Pat Wagner <lead@pattern.com> is the primary contact.

Description: Influence is about making it easier for other people to say yes by earning their trust and respect, but too many people associate the word with unsavory behavior. Learn how to use positive concepts, including empathy, gratitude, and commonality, to impact the success of your library and your career. Topics include the three basic steps to positive influence: rapport, information, and action; the importance of specificity in communication; understanding the other person’s point of view; investing in relationships; what research is needed when dealing with executives, why selling the library is about promoting yourself, and the downsides of trying to hard. This class can be presented as a live, face-to-face class, or as a self-paced, online class, which lasts six weeks.

Educational Objective: How will you know you are more influential after this class? You will discover that life becomes less difficult. 1. You will be able to make it easier for the other person to say yes. You will be better at identifying and removing barriers to your success when negotiating, teaching, leading, and advocating. 2. You will have increased expectations of success. You will be more confident, which promotes confidence in others. 3. People will want to work with you and for you, both formally and informally. You will find it easier to recruit volunteers for projects. 4. People will want to support your positions. They will want to take your side when it comes time to vote. 5. People will want to put themselves out for you. You will inspire generosity in others 6. If life takes a turn for the worst, you will feel more calm. You will more likely assume that you will be able to survive, and even thrive, because of your network of family, friends and supporters. 7. And the person waiting on you at the busy popular restaurant always will seem to save the last piece of pie for you.

Agenda:

This class is available both as a live face-to-face class or an online class. Complete online instructions and a preview of the class syllabus and agenda can be obtained from the instructor, Pat Wagner, by contacting her at pat@pattern or 303-778-0880 in Denver, Colorado. This six-week online class has a starting date and ending date. The class will begin and end with a live webinar, which will be recorded. If you are not able to attend the live session, we will ask you to view the recorded session. The online class is divided into chapters, and each chapter has pages with links to the LINKEDIN discussion group, where you will be directed to post responses to questions and assignments. Each week, you will be asked to read and respond to one-to-two chapters, in addition to reading and responding to the comments of your classmates in the discussion groups. The live class will cover the equivalent information in written exercises and discussion.

Week One

1. Welcome: Introduction to the pros and cons of influence. Participants will read introductory material, including how to use the LinkedIn site. Participants will create and post a short bio to the discussion group, and look for and comment of professional and personal connections with other participants. Participants will read case study about influence in a medical library and respond to the question: Would you have done this differently?

Week Two

2. Language and the limits of influence

Introduction to the concepts of consequences, power, and authority when discussing influence. Participants will review words used to describe influence. Participants will respond to three short case studies in the online discussion group on each issue. Participants will also respond to case studies on the topics of hierarchical and legal limits when trying to be influential in typical medical library institutions, dominated by degreed professionals. Participants will also review the bottom line regarding when it is time to leave. This section ends with workplace assignments regarding feedback from colleagues and research about foundation documents.

Week Three

3.The basic influence model: rapport, information and action.

Introduction to the three steps of influence and the three major theories of human behavior that shape the model: cognitive psychology, general semantic theory, and behavioral psychology. Participants will review online resources regarding different theories of influence and discuss those differences in the online discussions groups

4. Step One: Rapport: When we connect

Participants will review the main features of rapport building, including empathy, manners, commonality, and conversations, as well as the reasons that rapport-building can backfire. They will observe rapport-building techniques during the week at work and report back to the online discussion group about what they observed and how well the techniques seemed to work.

Week Four

5. Step Two: Information: When we document

Participants will review the main features of information, communication, and documents relating to the influence model, including objectivity, limits and precision. Participants will also learn about the danger of turning into a bureaucrat. They will respond to an online discussion question related to each of these three features, as well as an online discussion about a 24-part model on how to communication information successfully depending on the other person’s preferences.

6. Step Three: Action: When we move

Participants will review the main features of action, including understanding cause and effect, accepting responsibility, offer options, showing gratitude, and accepting power. They will discuss the concept of accepting power and  “consensual mythology” using a fill-in-the-blanks exercise and the online discussion group. They will also discuss the concept walking through risk and investing in relationships by keeping a workplace diary.

Week Five: Case studies.

7. Application: Case studies

Participants will comment of five case studies pertaining to concepts presented in this class: influencing the children of a medical student; communicating with staff during a budget crisis; building rapport with a reference librarian who dislikes young people; improving support for your department, and politicking with an elected public hospital board. Participants will also discuss how to the influence model in written contracts.

Week Six: Conclusion

8. Conclusion

Participants will report in the online discussion group how they intend to use the material in the class to become more influential. Post-test, applying the class information and the final plus/delta evaluation

Need for This Course: This leadership class specifically relates to one the most pressing needs of medical librarians: being able to be more influential within their institutions. Since I first presented my live MLA CE classes on How To be A Fearless Employee in Illinois in 2003, the most common question has always been about advocating for the library. While many approaches to advocacy focus on the product, this focuses on the medical librarian's approach to winning the confidence and support of users, employees, co-workers, supervisors, directors, and political and economic decision-makers. Building personal influence will do more to sell the medical library to the powers-that-be than relying solely on ROI statistics. In addition, more and more medical librarians have told me that travel costs and workplace scheduling pressures, even as they apply to local chapter meetings, have become problematic. Requests for online continuing education, for both certification and personal career development, are growing. I informally surveyed medical librarians the last year, and enthusiasm was high for online classes. This class can be taken live or online. The live class can be designed for four, six or eight credits.

The instructional methods used include Slides, Discussion, Dialog, Brainstorming, Sharing/Self-disclosure, Hands-on Exercises, Case Method, Case Study, Problem-based, and Other.

Participant Materials: Participants online materials include: 1. An online interactive class site, which participants will read and use during the six weeks that the class is active. 2. Downloadable quizzes and resources. 3. Use of the online LinkedIn group, where participants will post responses to class materials and exchange ideas. 4. Access to the Librarything online bibliography. 5. Links to pertinent news articles and websites. 6. Live webinar using GoToWebinar.

Facility Requirements: Complete instructions and a preview of the class syllabus and schedule can be obtained from the instructor, Pat Wagner, by contacting her at pat@pattern or 303-778-0880 in Denver, Colorado. Participants for this online class will need to be able to: 1. Use one, and only one e-mail to register for and access the class, whether at home, at work, or at a public terminal. 2. Access the University of North Texas LE@D (Lifelong Education @ Desktop) software, which requires the ability to turn off "pop-up" blockers, and accept cookies, applets, and plug-ins. We will supply you with a free password to test a class and determine if you will be able to access the software as well as supply you and your technicians specifications. Our experience with thousands of participants is that most people are able to log-in with no trouble, even if their computers do not perfectly match the requirements. We have experienced, friendly, live humans beings to help you. 3. Set up on an account at http://www.linkedin.com/. There is no cost, and thousands of your library, university and institutional colleagues are already there. You will be asked to "link" to your instructor, and you will be set up with a discussion group online, where you will be posting your comments and responses to the assignments during the month you are taking the class. 4. Print out various pdfs from the class site. If an organization would like to hold this class as a "live" event in a shared computer lab, arrangements can be made. However, the technical requirements listed would still apply to the individual. So, facility requirements are described in "virtual" terms. Note on privacy: All of the class sites we use are password-protected.

Additional Evaluation: A pre-test and post-test will be part of the class and is built into the online class. It is designed to test the knowledge of the participant before and after the class and focuses on major educational objectives. Also, at the end of the class, participants will be asked four questions regarding the class: what will they apply in their workplace, what would they include in their own class on influence, what they liked about the class, and what they would want to change about the class.