Leadership and Influencing Skills Training


Leadership and Influencing Skills Training

Soft Skills Training for Project and Business Success

Success in business analysis and project management requires more than technical skills. The “hard” part of our jobs is the “soft” stuff. Every day we need to build and maintain trust, resolve conflict, solve problems, and influence outcomes while achieving business goals to move forward and add value to the organization. Our softs skills training courses will help you to:

  • Understand and analyze business problems, and recommend and “sell” solutions that will solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity.
  • Employ various facilitation techniques to help build teams, elicit requirements, resolve conflict, and identify and solve problems.
  • Build trust and communicate more effectively.
  • Help guide your organization through difficult, but needed, changes.
  • Effectively handle challenging situations with your customer, team members, vendors, and sponsors.
Learn, Lead.

Business professionals rarely have control over all of the people they depend on to deliver the results expected of them. Our influencing skills training and coaching will help you improve your ability to lead and influence in many areas, such as:

Influencing Skills Banner

Soft Skills Training Courses

Our leadership and influencing skills courses include:

Consulting Skills to Solve Business Problems

Influence stakeholders by developing the ability to understand and analyze business problems, break down a problem into manageable pieces, and “sell” solutions that will adequately solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity.

Critical Thinking Skills

Become a critical thinker who questions information, conclusions and points of view; strives to be clear, precise and relevant; and thinks beneath the surface.

Eliciting Requirements

Learn how to identify business problems and link requirements to business objectives in order to solve business problems and set project scope.

Facilitation Skills Workshop

Become an influential facilitator by learning how to empower your group to capitalize upon their own latent capabilities and knowledge in the search for optimum solutions and consensus.

Influencing Without Authority

Learn the skills, tips, and tricks of successful influencers so you can influence even when you don't have the authority

To provide you with maximum flexibility, our Leadership & Influencing Skills classroom training is available as either open-enrollment public classes or as private onsite classes. Public classes allow individuals to attend classes conveniently held throughout the year. Are you interested in private onsite soft skills training at your company? We offer private onsite training whether it is one class or a complete series, designed to elevate the skills of your organization.

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Articles and Blogs About Influencing Skills

Check out these Leadership and Influencing Skills articles and others on our website (quick, free registration required).

  • The Influencing Formula
  • Be Satisfied With What I Give You - It's Better Than What You Asked For
  • Creating Bulletproof Business Cases
  • It's Not Like Selling Pots or Pans... Or is It?

Influencing Skills Presentations and Webinars

Check out these Leadership and Influencing Skills articles and others on our website (quick, free registration required).

  • The Art and Science of Conflict Management
  • Creating Bulletproof Business Cases
  • Critical Thinking Skills for Today's Problem Solvers
  • Fantastic Voyage or the Impossible Dream - The BA as Management Consultant
  • The Influencing Formula: Three Steps to Influencing When You Don’t Have the Authority
  • Is Your Organization Project Capable? Assessing Organizational Readiness
  • Seven Ways to Build Trust for Successful Requirements Elicitation
  • Why Strategic Projects Fail: How to Avoid Becoming a Statistic

Why Choose Watermark Learning?

As with all of our training, the Influencing Skills program combines a practical orientation, industry best practices, and engaging delivery that teaches retainable real-world skills to foster enduring results. Our Influencing Skills training is designed to go hand-in-hand with our Project Management and Business Analysis training to give you the soft skills needed to be most effective in your job and add value to your organization. Our instructors are Project Management Professional (PMP)® and CBAP® certified, with 20+ years' experience, and use real-world examples and proven techniques to make your time spent in class immediately relevant and applicable on the job.

Watermark Learning is an acknowledged thought leader in Influencing Skills, a Premier PMI Authorized Training Provider (ATP), and a Charter IIBA® Endorsed Education Provider. We contribute to these professional organizations and influence the Project Management and Business Analysis professions. Our principals and staff members have been lead authors on the PMBOK® Guide and the BABOK® Guide, allowing us to provide our students with unique insights. Our students tell us again and again how happy they are with their experience at Watermark Learning, and we think you will be too.

View Client Success Stories

Testimonials

"The Influencing class was jam packed with great information and tools for relationship building and assessing your stakeholders. For me, this class is similar to when I took purchasing classes AFTER I had developed a new purchasing department and been in purchasing for many years. Last week I received the "So that's how it's supposed to work!" education and hope to implement it in my projects. Thanks very much."

— Susan Mortensen, Large Energy Industry Company

Client Success Stories

The Challenge: One of the nation’s top health insurance companies selected Watermark Learning for training on influencing skills, finding the curriculum to be perfect for skills their Project Management Office (PMO) was looking for. Their main focus was influencing and stakeholder management, which they needed to help build and develop their workforce.

“I loved their approach to learning and felt it would help our PMO workforce reach the next level in learning and development,” said the organization’s Workforce Performance Consultant.

The Solution: Watermark Learning personalized a version of the Influencing Without Authority workshop for three groups. The workshop is designed to develop essential influencing skills and focuses on key concepts like:

  • Trust
  • Preparation
  • Courage

The Workforce Performance Consultant continued, "The Watermark Learning staff really took the time to listen and understand our business need in an effort to provide a solution for us as well as made it very easy to do business with them. I would definitely use them again for future training and/or recommend their services."

The Benefits: Over half of the Influencing Without Authority participants boasted how dynamic, knowledgeable, and engaging the instructor was, bringing real world experience and tremendous knowledge. This in turn helped provide a positive impact, concepts, and tools that were relevant and immediately applicable even with very busy, critical projects always in the works.

“The instructor was without a doubt the absolute best facilitator I have EVER had a class with. The course challenged me to evaluate my communication skills, which I’ve always considered a strong point. I can truly say that I plan to use at least 90% of the content taught in this class in my daily work as well as life in general," said an Influencing Without Authority class participant.