We are all influencers. Be it ever so slightly, even our most fleeting encounters leave their mark. And if there’s one skill, above all others, that will help our learners get ahead in the world of international business, it’s the skill of influencing. For influencing drives all the other competencies needed to manage up, down and sideways in organisations – face-to-face, virtually and across cultures. So, whether our classroom focus is on networking, videoconferencing, negotiations, confrontations or presentations, exerting positive influence is likely to be the underlying goal. But what exactly is positive influence? And what makes us as intercultural language specialists ideally placed to develop it in our learners?

Though not an exact science, positive influence is an evidence-based approach to making a constructive difference at work, a subtle set of tools and techniques to make others more receptive to our needs and ideas. Informed by robust psychological research, even small linguistic and paralinguistic adjustments can have a big effect. And regardless of our culture, gender or professional status certain optimal communicative principles seem to hold true.

So join us for this highly practical and interactive 10-week programme to flex your influence-muscles through guided discussions, role plays, authentic video clips and micro-case studies. Critically appraise the leading gurus past and present. And together we may discover that, much more than just persuasion’s charming cousin, positive influence is about pull rather than push, about the interests of others rather than self-interest and, as remote working continues to drive us apart, might just be the uber-skill we all need to close the distance.

Mark Powell, course trainer