An Unusual Ingredient in Stakeholder Management

Most models of stakeholder management ask you to consider your stakeholders' power and interest. From our standpoint that is okay, but it carries a significant danger that it will deprioritise the human element and also overly focus on your own objectives. When managing stakeholders, it is extremely important to remember at all times that they are not names on a white board, but real people with their own agendas.

That is why, over the last ten years, we have been using a slightly different approach which puts the main emphasis on relationships when analysing stakeholders. There are three elements to the stakeholder relationship we train clients to consider...

• Trust. This is the most important part and seeks to determine the extent to which trust exists within the relationship with the stakeholder. This is a two-way consideration — trust needs to be present in both sides otherwise there could be trouble ahead.
• Openness. This reflects the way each party volunteers information. It is one thing to have trust, but this does not necessarily mean that they will go out of their way to alert the other party to problems.
• Frequency. Both trust and openness can exist in a relationship; but if there is little contact of engagement between the two sides, the relationship will struggle to survive.

By considering the stakeholder's position, we are able to easily work on generating ideas to increase the quality of the relationship. Implementing these helps the stakeholder to feel understood, valued and it is more likely that the teams will proactively address their concerns rather than simply try to overcome the objections (or avoid them).

We have seen some quite incredible improvements and results by using this approach. One example a major company was able to avoid industrial action which would have cost them millions.

If you would like to learn more about how we apply this in our training and coaching, please get in touch.

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