The Three Factors to successful Stakeholder engagement
You probably heard that "Business is about people". In a project, we call the people and organizations affected by the project or business: "The Stakeholder".
In this article I want focus on the 3 key factors we need to master when we want to influencing stakeholders for a deal, preparing and event, planning a new business, or starting a new project: The People,The Results,The Systems,
This is so important for all entrepreneurs who want to close bigger deals with large corporations. leaders who care about including key stakeholders intro the communication process, sales managers who want to find out out why they failed to close the deal and want to make sure that never happens again.
This is for you if you are responsible for change projects in your company or if you plan a merger with another company or department.
After being 20 years in business with fortune 100 corporations and international entrepreneurs negotiating 7-figure deals ,I know how important it is to make sure you have the major puzzle piece of your key stakeholder on your table and built fruitful relationship with them.
Here are the Top 3 factors I like to keep in mind
- The People
- The Results
- The System
1. The People
Stakeholders are people or groups and organizations who are accepted by our project, business events, etc.
So we need to identify and understand the requirements of all relevant people in the project, me myself and build winning relationships.
We want to know about our stakeholders facts like:
- What is their attitude towards the project?
- What is their power of influence?
- How does our project affect them?
- What are their needs?
- What is their DISC personality style?
We want to know about ourselves:
- How confident am I being a project leader?
- What are my strong leadership qualities?
- How to do others see me?
- What do I need to learn?
- What do I personally really want?
We want to master building win-win relationships :
- How to build relationships with stakeholders online and offline?
- How can we communicate effectively with stakeholders?
- How to collaborate with a team online successfully?
- How can we get a commitment?
- How to handle conflict of interests?
This is why in our and training and coaching programs we focus on raising our consciousness and self awareness by using leadership assessments, practice negotiations role-plays, we teach how to communicate digital using our favourite online tools, how to lead successful meetings and how to collaborate and get commitment,
2. The Results
Did you know, that one of the biggest missing pieces is that we do not have enough clarity and not a picture in mind of shared vision about the project results?
- How clear are you on your goals?
- What are our personal goals?
- What are the stakeholder goals?
- Can communicate you your project goals clearly to the stakeholder?
- Can you paint a picture of the results and the outcome of the project?
- What are the restrictions we need to consider?
Working based on assumptions or not considering the goals of key stakeholders often leads to project stopping out of the blue. Once I had a contract ready to be signed and the board just did not approve it because one of the board members' found his interests were not met.
You know that when you change the scope and some of the goals you have a new project and start the planning process allover form start. If you do not know exactly where you want to go you cannot give a clear direction to your stakeholder.
If you cannot communicate the outcome of your project clearly, how can the stakeholder follow and support you?
This is why in our Project Leader business class and Leadership coaching programs we focus on leveling up your presentation and delegation skills.
We included in our Program a module on negotiation skills so that you can lead win-win negations and a module on conflict resolutions so that you detect conflicts in an early stage and resolve them when it's easy.
3. The System
Especially in large organizations and corporations, it might be difficult to find out who the real decision-maker is.
1.Look at the the stakeholder relationships
Very interesting is to draw a scheme on a chart and look at the relationship between the stakeholder. I love to ask to give me an org-chart .
- How well, do you understand the system of the organisation?
- Who is a key influencer in that system?
- What is the hierarchy?
We use Stakeholder Maps to visualize these stakeholder relatiosnhips.
2. Understand the different Value Systems
What is special about the culture? What beliefs and values drive the decisions? What legal restrictions affect our project?
Here you can measure the Value systems of your organization and stakeholder within 20 min by using the 9 Levels Value system survey.
3. Know the Processes
There are so many processes in our business world. Here are the 3 I want to understand and focus on first :
- The decision making process
- The information flow process
- The core business process
Very important is knowing the details of the decision-making processes in the client's organization. Knowing how they take decisions this is a game changer.
The communication process became so complex in our global economy so that we need to find out What communication channels do the stakeholders use? Where do we find the stakeholder online?
- With some stakeholders, you may sign agreements.
- What is the economic and political situation?
- What are the risks and opportunities?
- What software tools can we use?
Sure there s much more we address in coaching sessions and one of our tasks is it empowers you to gain as much clarity as possible in the time given that you can take out the guesswork when it comes to getting stakeholder support.
Takeaway:
- Stakeholders are people so we need to build trustful relationships as a foundation
- We need to up-level our communication skills so that we can persuade stakeholders and lead stakeholder meetings with confidence.
- We need to understand systems and processes and can use technology to engage stakeholders from wherever online.
Resources:
Free Five step Guide: to create a Stakeholder Analysis : Click here
Ultimate Stakeholder Template Kit : Click here
