Stakeholder Influencing and Management

The aim of the workshop is to develop participants’ capability to build more effective stakeholder relationships with others working along the supply chain.

Introduction

This workshop explores practical tools, techniques and skills that can be used to influence stakeholders and align them around the project goals and objectives.  The program explores a variety of approaches to the identification, analysis, engagement and subsequent relationships with stakeholders.

This course is designed for:

This workshop will benefit practitioners involved in managing categories, projects, contracts and suppliers who need to manage stakeholders to realise their planned project outcomes. This may include resource managers, service delivery managers, contract managers, category managers and procurement practitioners.

Course structure

A practical one-day workshop consisting of nine session involving exercises, case studies, presentations and trainerfacilitated discussions. Each of the sessions will be led by an experienced facilitator and will feature the key principles and practical methods which may be used in the procurement process, together with practical case study sessions to maximise the transfer from the workshop to the workplace.

Benefits of attending

This workshop will develop capability in adopting a systematic approach to stakeholder engagement and subsequent management.

As well as this, participants will gain three key benefits from attending:

1. More capability in identifying and engaging stakeholders and diagnosing what role they may play in the project
2. More capability in influencing stakeholders and dealing with role conflict, disagreements about direction, and challenges about support for the project
3. Less conflict with stakeholders or project delays due to loss of stakeholder engagement or disagreement about direction or choices to be made

Key learning outcomes

This workshop will develop capability in adopting a systematic approach to stakeholder engagement and subsequent management.

1. Develop practical approaches to stakeholder identification and segmentation as a prelude to designing appropriate relationships with stakeholders
2. Engage with, and influence, a range of stakeholders and deal with their questions and objections about participation in the project
3. Deploy practical tools to define roles and responsibilities and ensure that role ambiguity is minimised
4. Develop communication programmes to both ‘push’ information and allow stakeholders to ‘pull’ information about the project or category which is aligned to the stakeholder’s needs and reasonable expectations
5. Develop the capability to influence horizontally and upwards to lobby and influence governance groups and senior managers to align them around project goals and recommendations

Course Content

Stakeholder influencing and management

• How to identify stakeholders
• Profiling stakeholders and their likely interest
• Engaging stakeholders and building rapport
• Influencing stakeholders and dealing with objections
• Managing ‘turf wars’ and role conflict
• Designing communication programmes
• Managing upwards; dealing with your boss, governance groups and the senior leadership team
• Building and re-building trust and other challenges

How to identify stakeholders

• The classical approach: inputs/policy/budgets/users/customers
• Internal and external stakeholders?
• Defining the scope of the stakeholder analysis

Profiling stakeholders and their likely interest

• The power / interest matrix
• What are some sources of power?
• What are some sources of interest?

Engaging stakeholders and building rapport

• “Hi! I’m from procurement and I’m here to help!”
• Gaining access through gatekeepers
• Answering the WIIFM question
• The first 90 seconds
• Ask or tell?
• Building rapport authentically
• Tips, tricks and traps

Influencing stakeholders and dealing with objections

• Influencing styles; push and pull influencing styles
• Defining your personal power
• What is an objection?
• Benefit statements
• Tips, tricks and traps

Managing ‘turf wars’ and role conflict

• Types of conflict: warranted and unwarranted conflict
• Unwarranted conflict and conflict resolution
• Warranted conflict and role ambiguity
• Using RACI to reduce conflict
• Other ways to defuse conflict
• The benefit of pilot projects
• Denial, resistance, exploration and participation

Designing communication programmes

• Segmenting stakeholders
• Communicating with key players
• Communicating with other stakeholder groups
• Developing a communications matrix
• Do people really visit your intranet site?
• Key traps in writing stakeholder communication

Managing upwards: dealing with your boss, governance groups and the senior leadership team

• How much detail is appropriate?
• Fear, anxiety and suspicion; what role do they play in review processes?
• The one page overview
• When PowerPoint works, and when it doesn’t
• Delivering bad news; tips, tricks and traps

Building and re-building trust and other challenges

• What is trust?
• Sako’s typology of trust
• Building basic or “contractual trust”
• Belief tests and rebuilding trust when it has been lost