Influencing Stakeholders Training with Improvisation
At AndAlso, we’re often asked about influencing stakeholders training for businesses. And I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear the word influencing, I get a tiny shiver down my spine. I don’t like the idea of it. It feels calculated. Like someone is going to try using a “technique” on me. A bit corporate Wolf of Wall Street.
It reminds me of how people first react to status work in improv. Nobody likes talking about status when they first encounter it. But status is everywhere, whether you like it or not. And if I’m honest, influencing is too.
If I’m really honest, I do it all the time. Sometimes consciously, mostly unconsciously, and slightly annoyingly, improvisation has made me very good at it.
How Influencing Stakeholders Training Usually Looks
What I notice when I sit in on traditional influencing stakeholders training in organisations is that it often starts outside-in. It’s often built around well-known persuasion principles, like those described by Robert Cialdini. You learn the principle. Then apply the principle. Finally, deploy the principle. Intellectually, I find that fascinating. I can see those principles at work everywhere once I know them.
But improv doesn’t start there. Improvisation does it in a brilliantly backwards, inside-out way.
Instead of thinking, Which principle should I use here? It starts with: are you actually listening? Not nodding-while-waiting-to-speak listening. Proper listening.
Are you noticing the person in front of you? Are they anxious? Defensive? Busy? Bored? Burnt out? Are they blunt and transactional? Or relational and trust-based?
If I try to influence my no-nonsense colleague using warmth and metaphor, they will look at me like I’ve brought a scented candle into a budget meeting. If I go full spreadsheet with someone who leads with values and connection, they’ll quietly disengage before I’ve finished my second sentence.
Improvisation trains adaptability. And adaptability is influence without it feeling like influence.
Because the irony is that the moment someone senses you are using an influence technique on them, it’s game over. It’s like sales. We don’t mind buying. We do mind being sold to.
When you look at who actually influences you in your life, it’s rarely because they applied a clever framework. It’s because you trust them. They’re consistent, they’re honest, they’re competent. You feel understood.
What improv has taught me over twenty-odd years is not how to persuade someone. It’s how to listen. Actually hearing what they want, what they’re afraid of, and everything in between.
That’s not a trick. That’s a relationship.
What Happens in Improv Training for Influencing Stakeholders?
In our improv training for influencing stakeholders, we don’t start with, “Right, let’s practise persuading your CFO to release budget.” Everyone tightens immediately.
Instead, we play.
We practise influence in ordinary, slightly messy human scenarios: convincing a partner to adopt a pet when they are absolutely not keen. Negotiating chores with a sibling who firmly believes they already do more than their fair share. Getting a colleague to swap shifts when it’s their first Saturday off in three weeks and you have a wedding.
When you experience those scenes or watch them play out, something fascinating happens. The people who succeed aren’t the ones who argue the hardest. They’re the ones who acknowledge the objection, adapt their approach, and genuinely respond to what’s being said.
In some cases, they are completely transparent and say, “I really need you on side here.” And that honesty can be extremely powerful. Because influence done with someone feels very different from influence done to someone.
Over my years of improvising, I haven’t become better at influencing because I memorised persuasion principles. I’ve become better because I:
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notice more
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react faster
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adjust more fluidly
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care more about the other person’s reality than my own script
Which brings me back to that slightly uncomfortable phrase: influencing stakeholders.
If we strip away the jargon, what are we actually talking about? We’re talking about helping someone see what you see. Aligning priorities. Building trust so that decisions move forward. That’s it.
And improv training for influencing stakeholders is powerful because it builds the underlying capacities rather than handing you a list of techniques.
It builds:
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presence
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listening
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status awareness
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emotional intelligence
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behavioural flexibility
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and the confidence to be transparent when needed
Ironically, when you develop those capacities, many of the classic influence principles described by Robert Cialdini show up naturally anyway. Reciprocity appears because you’ve built genuine goodwill. Authority appears because you’re grounded and clear. Social proof appears because you’ve built real relationships.
But it doesn’t feel tactical. It feels human.
So yes, I still get a slight shiver when someone says “influencing stakeholders.”
But what I’ve come to realise is that you are already influencing. The question is whether you’re doing it mechanically or improvisationally.
And in organisational life, where trust is fragile, politics are real, and people are tired of being “handled”, the inside-out approach is not just nicer. It’s more effective.
If that’s the kind of influencing stakeholders training you’re curious about, then applied improvisation might be exactly the unexpected tool you’re looking for.
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