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Dates Location Tuition
Nov 10, 2008 - Nov 13, 2008 Philadelphia $6,950
Jun 1, 2009 - Jun 4, 2009 Philadelphia $6,950

Every business today is a relationship business. The quality and impact of your work, and the profitability of your business, depend upon relationships — with customers, co-workers, and competitors; with suppliers, distributors, and support services; with direct reports, senior managers, and boards. Global mergers and alliances offer opportunities for creating growth, but they also pose new challenges. Not only are you working with more people from different disciplines, industries, and cultures, but you have much less face-to-face time with them than ever before. This three-day program helps you revitalize the relationships that affect the quality and profitability of your business. It goes beyond strategies for influencing the behavior of others to provide a process for creating clear communications, effective collaboration, and relationships that achieve results. Faculty will help you develop better listening and questioning skills. You will learn to recognize your own assumptions and judgments and to reframe situations to gain a broader perspective. You will be introduced to a series of sequential, step-by-step frameworks for building new relationships and improving existing ones.

Tuition for Philadelphia programs includes lodging and meals. Prices are subject to change. Program Consultants are available to provide more information on course specifics and discuss how this program might meet your needs. Please contact them by telephone at +1 215.898.1776 or by e-mail.


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Interactive exercises wrapped around short lectures will introduce you to a series of practical frameworks for building new relationships and improving existing ones. As you focus on the three cornerstones of successful relationships — knowing yourself, understanding others, and developing trust and credibility — you'll develop better listening and questioning skills. You'll work on one of your current relationship challenges through applied practice, small-group work, and reflective sessions and receive individualized feedback on your approach from faculty and peers. You'll leave with a solid understanding of how to transform ineffective patterns, resolve difficult relationships, and build highly collaborative alliances throughout your career.

Session Topics for the Building Relationships That Work Program

  • How Building Relationships Differs From Influencing and Managing People
  • Foundations of Building Relationships
  • Barriers to Relationships
  • Asking Questions and Telling Stories
  • The Costs of Building and Maintaining Relationships
  • The Dynamics of Building Relationships Over Time
  • The Role of Cooperation and Conflict in Relationships
  • How to Approach Different Types of Relationships (e.g., one-time, short-term, long-term)

The program addresses issues that concern every manager who interacts with others in the daily course of business. Managers facing complex relationship challenges, such as a merger or acquisition, a move into new markets with new customers, or a change in supply chain relationships, can particularly benefit from this program.

This program can be customized for organizations that wish to provide an intensive shared learning experience for their managers. We encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to leverage the application and value of the program. Additional group benefits are available when four or more participants attend a program.

Participants must be fluent in English. Specifically, they should be comfortable with metaphoric speech. If this presents a problem, the University of Pennsylvania offers one- and two-week intensive English Language Programs (ELPs) to prepare for a productive week at Wharton.

Learn how to convert business relationships into a network that works for you. Discover how your preferred thinking style affects your interactions with others and how tools such as effective listening will enable you to make and maintain solid business relations. You will:

  • Work on one of your current relationship challenges during the program and leave with practical solutions.
  • Revitalize key relationships with colleagues, clients, and suppliers.
  • Develop skills for building ongoing relationships across disciplines and cultures.
  • Learn to reframe situations for innovative solutions.

Charles E. Dwyer, PhD CHARLES E. DWYER, PhD
Academic Director
Associate Professor, Educational Leadership Division
Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania

Charles Dwyer has held the positions of chairperson of the board of the Wharton Center for Applied Research and director of the Management and Behavioral Science Center. He has more than 30 years of experience in corporate and organizational consulting and executive development for various clients, including IBM, the New York Stock Exchange, PepsiCo, the Buick Division of General Motors, Merrill Lynch, Intel, Bates Advertising, the Justice Department, the General Services Administration, and the Federal Reserve System. Professor Dwyer is recognized as an outstanding teacher and lecturer. His recent books are Managing People (Kendall/Hunt, 1996), The Shifting Sources of Power and Influence (American College of Physician Executives, 1992), and Achieving Power and Influence in Organizations, the latter being a multimedia, self-instructional series of three seminars. He also teaches in Wharton’s Leading and Managing People and Building Relationships That Work programs.
Janet Greco, PhD JANET GRECO, PhD
Academic Director
Co-President, Transition One Associates
Lecturer, Master of Science Program in Organizational Dynamics
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

Janet Greco provides leadership and management development through coaching individual executives and consulting with management teams. As co-president of Transition One Leadership, she specializes in helping leaders of organizations accomplish healthy and productive change in themselves and their employees and colleagues. Dr. Greco's clients have included senior executives and middle managers from a wide range of industries, institutions, and nonprofit organizations, including GMAC, Rohm and Haas, Merck, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and Delaware Valley Financial Services. Before joining Transition One Associates, she was vice president of a large regional advertising agency. Dr. Greco also serves on the faculty of the Organizational Dynamics master's program at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research on the use of stories for executive development has been published in the Journal of Organizational Change Management.

"Thanks to the program I attended at Wharton, I went through a sort of a small revolution! In my daily activity, I began to consciously apply many tools and skills I acquired during the program. The quality of relationships with colleagues, partners, and friends improved massively; and I also managed to develop new ones with great satisfaction. I also had the chance to apply what I learned in the framework of a relevant change within my workplace, given we have been acquired by a larger firm: I managed to keep my job and enhance both visibility and responsibility in a very different environment. Both my managers and my relevant partners have changed, but I managed to establish relationships and collaborations with the new guys, spontaneously adopting the extended model of influence. To be sincere with you, the program allowed me to manage issues I already knew were tough; however, I was underestimating their relevance. But the greatest lesson I learned is that you must never give up when things don't work; you just have to keep trying and looking for the right way to succeed."
— Director, Financial Services Industry

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Use the fundamental principles of human behavior and communication to engage employees in serving your goals—by linking to their individual motivators. Gain practical tools and frameworks to help lead more effectively and achieve results. The program is complementary to Building Relationships That Work.