Influence in a political setting
Member-officer relationships, influence and interest-based negotiation.
Two hours on influence in a political setting: member-officer relationships, the anatomy of power and authority, and negotiating on interests rather than positions.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Serving the public
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Council officers who advise, brief and work alongside elected members
Overview
Officers rarely hold formal power over the decisions that matter most, so their influence rests on relationships and legitimacy. Drawn from the half day Working with the grain, this course opens with member-officer relationships: political and managerial leadership, the shared goal behind familiar complaints, Eric Berne's transactional analysis and the LGA's 2025 guidance on jointly built protocols. It then examines French and Raven's six bases of power, Weber's three types of legitimate authority and the line between persuasion, coercion and manipulation, with the negotiated end of apartheid. It concludes with Fisher and Ury's principled negotiation, Kahneman and Tversky on anchoring and framing, BATNA and Camp David.
Aims
This Focus exists to strengthen officers' influence where they hold little formal power: hearing what sits behind a member's request, choosing the right base of influence for the moment while staying on the right side of the ethical line, and negotiating on interests so that agreements last.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Identify what members need from officers and what officers can expect in return, and plan steps such as a jointly built protocol.
- Distinguish influence, power and authority, and use the disclosure test to separate persuasion from coercion and manipulation.
- Apply Fisher and Ury's principles, and assess your BATNA and the zone of possible agreement, to negotiate on interests rather than positions.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Distinguish political from managerial leadership and explain where the two legitimately overlap.
- Distinguish influence, power and authority, and identify which of French and Raven's six bases of power you and others are drawing on.
- Distinguish positions from interests and apply Fisher and Ury's four principles of principled negotiation.
- Use transactional analysis to recognise Parent, Adult and Child ego states and steer a difficult conversation towards Adult to Adult.
- Compare Weber's traditional, charismatic and rational-legal authority and assess the risk of an organisation depending on charismatic authority.
- Determine your BATNA and reservation price, and assess whether a zone of possible agreement exists.
- Identify what members need from officers and what officers can expect in return, and plan practical steps, such as a jointly built protocol, to strengthen the relationship.
- Apply position, push and pull strategies, and use the disclosure test to distinguish persuasion from coercion and manipulation.
Built from 3 parts.
2 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01Two roles, one purposeMember-officer relations and leadershipBitesize · Working in a Political Environment · module 61 module
- 02Where influence really comes fromPower, authority and influence at workBitesize · Influence, Persuasion and Negotiation1 module
- 03Reading the roomNegotiation skills: the foundationsBitesize · Influence, Persuasion and Negotiation · module 51 module