What is a Stakeholder?
A stakeholder is an individual, or group of people, that all share a common interest in a project or organisation, and share an interest in its outcomes. A stakeholder is anybody that affects or is affected by a project or organisation. Each stakeholder has different interests and requests and should be communicated with on an individual level that suits them.
Learning how to communicate with stakeholders is an invaluable skill and comes with practice.
In this blog post we will be looking at why stakeholders are important, how to successfully manage and engage your stakeholders, and look at five top tips on how to communicate with stakeholders effectively.
Why are Stakeholders Important?
Stakeholders are important because they provide your project and business with support and input (from a business perspective and from a financial perspective).
They broaden the range of people involved in your project and have a collective best interest for the project and/or organisation.
One of the main reasons a project can fail is because the stakeholder management has been mismanaged. Knowing how to communicate with stakeholders is an important part of stakeholder management.
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What Happens if There is Poor Communication with Stakeholders?
Poor communication with stakeholders can lead to negative outcomes, brand damage, a breakdown in stakeholder relationships, etc.
Without a clear stakeholder communication plan, stakeholders may develop different expectations about the project’s goals, timelines, and outcomes. This misalignment can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction, as stakeholders may feel that their needs and concerns are not being addressed.
Ineffective stakeholder communication can result in critical decisions being made based on incomplete or incorrect information. This increases the likelihood of project failure, as key stakeholders may not be properly informed or involved in the decision-making process.
Consistent and transparent communication with stakeholders is essential for building and maintaining trust. Poor communication can erode this trust, leading to disengagement and a lack of support from stakeholders, which can hinder the project’s progress.
When communicating with stakeholders is ineffective, the flow of information can be slow, leading to delayed decision-making. Stakeholders may not have the necessary information to
Why is Effectively Managing and Communicating With Them Important?
Clear communication with stakeholders ensures they understand the project’s goals, objectives, and benefits. This alignment helps minimise misunderstandings and conflicts, leading to smoother project execution.
Regular and transparent communication, particularly when liaising with stakeholders, fosters trust. When stakeholders feel informed and involved, they are more likely to support the project and its outcomes.
By understanding how to communicate with stakeholders effectively, you can engage them in discussions and decision-making processes. This allows you to gain valuable insights and feedback that can lead to better decisions and more successful project outcomes.
Understanding how to communicate with stakeholders and their needs through communication helps in allocating resources more effectively, avoiding wasted time and effort on unnecessary activities.
Examples of Stakeholders
Stakeholders are internal and external people who are interested in your project or organisation. They can range from company employees to first time customers. Understanding how to communicate with stakeholders is one of the most important skills in running a successful organisation or project.
Firstly, let’s look into some examples of stakeholders.
- Employees
- Owners/CEOs
- Customers
- Stockholders
- Investors
- Suppliers
- Partners
- Creditors
- Trade Unions
- Government
How to Identify Your Stakeholders
An organisation, corporation or department can have multiple stakeholders. When it comes to stakeholder communication requirements – transparency, accuracy, and communication are key. An expectation from stakeholders is that you have already completed and identified the key stakeholders for your project.
Identifying your stakeholders at an early stage can help to keep your project on track. Your stakeholder communication requirements usually request that the stakeholder identification is done before the project starts.
Stakeholder engagement and stakeholder management are the two most important parts of the overall success of a project, but what is the difference between the two?
What Happens If There Are Multiple Stakeholders?
Multiple stakeholders in a company or project are very common, in fact, there is on average 5 stakeholders per project. Different stakeholders may have varying interests, priorities, and expectations. Balancing these differences can be difficult, as some stakeholders may have conflicting goals.
What we have outlined in this blog still stands but it is important to remember stakeholders do prefer different ways of communication or be looking for different information in your communications, it is important to outline this in your stakeholder communication plan.
What is Stakeholder Engagement?
Stakeholder engagement refers to the communication between the project leads and individual stakeholders in regards to a project or organisation. The stakeholder engagement process involves all identified stakeholders or people who make decisions that affect the project.
Learning how to communicate and liasing with stakeholders via stakeholder engagement is one of the most effective ways to learn about your stakeholders and helps you find out what their needs are. In turn, this will improve your overall relationship and will help shape the goals and objectives of your project.
For example if you find out one of your key stakeholders requires that your project meet certain criteria, you can make sure this is discussed and covered off in your plan. You can then contact your stakeholder on their specific requests via your stakeholder communications plan.
What is Stakeholder Management?
Stakeholder management is the process you adopt to manage your stakeholders. Managing your stakeholder is imperative to the success of your project and should not be overlooked. You can use a stakeholder communications template plan to help manage stakeholders, this is especially useful if you have a number of stakeholders which all have different requirements.
Download Now -> Free Stakeholder Communications Template Plan
The benefits of efficiently managing your stakeholders include;
- Building trust
- Building better relationships
- Being prepared for questions
- Risk management
- Better budgeting
- Accountability
- Quicker decision making
- Education
- Keeping people informed
What are Conflicting Stakeholder Interests?
Diverse Interests and Priorities
A well-structured stakeholder communication plan is essential to ensure that all perspectives are considered and addressed effectively.
Increased Risk of Miscommunication
With more stakeholders, the likelihood of miscommunication rises. Inconsistent messaging or information gaps can lead to misunderstandings, confusion, or even conflicts. Effective stakeholder communication practices are necessary to ensure that all stakeholders receive clear, consistent, and accurate information.
Resource Constraints
Multiple stakeholders may have competing demands for resources, such as time, budget, or personnel. Managing these constraints requires clear communication with stakeholders to negotiate and allocate resources effectively without compromising the project’s overall success.
Increased Coordination Effort
Managing multiple stakeholders requires significant coordination. Keeping track of their concerns, feedback, and involvement levels can be challenging. A comprehensive stakeholder communication plan helps organise and manage these interactions effectively.
5 Tips on How To Communicate With Stakeholders Effectively
1. Email and Newsletter
Email is one of the most popular tools to use for stakeholder communication. Why? It has a number of benefits such as immediate delivery of information, proof of sending, it makes it easier to manage communications with each stakeholder and you can also monitor engagement and open rates.
Try using a weekly digest to inform stakeholders of the top-level information from the week. This can include; budget updates, photos, news of the week, contact information, next steps, top-level project plans and more.
2. Email Automation
Now you have your emails and newsletters in place, why not automate them and save your time? You can set up regular daily updates which will be sent out to each stakeholder via an RSS feed. Automating your BAU information will save you heaps of time, time that can be better spent elsewhere.
With email automation, you can customise your emails with dynamic content and only send certain stakeholders specific information, as well as use visually appealing templates which make the information much easier to digest.
Whatever way you choose to communicate with email, make sure it is easy to read. Ensure content is skimmable, informative and avoid too many buzzwords or technical jargon. Use headers, bold important titles and words and use images sparingly.
3. Online/Virtual Presentations
Another popular way of communicating and liasing with stakeholders is via a presentation.
This can be physical (Note: Please check the latest information on physical meetings due to Covid-19) or online. If online, you can opt to use video presentation software. There are many video presentation platforms out there and a lot of them are free to use. Video presentations are great tools to effectively engage and manage your stakeholders.
Once you have completed your online presentation, save the slides and send them off to your stakeholders so they can refer to them in their own time. See some tips and tricks on how to keep your audience engaged in an online presentation here.
Tip: Send presentations, decks, and other materials before a meeting. But don’t assume anyone will read it before the presentation!
4. Project Summary Report
One of the more traditional methods of stakeholder communication, but still very effective is the project summary report.
The good thing about this is if you have done your research on your stakeholder identification and have filled out your stakeholder communications plan and/or matrix you can tailor these reports to each stakeholder. This will mean each report is much more useful and unique and your stakeholders will thank you for it. This does however mean more work for the project lead.
Alternatively, you could send out a top-level highlight summary report of the project each week which details the project events of the week.
5. Group Video Call or ‘Screen to Screen’ Meetings
Schedule a group video call once a week to give a summary of the project and to provide any updates. These are often good to have if there is a sudden obstacle which needs to be addressed quickly. Jump onto a Zoom call and discuss immediately.
When using it for a weekly update on project status, have an agenda prepared and leave time in the end for questions.
If you have a more personal relationship with your stakeholders you may find a one on one or ‘screen to screen’ with each stakeholder will help you address their concerns in more detail and with greater control.
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Informal Ways To Communicate With Stakeholders
We have spoken about formal ways of communication with stakeholders, let’s take a look at two of the most popular informal ways of stakeholder communication examples.
If done right, informal activities for stakeholder communication are sometimes more effective than formal ones. Think a day out on the golf course, or a lunch date. These are excellent ways to get to know your stakeholders and understand what they require from you.
Top of the informal ways of stakeholder holder communication is lunch dates. They are very useful for getting causal feedback and can serve a real purpose when it comes to relationships and building trust. These are often as effective as formal stakeholder communication so don’t rule them out.
Sporting events, lunches, team building and high tea. These are just a few examples of the leisure events that you and your stakeholders can take part in to help build on your relationship and to improve communication and trust.
Download Now -> Free Stakeholder Communications Template Plan
How To Choose The Right Method of Communication
Choosing the right method of communication to ensure you can appease all stakeholders is not always easy.
Liaising with stakeholders to ask them what their preferred method is is a good start, and ensuring that it is noted in the stakeholder communications plan is a good idea.
Email is one of the most popular and common ways for communication with stakeholders, you can ensure you reach everybody at a place where you know they will check. You can share the stakeholder communications plan via email and then follow up with an SMS if needed.
Improve your Stakeholder Communication with Automation Software
Building bridges and understanding how to communicate with stakeholders is an invaluable skill and is important to the overall project success.
If you would like more information on how to improve your communication with stakeholders or would like to see some successful communication with stakeholders examples, get in touch with Swift Digital.
Swift Digital works with a number of public and private sector companies – including Government organisations, Universities and Utility companies– to improve their communications and stakeholder management.
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Stakeholder Communication FAQs
How do you connect with stakeholders?
Connect with your stakeholders via email, newsletters, online meetings and virtual events. You can also connect with stakeholders informally by holding lunch meetings and leisure events.
What information should be communicated to stakeholders?
Conduct a stakeholder identification to find out how your stakeholders want to be communicated, what information they require and the frequency of communication.
How often should stakeholders be communicated with?
How to communicate with stakeholders and the frequency should be decided at the beginning of your campaign or project. The frequency of liaising with stakeholders can vary depending on their vested interests. However, communicating with stakeholders should be regular.
