Career Coach and FLOBEL advisor Lee Miller is conducting a new series of workshops introducing key strategies for influencing and communication. The series includes hands-on, skill-building sessions focusing on advanced strategic influencing and offers learning specifically dedicated to understanding the nuances involved in cross cultural influencing and communications specifically for women. Inspired by his joint published work, A Women’s Guide for Successful Negotiating, with his daughter Jessica Miller, Lee is launching the series to activate the principles discussed in the book. Nectar News sat down with Lee to discuss the inspiration for the upcoming workshops and his aspiration for participants.
NN: Can you tell us about the upcoming workshop, its mission and the inspiration for developing the series?
LM: The impetus for this work is the research we’ve done on influencers and negotiation, specifically the work I’ve done with my daughter on influencing and negotiating for women. Huffington Post picked our joint book, A Women’s Guide for Successful Negotiating as one of the 16 must read books for aspiring women leaders, and that led to the development of our seminars on the same topic, the first of which is scheduled to take place on Friday March 22nd. We conduct seminars that are gender neutral on cross cultural influencing and negotiating. We also host an Essential and Strategic Influencing and Communication workshop for women that focuses on how we communicate one on one. The hope is that we can then translate those same face to face techniques when communicating virtually or with a larger company, helping women specifically become effective influencers and negotiators.
NN: Can you tell us more about the function and structure of the upcoming workshops? How you have shared the principles of the book with audiences n the past?
LM: I also teach this work at Columbia and Steven Hall in the graduate program. For these seminars, we’ve condensed what is normally 14 weeks of learning on the graduate level into a 3 day workshop for more selective learning. Participants do not have to take all three workshops and each one has a different aspect of influencing and negotiating. One is them is designed specifically for women to deal with issues that are specific to women. 80% of influencing and negotiation is gender neutral and the other 20% is specific to gender meaning what men do may not work for women and vice a versa. The workshop helps participants understand the differences and how to be effective applying the principles. Everybody is working with the same principles, but they apply differently when women are implementing them in comparison to when a man is implementing them.
NN: Have you had any challenges sharing this content and knowledge base you’ve created ?
LM: I wouldn’t say we’ve had any challenges in our work, but the research is all based on interviews with high level successful women and the challenges they face. In writing the book we came up with “10 most common mistakes women make when negotiating” and how to avoid them. This was based on the actual experiences that these senior, well regarded, women leaders have witnessed or experienced themselves.
NN: How have you been encouraging potential participants to register for the workshop?
LM: The main pitch is that the most important thing in your life is how you influence and negotiate. No matter how successful you are developing a plan, or selling yourself, it’s not only how good you are or how good your ideas are but how effective you are at gaining the support of others to support those ideas. Good ideas that don’t get implemented are no better than bad ideas. Research supports the view that 85% of success is based not on how good you are at what you do but how effective you are as an influencer, a negotiator or as a leader. Once you get above your first or second job it’s not about what you do it’s about getting others to support your vision and work for you and with you.
VISIT THE WORKSHOP WEBSITE
http://www.shu.edu/continuing-education/
NN: As a male advocating for females, do you have any thoughts about your work as cross gender advocacy? Have you thought of it that way before?
LM: Frankly, half of what I say comes from what I’ve learned with my daughter. It’s as if she is there with me at each workshop reinforcing the material we worked together on. When my daughter and I wrote the book, the whole point was to have an intergenerational male and female team write about how people negotiate and influence between the genders. It was my view point, my daughters view point and the view points of over 100 women we interviewed. Most of the women who go through my programs tell me that they are glad they have a man teaching this course, especially a man that has worked with women in negotiating and influencing, because they are often applying these techniques with are men.
To register for Lee Miller’s Strategic Influencing Series contact Dean Passaro directly to reserve a space Email: karen.passaro@shu.edu. Visit http://www.shu.edu/academics/strategic-influencing.cfm for additional details about registration and schedule.
