Today’s business community faces polarization, rapid technological change, stakeholder activism, and eroding trust in institutions. Leaders must navigate competing interests, scarce resources, and political complexity. By understanding power and influence - how decisions are shaped, coalitions built, and narratives framed - they can align stakeholders, drive change ethically, and create resilient, purpose-driven organizations.
Your benefits
- Understand what power is and how it can be used and misused
- Be able to analyse
- Your organisation’s power position vis-à-vis external stakeholders
- Your own position in an organisation from a power perspective
- Understand the relationship between expertise and power
- Understand how power principles fit within general management theory
- Understand managerial choices when facing new situations
- Begin to build a repertoire of influence tactics so that you can be effective in a variety of situations
- Understand negative consequences of power for individuals such as the power-responsibility balance
- Develop your own strategy for building and exercising power and influence responsibly
About the course
This course explores how to use power and influence effectively to understand your environment and achieve your goals. It focuses on getting things done in the real world, where politics and personalities can hinder progress, and is designed for those who want to make things happen despite obstacles. It also emphasizes using power responsibly—avoiding its pitfalls and applying it to create positive impact.
Through conceptual frameworks, practical tactics, and assessment tools, the course helps you develop your own influence style and navigate political dynamics. By examining effective and ineffective uses of power across organizational settings and career stages, you will be challenged to define what ethical and responsible leadership means in your own life.
Themes
- Foundations of rational, data-driven, and behavioural decision-making.
- Evidence-based decision-making: opportunities and limitations.
- The role of intuition in executive decision-making.
- Combining data and intuitive judgments in complex decisions.
- The impact of AI and machine learning on organisational decision-making structures.
