This course will provide learners with a systematic general framework for analyzing persuasive influence situations. Learners will be able to identify different challenges faced by persuaders and to fashion appropriate strategies for addressing those challenges. The broad goal is to provide learners with not only an extensive persuasion tool kit, but also with an understanding of how different tools are useful in different situations. Specifically, the course will address four broad topics: strategies for influencing people’s personal attitudes; strategies for affecting social factors influencing behavior; strategies for affecting people’s perceived ability to undertake the desired behavior; and strategies for inducing people to act on their existing intentions.
Leadership Through Social Influence
This course is part of Organizational Leadership Specialization
Instructor: Daniel J. O’Keefe
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There are 4 modules in this course
This module discusses the first of four challenges that persuaders often face: getting people to think that what you’re proposing is a good idea. Sometimes, the reason people aren’t already doing what you want is that they’re not yet convinced that they should—that is, they don’t have sufficiently positive attitudes. This module discusses some fundamental strategies for changing people’s attitudes.
What's included
8 videos3 readings1 assignment
Even if people have positive attitudes about what you’re proposing, social factors—what they think other people do or want them to do—might lead them to not do what you want. This module discusses several ways in which such social considerations might pose a challenge for persuaders—and discusses how to successfully influence such factors.
What's included
4 videos1 assignment
People can have positive attitudes about your advocated action, and all the social considerations can be lined up positively, but still people might not engage in the desired behavior—because they don’t think they can perform the action. That is, they think the behavior is too difficult, too hard to do, they lack the ability. This module discusses strategies for addressing that challenge—strategies for influencing perceived behavioral ability.
What's included
4 videos1 assignment
Even when people already have the desired positive attitudes, positive social factors, and high perceived ability to perform the behavior—that is, even when they intend to engage in the behavior you want—even then they might fail to do so. When people have the intentions you want but aren’t acting on them, then the challenge is to get people to convert those intentions into actions. This module discusses several strategies that can encourage people to do that.
What's included
6 videos1 assignment
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Arizona State University
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Johns Hopkins University
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Reviewed on Dec 17, 2016
Common sense is not so common. Simply put, these principles are so relevant to everyday life, and yet they elude us. Vital tool to develop communication tactics every leader must master.
Reviewed on Jun 29, 2020
Extremely well explained, though perhaps some peer-graded assignments and not just quizzes would have been more appropriate to put our newly-acquired knowledge into practice.
Reviewed on Jul 13, 2020
Excellent points of learning. Social Influencing has huge role to play to get buy-in from stakeholders. This course helps in learning these critical nuances in a simple and lucid way.
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