ANALYSING YOUR INFLUENCING STYLE 1. Instructions The goal of this analysis is to give you insight into the image that you have of your own influencing style. The analysis consists of 12 statements about typical work situations. Give your professional reaction to each situation. For each situation, there are 4 possible actions that you could take. Although you might not react exactly as described in the responses, you should choose the alternative that fits as closely as possible with your own behaviour. Please note: we are not looking for what you think you should do, but for what you think you really would do in such a situation. Circle the letter of that action (choose only 1 possibility for each situation). 2. Situations: 1. You have agreed with one of your colleagues that he would produce a first draft of a scientific publication. You had hoped that this would work, provided that you gave him sufficient instructions and frequent encouragement. However, despite your instructions and encouragement, you have not received the draft at the agreed time, and this happened with the previous draft as well. a. go to him and say that you are waiting for the draft. You explain what you feel is the minimum information that the draft should contain, and you start to visit his desk every day. b. wait a little bit, because there is certainly a good reason for the delay. c. communicate clearly to him that the draft needs to be ready now. Together, you discuss how far he is and what is still missing, and you determine with him the next steps for finishing the draft as quickly as possible. d. go to him to find out what is going on and to see if you could perhaps spur him on or help him out. www.truecolours.be
2. You ask another department to perform certain data analyses. They are by far the experts in this, and it s not always easy to get them to help with your analyses. A new collaboration agreement has recently been made. They have entered into the agreement because this gives them the chance to try out a number of new analysis techniques. This means a number of weeks delay for you, but otherwise they would not have gone along with the agreement. a. contact them more frequently than the agreed times, check the status of their progress, and, if necessary, press them to be sure to deliver the analyses within the agreed timeline. b. call them periodically to ask whether the analyses are providing the learning experience they had hoped for. c. continually stress the importance of timely delivery and even try to speed up the delivery by constantly pushing them. d. follow up the interim status reports as you agreed with them, and then not disturb them further. 3. You are a member of a project group and you have all worked hard on a strengths/weaknesses analysis in the context of a planned investment. One of your colleagues always comes right on time to the meetings and is doing his best, but he s falling further and further behind in gathering a number of important cost figures. It s absolutely imperative that these figures be delivered within three days. You are the one in the group with the most expertise regarding these cost figures. a. propose to the project leader that you explain to this colleague step by step how he can gather these cost figures and arrange to follow this closely with him during the coming three days. b. sound out this colleague during an informal chat to see if he thinks he can still get the job done on time. c. point out to the project leader that he should speak to this project member immediately to convince him of the importance of making concrete agreements regarding how you all can support him further in his efforts. d. assume that he has been assigned to the group for good reason, and so he should be capable of making up the lost ground himself. www.truecolours.be 2
4. You regularly work with another department. Thanks to the years of working together, they only need a short briefing to carry out the work that they do for you independently and with good results. However, over the past few weeks, the results have slipped the work has been delayed and the quality has dropped a bit. a. wait a bit. If the department is having problems, they can resolve them better themselves. They know very well what is expected of them. b. hold a meeting in which you make it clear that, in any event, you expect the schedule to be put back on track and the level of quality to be re-established. You would indicate where you yourself see opportunities for improvement and agree that, starting now, you will also follow this up more closely with them. c. send an e-mail in which you clearly communicate once again exactly what you expect from their service. With concrete assignments, you would communicate to them more precisely your expectations and quality requirements starting now, and you d keep an eye on this quite closely for the time being. d. urge the head of the department to call his people together, to look for solutions with them, and to help them implement the methods they decide on. 5. In the beginning, you had quite a lot of difficulty with a new colleague. She came from another organisation and was rather timid, not really proactive, and she often misjudged priorities. She completed her work only because you and your supervisor constantly kept after her. But now she s beginning to enjoy her work, and she herself is starting to come forward with proposals for improving the way she does her assignments. a. encouraged by the good results, continue with the stern approach and, in any case, check her work carefully. b. continue to check on her work and also adopt her suggestions if they are reasonable. c. now that it s going so well, give her the responsibility for her work. d. support her ideas and together look for more things that she likes to do. www.truecolours.be 3
6. You re working on your PhD, and 2 weeks ago you submitted a draft of a congress paper to your promotor. Normally, he reacts to these things within the week, but this time you ve had no reaction. When you spoke to him about this yesterday, he said that he didn t have enough time, and he advised you to develop your paper further with the post-doc that you also supervise. But you feel it s also important to get feedback from your promoter himself. a. remind your promoter of the qualities of a good promoter and of the fact that it s his duty to supervise you himself, and you would say that you want to make arrangements to guarantee this in the future. b. take your promoter s advice and work further on the paper with the post-doc. He can possibly raise the alarm with the promoter, if that should be necessary. c. go speak to him again to sit down and try to make it clear to him why this is so important for you, in the hope of making him more enthusiastic about freeing up time for you. d. during your next consultation, go over the paper with him instead of following the pre-arranged agenda. 7. You and your colleagues have decided to consider a new way of organizing and distributing the work. You are all convinced that something must be done now about the overload. In a first brainstorming session, you have all put forward a number of ideas about possible alternatives. It was then agreed that, on the basis of these ideas, 2 colleagues would develop a concrete proposal. You are sure that they will take this task to heart and come up with something good. You only hope that your interests will be taken sufficiently into account when you are not present yourself. a. speak with them to say that it s important to come up with several alternatives so that everyone will support the new distribution of work maximally. b. summarise your interests again and make it clear that you want them to take your interests deliberately into account. c. trust that they will consider everyone s interests, and you would wait to see what proposal they will come up with. d. ask to be able to take part in the work group too, so that you can help develop this new distribution of work. www.truecolours.be 4
8. You have to get an important mailing out the door. A new employee has recently started to work with you, and your supervisor has made her responsible for carrying out this mailing. As this is the first time that she has had to do something like this, she feels a little uncertain. On the other hand, she feels it s a good challenge. a. give her the chance to manage things by herself; after all, your supervisor has decided that she can do this and she doesn t report to you. b. give her precise instructions regarding how she should handle this assignment, and then keep a close watch on things. c. ask her how she thinks she will tackle this and, according to her response, give her further instructions if necessary. You would arrange to check everything with her before the mailing goes out the door. d. Stress the importance of the mailing and encourage and urge her to give this task sufficient priority. 9. A very capable and dedicated colleague has asked you to help her with a certain assignment. This is a new assignment that she, with her knowledge and experience, should carry out independently, albeit with a bit of searching. It would also require some time for you to figure out the right approach. You are sure that she can carry out this assignment by herself. Still, she feels a little uncertain... a. given that you also have some experience and knowledge in this area, you would analyse the problem in question and tell her the best possible method for resolving it. b. stand back a bit to give her the opportunity to find a suitable solution herself. c. work out the solution to the problem with her, weigh alternatives, select the best solution, and let her carry it out from there. d. have her tell you where she sees the problems and support her in the actions that she s thinking of taking to resolve them. 10. In the last few months, there have been a number of conflicts in your department. The atmosphere has become quite chilly, and all of you are actually looking to your supervisor to do something about this. However, he is not good at dealing with conflicts. He minimises the problems and says that everything will be better after the holiday, when everyone has had some rest. But you are not convinced of this in your opinion, there needs to be a discussion where he is present and where the problems can be cleared up once and for all. www.truecolours.be 5
a. ask him about his plans and give him a number of hints about the fact that it might well be too late after the holiday, in the hope that he will pick up on this. b. tell him plainly what you want from him and how, in your opinion, he can best tackle the problem. c. wait until the holiday is over, and then, if it s not any better, he will surely draw his own conclusions about the problem. d. start a conversation with him in which you make it clear how important it is to you that something be done now and what you expect from him in this situation. Together, you think about how this can be a positive meeting for everyone concerned. 11. You want to organise a customer satisfaction survey regarding the service that you provide to other departments. To do this, it was agreed that everyone would contact a number of customers to ask their feedback on a number of things. You have developed a guideline for these discussions that everyone should follow. One of your colleagues has the habit of being quite confrontational towards his customers. The customers respect his direct manner you just hope that this is also a good style for these discussions. He is already convinced that these will be very informative discussions and he has planned for them right away. a. nevertheless ask him how he will keep these discussions as constructive as possible to make him think through these things carefully beforehand. b. suggest to him that you prepare for these discussions together and possibly conduct one of the discussions together, so that he gets a good idea of what this entails. c. provide him with your preparation for your discussions and make it as clear as possible to him how such a discussion goes and what he needs to be careful of. d. leave him to his own devices. 12. As post-docs, you and your colleagues are responsible for the supervision of a number of technicians and Ph.D. students. At the request of the technicians, you have agreed to conduct an annual performance interview with them. In their opinion, you all are in a better position to do this than their official department head. One of your colleagues was very enthusiastic about the fact that you can now have more control over the technicians. You ve now heard that this colleague is conducting evaluation meetings in which he emphasises everything that s going wrong, instead of performance interviews in which both parties participate equally. www.truecolours.be 6
a. leave him alone for the time being as he goes along, he will discover how he can handle this better. b. once again provide him with the agreements and guidelines that you all had drawn up for these discussions, and in this way emphasise that it s especially important to make the discussions motivating. c. ask him how he is handling these discussions and from your experience give him tips for handling them better in the future. d. ask him if he thinks that this is really the best way to motivate the technicians, in the hope that he will get the point without you, as his colleague, having to tell him what he should and should not do in these discussions. www.truecolours.be 7