position– but from a strategic position.   

These 7 points will be covered so that HR professionals and leaders will be trusted advisors and strategic partners to both operations and senior management.

• Identify the six sources of leadership power.
• Recognize the value of personal power to get results. 
• Understand why politics and power are not bad words.
• Review three strategies and nine tactics to influence others .
• Become familiar with Marshall Goldsmith’s “Rules of the Road”.
• Review three influence styles and decide which would work best in specific situations.
• Learn three ways to increase your personal power and not feel you just playing the game.

When was the last time you thought about how you influence others — how you change minds, shape opinions, move others to act?  Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager said, “The key to leadership is influence, not authority." That’s why it’s important to include influencing skills as part of your professional portfolio.

­­­Even with a solid foundation of credibility and competence, you as Human Resource professionals and leaders, may fall short if you don’t understand the influence dynamics of power, politics and persuasion.  Whether you’re advising staff or operations, or getting approval for expenditures beyond your budget, or getting items onto the agenda for the next meeting, your ability to influence matters.

Therefore, it is crucial to understand the range of influence techniques you can use, know when and how to use them, build your power bases, and sharpen your persuasion skills so that they can be viewed as a strategic partner working to support the business strategy.

This webinar will help you master the art of influence focusing on how to:

• Build your personal or informal power and political savvy. 
• Build credibility by getting out of your HR silo and into the business mainstream.
• Build partnerships with all levels of management to support the organization’s corporate strategy.

• CEO’s
• COO’s
• VP of Human Resources
• Human Resources Professionals
• Managers
• Supervisors
• Directors
• Chief Learning Officer, and other leaders/managers who need to learn how to influence and develop their personal power. 

Marcia Zidle, the Smart Moves Coach, is a board-certified executive and career coach, business management consultant, and keynote speaker, with over 25 years of management, business consulting, and international experience in a variety of industries including health care, financial services, oil and gas, manufacturing, insurance, pharmaceuticals, hospitality, government and nonprofits.

 She has expertise in strategy and alignment; executive and team leadership development; social and emotional intelligence; employee engagement and innovation; career and organization change management; employee relations and talent management.
 
Marcia has been selected as one of LinkedIn Profinder’s top coaches for the past 7 years. Check out the 200 + LinkedIn articles she’s authored on Leadership, Management, and Human Resources topics that have facilitated organizations to leverage their leadership and human capital assets generating greater effectiveness and profitability.

Marcia’s claim to fame is as a world traveler having a multi-cultural spirit and perspective. She has lived as an expatriate with her family in Scandinavia and Australia. In fact, one of her children is an "Aussie". She’s traveled to over 30 countries throughout Europe, Middle East, Far East, and the South Pacific.