Your stakeholders will make or break your project. So, how you treat them is critical. This means you have to plan your stakeholder communication with care. In this article, we’ll look at the three elements of a solid stakeholder communication plan. That is: For each stakeholder or stakeholder group, the place to start is your strategic intent. That is, what are you aiming to achieve with these stakeholders? For example, you may want to influence their thinking, gather their input, collaborate deeply, or simply inform them of what’s going on. There are a number of dimensions to your stakeholder engagement strategy. Some relate to the nature of the stakeholders, and others to what you want to achieve with them. The Nature of Your Stakeholders All stakeholders are not equal. While you want to treat them all with respect, you will need to prioritize some, and tailor your messaging strategy to their needs and how they can impact your project. The familiar questions to ask about your stakeholders are things like: The more information you can gather about each stakeholder or stakeholder group, the better you’ll be able to assess what you want to achieve – along with the best way to do that. This will allow you to determine the extent to which you need to: What You Aim to Achieve Next, think about the kind of interaction you need to have with each stakeholder, so you can best serve the needs of your project. There is a wide spectrum of possibilities, based on the extent to which you: These suggest a range of strategic postures. The following table illustrates some of the main ones: Focus Posture Focus on Stakeholders Accommodating Prepared to make substantial concessions to the stakeholder to achieve the core intent. Collaborating Prepared to work together with the stakeholder to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Consulting Consulting actively, and open to compromise. Neutral Informing Open sharing of information Focus on organisation or project objectives Promotional Use of promotional and persuasive tactics to influence stakeholders positively. Defensive Resisting compromise and providing strong counter arguments to stakeholders’ perceptions. Assertive Prepared to fight hard to optimise the position of the project or organisation. Extent of tactics dictated by ethics and long-term pragmatism. Source: The Influence Agenda, by Mike Clayton. Palgrave Macmillan 2014 Once you know what you need to achieve with each stakeholder or stakeholder group, the next step is to consider how you will do this. Typically, each key stakeholder will have a whole plan for the different approaches you’ll take and messages you need to deliver. This will span the project and the emphasis will likely shift from phases to phase. For lower-priority stakeholders, and those in large group (‘broadcast stakeholders), you may have simpler plan. But, the elements of planning any one communication will be similar. I like to remember what it will include with “eight T’s.” This mnemonic makes use of the exceptional flexibility of the English language. The 8 T’s of Stakeholder Communication Planning Crafting a CPP Message My simple formula for good communication is that it must be compelling, persuasive, and powerful – CPP. Compelling The message must engage your stakeholders by drawing them in, holding their attention, and helping them to understand with clear language. We do this by structuring our messages. We use a logical sequence, questions and answers, and storytelling. Persuasive Your messages need the ability to change thinking. So, the understanding we convey must be accurate. We need to use a good argument that demonstrates why the receiver should pay attention to the message, solid reasoning, and an appeal to their emotions. Powerful It’s not enough that they understand and agree. Your message needs to stick, and trigger action. Create impact by tuning into your audience and using memory hooks and psychology. Selecting the Right Medium The range of media available to convey our message is huge. So don’t just stick to email and presentations. Decide which to use, based on: Evolving Your Messages Throughout the Project Many projects, particularly change or transformation projects, go through a number of stages. And the nature and intention of your stakeholder communication will change at each stage. For this, you can use a Progression Plan. There are many ways to construct one, but it starts with three things: Drawing up a progression plan can be a powerful way to see the big picture of your stakeholder engagement throughout your project or program. Preparing for Reactive Stakeholder Communication The last thing to plan for is how you will respond to incoming communication from your stakeholders. As a minimum, you need a process for: For important stakeholders, it can be helpful to allocate members of the project team to be the first contact for each of them, with an alternate point of contact for when that team member is unavailable. Another approach can be to have a dedicated communications team within the project. This is typical in large projects with a big “political” impact. I use quotation marks here because this may not be capital-P politics. Certainly, some projects have a high profile or a big social or community impact. For these, you may even contract a specialist communications or public relations (PR) agency. The Importance of Planning Reactive Stakeholder Engagement There is an old saying that we should not ‘spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar’. This means that if you try to save a little money on waterproofing, you could lose the whole ship. You’ve put a lot of work (I hope) into planning your stakeholder engagement strategy and outgoing communications. Don’t waste it by not preparing to deal with stakeholder enquiries, responses, concerns, or challenges. There is a good chance that your stakeholders will judge you more on how you deal with unplanned interactions than on your set-piece planned communication. Concluding Remarks on Stakeholder Communications Planning There are good reasons why, over the last 20 years, we have stopped using the term ‘stakeholder management’ and come to prefer ‘stakeholder engagement’. Not least of these is because it suggests a more respectful mindset towards the people who matter most, our customers and clients, colleagues and collaborators, and our communities. However, the process of stakeholder engagement needs to be managed. So, I also use the term ‘stakeholder engagement management’. And anything that we manage, needs a plan. Stakeholder communication is a big subject – and one I could write a whole book on. In fact, I did. This article introduces some of the ideas from my 2014 book, ‘The Influence Agenda: A Systematic Approach to Aligning Stakeholders in Times of Change’. It is published by Palgrave and you can get a copy anywhere that you buy your books. Related Content Stakeholder Analysis: A Comprehensive Guide for Project Managers Who Are Project Stakeholders and Why Are They Important? What is a Stakeholder?
In his 1990 book, “On Becoming a Leader,” Warren Bennis articulated his famous 12 differences between managers and leaders. The last is the best-known: ‘The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.” But others are instructive for us. To paraphrase Bennis, “The project manager focuses on systems and structure; the project leader focuses on people.” I choose this one because there is one thing all experienced project managers know. Being a project manager is all about people: customers, stakeholders, and team members. So, when we ask about project leadership, the answer is all about attitude. I believe that a mature approach to projects would see all project management replaced by project leadership. “But okay,” I hear you say, “We know what we mean by project management. We understand the project processes and the specific disciplines we can knowledge areas or domains of knowledge. But what does a project leader do?” My answer is that Project Leadership requires us to be intentional about the following: Getting the Team You Deserve is Easy I have long believed that you get the team you deserve. That is, if you expect your team to let you down, and look for every chance to prove yourself right, that exactly what you’ll find. If you think that any failure of your project will be because you could never hope to get the perfect team for the job, people will inevitably meet your expectations. If, on the other hand, you content yourself with the fact that you have the best team you could possibly get…given the circumstances. If you respect your team and celebrate their diversity. If you take every opportunity to build relationships with them and develop each individual’s abilities, then, you will get the team you deserve. In fact, I suspect that getting the team you deserve is inevitable. However, deserving the team you want takes work: a lot of work. And everything you need to do is simple. My four essentials of team leadership are the most important things you need to do. They are as follows: It is not difficult to make time to get to know each person on your team. Nor is it hard to listen to their hopes and aspirations and look for ways to support and encourage them. It’s simple. And it’s a standard part of traditional project management to build a plan that will give confidence and assurance to your team. Better still, you don’t need to do that work: it’s better if your team does it. That way, you can harness multiple minds, ideas, and perspectives. It also means your team will commit to that plan. It’s no longer your plan. They can’t claim to have never believed in it at the first sign of troubles. So, building a plan is easy. Crafting and maintaining a team are just a matter of understanding and adapting to the natural processes of group formation and evolution. And then, celebrating the team and finding ways to do things together. Let people do what comes naturally: caring for one another and collaborating on a joint endeavor. What could be simpler? Communication also comes naturally to people. Put aside your innate inclination to be in control of the messages. A hub and spoke model of team communication with the project leader at the center has a single point of failure: you! Instead, create a culture in which everyone takes it upon themselves to keep their colleagues informed in an intelligent and efficient way. Simple! But here is the rub. This may be all be simple; but simple is not the same as easy. In the chaos and confusion of a fast-moving project, there is a lot to do. So, keeping on top of that is not easy, but it is essential. Leading Up Governance is a key to the success of every project. It is the role of a project leader to advise on the processes that balance the competing needs of oversight and probity on the one hand, and agility and progress on the other. You are leading your project on behalf of your client, sponsor, or boss. They should know what they want, what decisions they need to make, and where to place their attention to ensure that you and your team are doing your jobs well. But, do they always know this? And, when they do, what part do you play in directing their attention and helping them to be effective? You best serve your sponsor, steering group, and project board by being an effective leader: not by being a competent manager. Leading Out I don’t know whether it is reasonable to say that we have a duty of care towards our stakeholders. Some, maybe. But I do believe we have some level of obligation to: Also, our roles may require us to influence them from time to time. We need our stakeholders to follow us, rather than be passive bystanders to our projects. They may not always support every choice we make, but we do need them to engage with the discussion. For this, management is not just inadequate. To me, it feels disrespectful to try to manage stakeholders. What stakeholders need is leadership. Leading In Finally, we need to look inwards, and lead ourselves. We need to be able to act with control and integrity, even under the greatest pressure. And, thinking of pressure, we need to be able to develop resilience to not just cope in times of stress, but to thrive. Integrity Integrity should be non-negotiable for anybody that seeks to lead an endeavor that puts someone else’s money and reputation at risk. And that is your job. But has it occurred to you that integrity is not enough? The people around you also need to have trust in that integrity. You must put aside your own needs and preferences to serve your client and act honestly, fairly, and openly, but that’s not all. You must also demonstrate the capability to do the job well and the reliability to show up and deliver on your promises. We have a word that captures all of this: professionalism. Resilience However, times can get tough. Both you and your team may find yourself under pressure. You need to be able to recognize the signs of stress in both your team and yourself. Then, you need to be able to deal with it. “In the event of an emergency, put on your own oxygen mask, before you try to help other people.” What great advice for a project leader in a stressful environment. Unless you are at your best, how can you be sufficiently resourceful to help your team? You need both: Stress arises from feeling of no longer being in control. To recover from this kind of helplessness, you need to seize back control. My top three techniques for taking back control are: As for building up long-term resilience, this all comes down to the discipline of prioritizing good self-care despite your focus on the project. This means a combination of: Summing up Project leadership is a mindset. It’s a deliberate choice to focus on the aspects of our role (call it whatever you like) that are about people. All of this is, of course, in any good book or course about project management. What they don’t do is place these imperatives front and center. By thinking in terms of project leadership, this is exactly what we do. Project leadership is a big subject – and one I could write a whole book on. In fact, I did. This article introduces many of the ideas from my 2012 book, “Brilliant Project Leader,” published by Pearson. You can get a copy anywhere that you buy your books. 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