At work, do you have the challenge of managing stakeholder
relationships each with their different sets of
opinions and values and different areas as well and industries,
and you're just wondering, how do I do manage those relationships effectively?
Well, in this video, I'm going to share with you five
very practical steps on how to manage these relationships communicate with them
and produce out great outcomes with your projects.
So first of all, when we say stakeholder, a stakeholder
is someone with a vested interest in something. And that something is usually a business,
but it could also be a relationship. It could be
a project, it could be some sort of products and services.
It is somebody with a with a vested interest
and when it comes to stakeholders their interest that they've
vested in, their interest is usually around three arenas.
They're interested in the decisions.
They're interested in the activities and they're interested in the outcomes.
So when you look at decisions, usually the decisions around moving forward
for example in a business come beforehand before the activities.
So this is before and defining in the,
in the process, where you're defining the relationship,
the activities that they're interested in is usually during the transactions during the movement,
when the relationship has already been determined.
And finally, the outcomes is after. What's going to happen afterwards,
after we have this progress process of working together, right.
So those are the three things that the key three,
three key things that your stakeholders are going to be interested in
and looking at in terms of assessing
whether or not, this is a worthwhile relationship moving forward and assessing,
whether or not things work well, as well,
while this progress is moving forward. So,
when it comes to understanding how to build stakeholder relationships,
how to maintain great relationships with the stakeholders.
The key is understanding there's one principle associated with it and the principle is this,
any incongruence between the highest values of your stakeholders
and the missions, or the vision of the project or the organization those incongruences
are going to cause a lot of misunderstandings between the stakeholders
and the persons involved on the team, especially if you are the team leader
and it's going to undermine the whole team spirit
and even the team spirit of all the management levels below.
It's getting cold outside. All right. So let's continue this.
When stakeholder relationships are not managed effectively
what happens what could happen is that there's perceived inequities among stakeholders
and this can cause a reduction in the leadership integrity
and also disrespect on management levels.
So, what I want to share with you are the five key strategies on managing stakeholder relationships.
And the first strategy is step number one in the strategy is to map
out their influences, map out their impact.
So what do we mean by that? Every single stakeholder will have an
impact on the thing that you are managing.
It could be the business, a relationship, a project and so on.
So, every image every strategy, every stakeholder will have an impact.
This is where you're taking a step back and looking at each stakeholder,
that you are interacting with and understanding,
what is their impact on this moving forward?
Right? And usually, we focus on are the purpose of this is to focus on which
stakeholders are the most important in terms of the most impactful
and usually,
it's in terms of which ones can produce the most influence on the financial decisions
or the company's bottom line or the most important metrics moving forward.
Those are the usually the ones that are the most impactful
and therefore, the relationships that you want to prioritize and put an importance.
But outside of that, this is also looking at in each stakeholders,
the context of the expertise they bring in,
how do they influence the project? How do they influence the business?
How do they influence the outcomes?
The decisions in the activities? Right?
What do they bring in and how impactful are
they in terms of the company's bottom line, in terms of the leadership,
in terms of the motivation in terms of access to resources and so on?
So, once you have mapped out the impact of each of your stakeholders
and prioritize which ones are more important and the lesser important to focus on
when it comes to maintaining relationships.
This will give you more of a structure
and guidance on moving forward in managing the stakeholder relationships.
Step number two of the strategy is to identify
what they value most each stakeholder
because the thing is every single stakeholder on your team that
you will be managing relationships with each
and every one of them will decide
and act in accordance to what they perceive is the most beneficial based
on what they value. And the key is what you value in the relationship,
what you value in the project,
what you value in your teams or the business moving forward that you're interacting with,
all of your systems have values. You cannot expect that
they will have the exact same values as you.
And you cannot expect them to see things equally as important as you do,
even if you were to present the data, present
the information. Isn't it true? And you will realize this,
that sometimes the stakeholders and other person’s systems of values
just don't see things exactly the way you do.
So understanding that your values in the organization
and the team and so on are unique to you
and they may not share the exact prioritization of values
as you and if the stakeholders are going to decide
and act in accordance to what they value
and what they and therefore that's going to affect their perception of
what is the most beneficial decision and action to take,
then it would wouldn't it make sense, wouldn't it stand to reason that it is
important to help them to understand how your proposal,
your action steps, your plan is going to help them to fulfill what's most important to them.
So once you've identified their most important values and in what what their highest priorities are,
and so on this will help you to avoid miscommunications.
This will help you also to better manage the relationship where they
can see that you are on their side that you can,
you can create the union that they will be able to understand that
what their decisions their actions as well.
That you are helping them to fulfill what's most important to them,
by the way, this is very nuanced, for your particular situation,
I understand when you have particular in particular
industries particular stakeholders as well.
There's a lot of nuances with respects to communicating with respects to relationships.
And sometimes the nuances I'm unable to cover all of them in this video.
So, but if you are somebody who really wants to master this skill,
who really wants to step up in leadership,
and there have been some conflicts with certain stakeholders that
you kind of need a little bit more feedback on,
then I invite you to work with me. Below this video in the description
there's a link to apply for coaching with me.
And this is where I'm going to walk you through the steps to help you to come up with a plan on,
how do you navigate communication
landscapes, when others have different perspectives,
different values to you. I'm also going to be training you on
how do you communicate effectively. How do you advocate for yourself?
Share your ideas, express yourself in ways that you are still respecting and honoring
what's important to you, but also creating a collaborative, a harmonious
and a productive relationship in your workplace.
So if you're serious to stepping up in your career,
as a leader in your industry, then I invite you to apply.
Only if you're serious about stepping up in your leadership, and so submit your application,
and I look forward to working with you on the inside.
Step number three is to link it to the dashboard,
right? So when it comes to managing your stakeholder relationships,
it's not only about what the stakeholders think.
It's not only about their decisions. There is a bigger picture and entity there.
It could be your business. It could be a project that leads to greater outcomes for humankind.
So there's a bigger picture at play.
So your senior management,
whether or not you're part of that senior management or you work closely with the senior management,
but the, but the entity, the entire entity of senior anagement in your organization already
has a dashboard. In other words,
that dashboard that they're looking at every single day that they’re tracking every single day,
they're monitoring every single day, that dashboard has a lot of KPIs, key performance indicators,
where they know that things are going in positive directions,
They can identify gaps right away and they can they can recourse or
they can regroup in ways that are more productive.
So, that dashboard whatever is on that dashboard,
this is important to link to your stakeholders the communications with your stakeholders.
The conversations you're having with them, to getting them on board,
helping them to understand how it's going to meet their values as well.
All these communications with your stakeholders,
you want to link it back to the dashboard. Show them
and demonstrate with them how they can improve it, ways that they can give feedback, ways
that they can improve upon it, ways that they can refine it
as well on that dashboard.
And when you link it to the dashboard,
this is exactly what you can do to avoid doubling the work where you can also,
avoid these little side goals that sometimes creep up
along the way that take up time, and and increase you the the output of your teams as well.
So, this is a really effective way to keep the entity in a coordinated fashion
and keep it in unified fashion, right.
So, link it to the dashboard. Step number four is equanimity and equity.
Those two are very different things. The principle behind this step is to realize that your
relationship with your stakeholder is a personal relationship,
make no mistake about it. It is a personal relationship.
So, here's what I mean by that, right? Your stakeholders yourself
and every member of your team as well,
they all have their own personal goals.
There is a stake in their career path,
in their life purpose, in their chief aim.
So the key in this state, in this step that I'm sharing is to re-establish,
find some ways to implement and establish equanimity and equity in the teams in the
each stakeholder relationships. Here's what that means.
Equanimity is internal. It's your self governance.
It is the way that you handle yourself. The way that your mind frame is your state of mind.
And establishing equanimity means that you have intern,
you have a mindset of fairness. You have a mindset of wanting to serve,
you have a mindset of wanting to create of seeing people as your equals.
So that is establishing a sense of equanimity.
The other one is equity and that is external.
This is collectively governed, which means that you are governing within that the relationships
as state of equality,
where you are putting in systems
and processes and a team spirit where there is equality among the stakeholders
and your team members at play, right?
So this step includes doing
what it takes to increase the levels of equanimity internal
and equity which is external on your stakeholder teams.
Step number five, contextual features.
So contextual the root word is context.
This is where you are doing being a little bit of a researcher,
a scientist and understanding the context
between each of your stakeholders,
because every single stakeholder that you are managing relationships with they come
with a context behind them,
so I'll give you some ideas of what this of what this means and how you can begin your research.
For example, every single stakeholder comes with him or her a relationship a network behind it.
So who do they have access to, who is in their network
that could be important to you, that could add some context to understanding their behaviors,
their philosophies, and their beliefs? So that's one aspect of it.
Another aspect is understanding how each of the stakeholders share information.
How do they share information? And what information do they have access to?
What are there any particular areas of expertise or experiences that they might have,
that might add some clues to how they could make decisions
and what resources they could have available to you?
Another example could be,
what are some nuances in which data needs to be shared with each of the
stakeholders in terms of their personal preferences?
In terms of how they communicate, in terms of what data they use or that they find necessary
that is important, that could influence the way that they decide? Right.
So these are various contextual features and I'm just giving you examples.
But the contextual features can run really deep
or they might you might find repeated things, patterns
common with each stakeholders.
So this is important as you are managing relationships to understand
and try to start to develop patterns on how you can manage each relationship effectively
and you might find that some stakeholders could have very close
relationships with each other, commonalities
and networks as well.
And that will help guide the way that you manage. Was this
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Then click on this video. I keep forgetting which side it is.
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