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Archive for the ‘Influencing’ Category

Making New Year’s resolutions about relationships and people, not things

Posted by Jessica Sedler

This year I want to focus my New Year’s resolutions on relationships and people, not things.

Yes – January is in full swing. How are the new year’s resolutions going? Did you make any?

I did. I vowed to attempt less screen time, especially before bed. I now keep my phone downstairs and read my Christmas present novel under the duvet, with a smug smile on my face. Fairly easy to tick off. And it’s this sort of stuff we decide to set goals for ourselves about isn’t it?

 

I want to lose a stone
I want to start running
I want to drink more water
I want to drink less wine…

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Minding the Email Gap – Seven Tips

Posted by Jessica Sedler

How often do you use Email to communicate?

Ever got stuck in a less than constructive way of communicating?

Ever found the dynamic very hard to shift?

Alongside my work with Aspire, I co-run a theatre company with 3 women. We write, produce and perform political cabaret shows. I have worked with these wonderful women for 7 years and let’s just say, we know each other very well.

Sometimes we say/do/write things to each other that are reactive, unthinking and occasionally damaging. That’s right. Even a communications skills trainer.

However, we recently changed one vital aspect of the way we communicate which has hugely improved the efficacy and ease of our day to day working relationships…

Our emails. Read more

Influence – How to get me to see your view

Posted by Liz McKechnie

How do we influence others?

Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

I’ve had this quote from Ian McEwan lurking on my desktop for some time now and every time I read it I am struck buy how amazingly simple and how astonishingly profound it is.

At Aspire Leadership our courses are all about people influencing and communicating with each other whether we’re exploring transformational Leadership or looking at more concrete things such as how to make a project happen on budget and on time.

The one thing all our work has in common is how on earth we manage to work with other people and get people to buy in and do the things we want them to do. How do we exert our influence?

Well first, why not try and step into their shoes and understand their stuff. What’s going on for them?

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