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Stakeholder Management - Keep Your Updates Regular

Guest post by: Martin Haworth

Article Overview: Stakeholders are vital elements of any management activity. Having them onside can make or break a project. Once you've identified them, the real work begins...

Stakeholder Management - Keep Your Updates Regular

Every activity a manager is involved in has stakeholders. Even the day to day organization of working with a team has it's fill of people with vested interests in what's going on. Stakeholder groups such as members of the team and customers are, at the very least, the most obvious, even in the smallest of set-ups. Where large projects are concerned, there are likely to be very many more stakeholders indeed.

Like all activities where people are concerned, they need to be well informed enough to make appropriate judgments to form the opinions that will help them decide their actions.

Where contentious situations occur, those with active interests in what's going on - the stakeholders - need to be kept in the loop as much as possible, because there will only be speculation if things go quiet on them. This can lead to misinformation, bad publicity and a serious deterioration in the relationships you have with them - and worse.

The best at stakeholder management, take the time to plan their course of action when it comes to communicating fully. They create timescaled action plans for what and how to communicate fully to those who need to know what's going on, together with a clear understanding of who will do the work.

These regular updates, especially when planned ahead and that plan is communicated, help keep unofficial speculation to a minimum and enable stakeholders to understand better the process you will drive. It also shows that you are prepared to share progress and not want to hide things from them.

In fact, creating and delivering a communication plan, really does help build relationships with those who might be at odds with the project which is the cause of the sensitivities.

Showing that you respect the needs of those with concerns, by communicating fully and openly, goes a long way to creating a level of trust and rapport that can be so vital when challenging issues finally do arise, that need special handling.

Where you really want to push the boat out, not only will your stakeholders be able to receive regular updates regarding what's going on, but you will involve them in the planning of the frequency of communication, as well as asking them for feedback about how you could do it better in the future.

Keeping on the right side of stakeholders is a really vital tool in their management and makes successful win-win relationships much more likely too.

What's more, by keeping your eye on the ball, your regular interactions with your stakeholders will give you a valuable awareness of the state of these vital relationships.

Then it is a lot less likely for things to go wrong, which will make for constructive partnerships rather than adversarial ones.

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Article Tags: communication skills, management development, stakeholder management, stakeholders, team development



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