How to communicate with your Stakeholder effectively
If you want to get your stakeholder's support you need to listen to them, to talk to them. and to collaborate with them.
Why do we need to communicate with stakeholders?
Story(1) Imagine you sell a machine and when it gets delivered to the plant it does not fit into the size of the doors of the new build workshop. So you need to break down the wall to fit it in. You think this is a joke. No this is a true story of one of my clients.
Why did this happen? Once the Machine was sold the key account manager closing the deal made the assumption that his client will consider all measures when building the workshop doors as he has all documentation in his hand. But we all know that it could happen we may buy a fridge and do not read the measures and it does not fit. or you buy a new car and it does not fit into the garage.
You may say if that is so obvious why do such errors happen still frequently? One reason is that the Key account manager or sales manager is not aware that he is as well the "project manager" for the implementation. Usually, the implementation will be done by experts who are in another department or even by another company and we need to break down the silo thinking between departments, stakeholder groups, and special experts in order to succeed.
Story(2) We need to sell our project. Have you ever wondered who will finance your big idea? How do you get the appointment and approval of the right decision-maker? The fastest way to succeed is by talking to people. Ask and get faster results and shortcuts to achieve your destination. Clarity about your stakeholder, the stakeholder landscape, the attitude, goals, and interests are just some aspects that can save us so much time and give us clues about who to connect with first. Did you know that we have connected to almost every person on the planet in max 6 steps? Negotiation and influence skills are very helpful in this process.
This is why in our training, we focus a lot on how to effectively. communicate with our stakeholders.
1. Collaboration in joint Stakeholder Workshops
Doing something together is the best way to get to a mutual agreement and get commitment to a decision from everyone who has been part of the process.
In our Stakeholder workshops, we encourage our Sales experts, Project Leaders, Key Account Managers, Service team leaders, Product developers, Logistic experts, and Financial experts to collaborate to build a plan to minimize all the risks related to selling, delivering, and installing industrial machines. The best results we achieved were if we invited the client to joint workshops and risk-minimizing sessions. Each project is unique and existing checklists are usually treated as a must only in a workshop do they help us to trigger our thinking process to gather all relevant information for our specific machine.
So one great way of Stakeholder communication is by conducting joint workshops. Here are some of our signature workshop types we facilitate and enable our clients to run on their own:
- Stakeholder appraisal workshop
- Project planning workshops
- Risk Minimizing Workshops
- Decision-making workshops
- Root cause analysis Workshop
Are you interested in running one of these? drop us an email to get a free agenda at [email protected]
Click here to download your Workbook
2. Persuasive Presentations
How persuasive are you when you talk to your clients about your project? How do you make sure they understand exactly what they need to know?
Here are some questions to consider when you prepare a stakeholder presentation:
In my experience, we need to prepare for each of the different stakeholder groups -different presentations, depending on the results of our stakeholder's analysis. Here are some questions that help us to set the right focus:
- What is the stakeholder's level of awareness?
- How educated are these stakeholders about the subject?
- How committed are these stakeholders?
- What is the stakeholder's attitude towards the project?
- What are the main objections of these stakeholders towards the project?
- What is in for them?
When we present information we can be more effective by being charismatic and considering the preferred channels of receiving. Did you know that we have different channels of receiving information? During my 20 years of training executives in presenting business cases, roadshows, and technical presentations I could observe how the body language and the voice affect the "What do they say" More than the structure and the words. However, if I invite you to tell me about one of your favorite movies I am sure you can recall the story in detail that you are surprised about your brilliant memory. This is what they mean with storytelling. In our Communication coaching sessions, we focus a lot on how to improve your presentation so that it paints a picture in your head and in the head of your clients that they grasp quickly and can keep in mind easily.
Today we do not need to travel and meet each stakeholder in person we can reach more stakeholders easily from wherever.
We can communicate our information online in 3 ways:
- written
- audio
- Video
What is your preferred one?
3. Stakeholder Interviews
Speaking is Silver and listening is Gold. Conducting Stakeholder Interviews is a great way to understand stakeholders' needs, goals, and objections. There are different forms we can use to gather information online. The beauty of leading protect from wherever is today is that we can conduct such interviews using online video chats and record those.
Tech tools
Here are some great tech tools you can use.
1 If you have the email and know the person I would use one of these:
- ZOOM
- Google Meetup
- ECAMM Interview Mode( looks so professional)
2. If you want to talk to people in public or you do not have the email you may invite them to talk with you in Video in
- Instagram Live
- Youtube live stream
- Facebook Live
If you do not like to talk and show up on video you may consider using a podcasting interview mode by setting your recording system up to allow incoming phone calls. We teach the tech tools we use in our communication training. They are changing it becomes easier every year. After spending so much time learning fancy stuff because I was excited about the possibilities I have to acknowledge that all that learning is great however I do not need to learn to build a yacht to rescue a swimmer near the beach who is drawing. Here is my advice: Start easy and simple and become fancy later!
4. Communication Skills
We can talk in person online, write emails and talk on the phone.
I have been training for 20 years executives in Presentation skills and in 20214 I fell in love with the S.C.I.L performance strategy framework of effective communication including a scientific online questionnaire that helps my clients to become aware of their communication strengths and greatest potential so that they can reach their audience more effectively.
What is the Communication system named S.C.I.L about?
Scientific research conducted by Andreas Bronhäusser and several Universities has detected 16 frequencies we use to send and receive information. We all have some preferred ones. These frequencies can be organized into four groups.
S -Sensus- How do we connect on the emotional level?
C-Corpus. How do we use body languages like posture, gestures eye contact, and voice?
I -Intellect- How do we structure and sequence our interview questions most effectively?
L.- Lingua- What type of words and language patterns help us to get the message understood?
How does the SCIL system apply to our interviews?
- Interview with Video, we have all 4 SCIL dimensions more or less covered
- Interview on the Phone: The Body langue is reduced to the voice
- Interview in written ( Survey, emails) we use the channels of S- Structure, and L - Language patterns only.
Knowing this demands us to uplevel our showing up online on Video skills. which is always a part of our leadership programs.
If you just use polls on social media or surveys and questionnaires please be aware of the limitations we have to communicate with other people as the emotional connection and body language and voice are missing.
All this Stakeholder communication needs some strategy and planning.
5. Communication Strategy
Project Stakeholder Communication should be always intentional. So here we need to develop a clear vision of our stakeholder communication and choose our key communication priorities before we go into tactical communication planning.
Here are some steps that worked for us and our clients.
- Create a Presentation about your Project Vision
- Define your Stakeholder and the different segments
- Create clear messaging for your Project stakeholder
- Develop Your Communications Strategy for each segment
- Plan Communication Activities
RESOURCES
Please check out these stakeholder resources
Read on the blog: 5 Steps to Stakeholder Analysis
FREE GUIDE: 5 Steps Guide to Stakeholder Communication Plan
If you want to uplevel your stakeholder communication please check out the offers:
Stakeholder Template Library. Click here
SCIL Performance Coaching Click here
