Are you known for your stakeholder engagement? – 1
Posted by
Part 1 – The big picture
By Amanda Whiteford & Anne Hamill
If you aspire to senior roles, you need to become expert in stakeholder engagement. The larger the project, the more stakeholders will need to buy in – so this is a key skill for senior positions. As a Director said to me, “At interview, I always ask for a person’s plans if they take on the job – and I’m impressed if they have already thought about the stakeholders and planned how to build relationships with them.”
Successful senior managers joining a new organisation will ensure they spend those ‘first 100 days’ mapping out who their key stakeholders are and start to build good relationships with them. But it’s easy to lose sight of the overview. So in this article, we help you review and build your stakeholder engagement.
Building engagement involves mapping and engaging with several groups; how much effort do you invest with each?
Your team. How well is your team equipped to deliver a high-quality outcome? Consider raw ability, skills, morale, and understanding of and commitment to your mission. What do they need from you to become the ‘dream team’?
- Do you have the right team in place? Do they have the raw ability, motivation, and skills to deliver an exceptional result?
- Do they respect and understand the people they work with in other teams?
- Do they understand your managerial goals, standards, and outcomes?
- Do they understand the organisation and departmental goals and how their job contributes to the achievement of these?
Your suppliers. List all the teams and departments your team relies on to achieve team and corporate goals. Do you cooperate like a smoothly oiled machine, where each understands the other’s priorities, drivers, and constraints? If things haven’t worked too well in the past, find out why – and address it to mutual satisfaction as soon as you can.
- Get your suppliers to rate these items out of 10 – either in a conversation or via a survey.
- How well do we understand what your team does, and how you can add value?
- Does your team feel they understand our work and the priorities that drive us?
- How easy are we to work with?
- How respectful are we of your needs and constraints?
- How clear and consistent are we about what we want?
- How appreciative and approachable do you find us?
- What 3 things would improve the way we work together?
Your customers. List all the other teams and departments who are impacted by your work or who rely on the outputs of your team. How much time do you invest in building relationships and familiarising yourself with their work so that you can help them more effectively?
- Get your customers to rate these items out of 10, either in a conversation or via a survey:
- Overall, how would you rate the service we are currently providing?
- How well do we understand what your department does, your priorities and objectives?
- How good are we at clarifying and documenting what you need?
- How much value do we add through our thinking, suggestions and work for you?
- How easy are we to work with?
- How respectful are we of your needs and constraints?
- How good are we at building a true partner relationship with you?
What 3 things would improve the way we work together, or help you achieve your goals?
Explore these questions in conversation to get examples of what works well, and what doesn’t. You may need them to make changes in the way they work to achieve improvements yourself. If so, talk about these in a way that makes it clear ‘what’s in it for them’ and if possible include both organisational and personal benefits. Appeal to their hearts AND their minds!
Senior Managers. Sometimes we assume there is good alignment between our work and the goals of our senior management. But what could you do to show superior alignment? Pay attention to what drives them, frustrates them and the words that are their ‘hot buttons’. A reputation for pushing the senior agenda can only be good for your career!
What are their major deliverables this year? Make sure you understand their objectives and criteria of success. Can you link your work and projects to this bigger picture? Ensure that everything you do is designed to support these initiatives.
- What do they lose sleep over? What are they passionate about? Make sure that the way you work aligns with their passions.
- Change the way you describe what you are doing to engage the interest of your audience. If you’re working on building a green pyramid – are they interested in the stable symmetrical structure rising to a point, the size, or the exact shade of green?
- Be the bearer of good news. Make a point of sharing progress and good results – senior managers often only get to hear when things go wrong! When you get the chance, comment on progress, initial results – not just your own, but great results that you’ve heard others have had. It gives a lift to the day to celebrate success.
External stakeholders. Clients, suppliers, regulators, the local community – understanding their needs and getting a reputation for being a good listener may be crucial. Many a strategy has been shot down by unseen opposition at the last hurdle because the external stakeholder map either hadn’t been drawn or was incomplete. Map out who they are, and make sure you build an ongoing relationship with them.
Listen to their issues and perspectives and work to find areas of mutual benefit and agreement. Summarising is very powerful – it’s the only they know you have heard their points.
- Write down their criteria of success – that way you can check proposed solutions against their desires, to see whether they are likely to support them.
- Consult them when developing strategies that will affect them. If you are unsure if they will be impacted – always check!
- Don’t forget about them! Keep talking to them and get them to feel involved in the whole process – or they may resist your solution.
The Takeaway
Whether new to a role or in situ, make sure you keep an up to date stakeholder map, build mutually beneficial relationships with your stakeholders and keep up to date by taking an interest in what is going on in their world over your own.
- Are you neglecting anyone?
- Decide – which of these groups will you invest time in this month?