SECURITY INFLUENCER WORKSHOP
Learn the skills of influence in relation to security practice and unlock your career potential. This workshop is available either in person via Zoom or online as a lecture series for you to attend at your own pace.
If you attend an in-person delivery, you get the online version free for your future use.
Many security practitioners admit that they want to be able to 'make change' in their careers, their organisations and in the wider industry.
This positive desire to deliver a real benefit from security is usually frustrated by lack of support, lack of investment and lack of engagement.
If this goes on long enough, the result is that security people get burned out, apathetic or they give up trying to be 'better' and just resort to box-ticking. Eventually, they leave the sector entirely. This is a tragic loss. We need more good people who genuinely care about what we do.
Nobody is teaching security people the skills and knowledge they need to make a difference. There is an over-emphasis in the sector on learning the 'security stuff'. Just take a look at the contents of any major certification.
There is no appreciation for the fact that it commonly isn't working. Being awesome at security isn't enough. The problems that many security practitioners encounter are not problems of security competence. They are problems of influence, and there are fundamental reasons why security people struggle with this.
This short workshop will fix that.
During this programme, you will examine fundamental concepts related to security, influence and how we can redefine our roles and break out of our organisational silos.
Through a series of reflective tasks, you will learn from your own mistakes, redefine them and learn how to move beyond them.
You will learn a bespoke model for unlocking security influence that details the components and characteristics you need to become a trusted business advisor.
You will also learn a model for preparing for big meetings and projects where you cannot leave the outcome in doubt.
You'll gain access to a specific skillset for orchestrating better outcomes for your security mission, and you'll learn to do it in line with your ethics and values. This isn't just theory. There are practical lessons here if you choose to apply them.
This isn't manipulation. It isn't 'quick-win techniques'. This is for creating long-term, valued, trust-based relationships.
This workshop is suitable for anyone at any stage in their security career. Sure, this is the advice that I wish I had been given when I was starting out in the industry, but it's never too late to hear it.
It is especially relevant for anyone wanting to move into consulting, either now or in the future.
There are no certificates for this course - what you get is real-world value.
If you want to break out of your silo, make a difference and learn how to redefine how the organisation sees you, this is the only course of its kind available.
What are people saying about this course?
Michael said;
It was an incredibly insightful look into the mirror about how we operate as security practitioners and how we can better plan our interactions across the organization to achieve more favorable outcomes. The amount of insight, experience, and work that goes into these courses is evident, and usually leaves me with weeks worth of ideas to chew on.
As usual, it was delivered with his signature snark that makes it engaging and approachable even when the introspective look gets uncomfortable.
I couldn't help but cringe a little bit thinking about some of my previous peer interactions and how many of the mistakes I could easily pinpoint. But a fantastic opportunity to do better in the future and learn from my mistakes.
I can't say enough good things about how much I've learned from Dr. Diston and look forward to continuing finding the uncomfortable places where I can learn new skills! Do yourself a favor and add The Real Security Doctor to your learning plan.
Den said;
It was really insightful, having a framing and structure in order to understand and reflect is immensely useful. I've done a lot of reading around concepts of influence with a lean towards understanding social engineering and how empathy can be applied to either influence or manipulate. This brought a lot of these concepts together in a way that can be used a security practitioners in a work context but it was reassuring that core principals and values are reasserted throughout. Powerful stuff, it was a good time.
Adam said;
So, on Wednesday I was part of the cohort that Unlocked Security Influence with Dr Richard Diston. Building on previous persuading, influencing and relationship training I'd done (including a genuinely excellent course with Oxford Said Business School years back) it was arguably from a security perspective the best piece of education I've ever received.
The contextualisation around security practice as opposed to more generalised relationship models made it all directly applicable in context immediately. The models were richer and more detailed than those I'd used before and yet effortlessly simple to use.
If I had one critique it would be that there was a large amount of introspection involved on times I had clearly screwed up in the past. This was powerful, helpful and massively uncomfortable. The Doc's glee at this aspect was well-deserved. I only swore at him under my breath.
Almost annoyingly brilliant, this course was worth its weight in platinum.
Bill said;
When two people I trust suggested I take The Real Security Doctor “Unlocking Security Influence” workshop, I was intrigued. I have learned much about things I didn’t know existed from his online webinars and private blogs in his Surgery and so I was intrigued about what I might gain from a course that (on paper) appeared to be about something I had believed I already knew a great deal about. How pleasantly wrong I was!
Honestly, this was the most enjoyable, effective, and humbling day I have ever spent investing in myself. The setting was small, principally because Dr.D kindly takes the lifestyles of others into account and sometimes runs sessions on Saturdays.
Don’t expect an instantly forgettable 90-minute lecture. You should expect an all-day affair. Dr Rich created an atmosphere quite unlike any educational environment I have been in for so long that I had forgotten how uplifting and enjoyable the experience of learning can be.
The nature of the workshop, what it teaches, how Dr Rich teaches it, the interplay between teacher and pupil, and between the pupils themselves (there were fewer than 4 of us) made this something special. His style is structured and formal, yet it feels like a chat in the pub with a group of friends cooking up a start-up.
His clever questions enabled me to arrive at the answers without being told. The pace of the workshop was good and sessions were often followed by an ‘aha’-type revelation when I learned for myself how each module fits into the big picture.
The real lesson from the whole day was that as a ‘security know-it-all’, I don’t know it all, far from it. I was confronted with the evidence of my previous failures in professional life and learned that the one trait they all shared was that my ego and assumptions about others prevented me from achieving my goals.
This is not a ‘technical’ course in the IT/computing sense of the word. Still, it is very technical in the systemic breakdown and analysis of the ‘why and how’ of human decision-making. It provides a structured method to take intuition, gut feelings, beliefs and other ephemeral tools that we often disregard and mix with technical and traditional learned security skills to achieve exactly what the course title promises to deliver: unlocking security influence.
The results of the course are the ability to take the skills I already possess and identify the gaps I need to overcome to really make a difference. I learned more about myself in one day than I have in several years of repeating the same thing and expecting different results, because the variable I never thought to change was myself and the way I behave.
Thanks very much Dr.D, I am a patient who feels much better for having had treatment 😊
What else would you like to know?
Contact me here about the next available course dates.
If you book the in-person workshop, you get automatic access to the online version free.
SECURITY INFLUENCER WORKSHOP online only
Of course, you might want to do the online-only version instead.
Online Duration: Approx 2 hours of lectures with additional time needed for the exercises.
What is even better is that you have 2 payment options. You can pay in full as usual or you can split the course cost over 2 months. Pay half today, pay the rest next month. Hit the button below to get started.