Staking the stakeholder — Part 4: how do we engage stakeholders through change?
By: Monty Alavedra
Tags: Stakeholder Engagement, Profiling, Stakeholder Management, Change Management, Business Psychology

In Part 1 of this four-part blog post, we looked at the why and how of identifying all stakeholders by using techniques such as Rapid Listening and Segmenting.

In Part 2, we looked at understanding how our stakeholders are impacted by what we do, think, and feel about it by looking at two key areas: interests & concerns (impacts), and attitudes (think) & emotional state (feel).

In Part 3, we looked at understanding how our stakeholders can influence what we are doing by examining the levels of power, legitimacy, and urgency they have over our work. We also considered change readiness and what capability needs to be developed to manage this “new normal.”

In this final blog, we will look at how we can use a stakeholder profile to build an effective engagement strategy in a mutually beneficial way, tailored to each stakeholder.

Before we go any further, it will be useful to understand what is meant by stakeholder engagement. The definition of a stakeholder engagement strategy, found in the PMBOK Guide Fifth Edition (2013), states:

the process of communicating and working with stakeholders to meet their needs/expectations, address issues as they occur, and foster appropriate stakeholder engagement in project activities throughout the project lifecycle.

As we have seen, stakeholders impact our work both positively and negatively and can have significant influence over the success or derailing of work. How a manager and team engage and manage these relationships is hugely important.

There are a few ways that teams can successfully engage stakeholders; these are:

face to face activities (collaboration)

appealing to hearts and minds (communication)

Face to face activities:

As Patrick Mayfield says in his book Practical People Engagement (2013), face to face still matters (even in a digital world). I thoroughly endorse this.

With face to face, we receive rich and human responses to the information given. People are open to asking more questions; they provide immediate feedback, and their reactions and scope of influence and be seen and felt.

Workshops can be a great form of face to face activity, i.e. impact assessments or change readiness assessments. The first draft of a stakeholder profile will be a useful tool to use in a workshop. Managers and teams will have some insights already on how stakeholders are likely to behave.

This information will help them know how to prepare for the workshop and how to pitch information and work with their stakeholders. For example, a PR team could be described as follows:

how they think: they are partners and support your agenda

how they feel: are willing to explore the change agenda

how they can influence: have high power and legitimacy and low urgency (dominant)

change readiness: high levels of awareness, knowledge, and skill

With this information, a team and a manager could expect high levels of collaboration and interest in deep-diving and exploring impacts. Since it demonstrates that the PR team have high power and legitimacy, they will require to be kept well informed, but they will not force an agenda. They also have high levels of change readiness making transitions easy.

A stakeholder profile will make face to face interactions easier to handle, bringing an element of objectiveness and focus to discussions and relationships.

In the workshop itself, profiles can be validated and/or updated with new information. There is an opportunity to deepen information and address interests and concerns (impacts) as part of this dialogue instead of waiting for communication to be issued.

As with all collaborations, there may be times when a team have difficult areas to address or an imbalance of influence or power dynamics which threaten to detail work. To ensure there is a healthy balance and constructive dialogue, a good facilitator is recommended to keep dialogue impartial.

While in our remote world this may not always be possible, an option such as video conference is a great substitute.

Appealing to hearts and minds:

Successful communication appeals to hearts and minds, meaning it appeals to reasoning as much as it does to emotions. According to Ranjit Sidhu there are three ways to achieve better engagement by using:

symbolic action and symbolism: role modelling and publicly showing commitment to change. Responding to feedback and challenge symbolises that individual contributions are valued.

role modelling and publicly showing commitment to change. Responding to feedback and challenge symbolises that individual contributions are valued. using metaphors : people will more likely remember things if explained in simple terms and connected with imagery they can identify with.

: people will more likely remember things if explained in simple terms and connected with imagery they can identify with. use of narrative and storytelling: our brains engage much more readily with stories and narratives on an emotional level as they help us make sense of what is happening.

All these techniques can be employed in workshops. Symbolism can provide a powerful context for staff to interpret change and can help with shaping stakeholder attitudes (think), especially if leadership teams are on board.

Used well, metaphors can help deliver more complex messaging and make the interpretation of information more accessible. Framing is considered a useful tool to do this.

Lastly, storytelling can help with change readiness and emotional states. It can help staff imagine a new future, one that they can influence and shape in the work that you are doing.

These tools, combined with a stakeholder profile, can help teams and managers use the right engagement technique. In doing so, it will help them effectively manage their stakeholders and promote a successful outcome rather than having their work derailed.

While a stakeholder profile may seem like a manager or team are labeling a person or group of persons, in fact, what they are doing is developing an understanding of who their stakeholders are as individuals or a group of individuals and engaging and communicating with them in the right way.

I have used this four-part blog series to offer insight into how it is possible to take our stakeholders with us when we try to “get stuff done”. I feel we can accomplish this using a more “human” approach, remembering to include all stakeholders.

I think it’s crucial to identify what stakeholders think and feel about change, how they can influence it, and, importantly, how we can involve them a positively engaged and effective way.

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