Engaging your stakeholders well ensures that everyone affected or involved in your project understands its goals, challenges, and benefits.
Beyond simple communication, strong engagement builds a foundation of trust and collaboration, turns potential critics into advocates, and helps identify risks early. Without it, even the best projects can face delays, increased costs, or opposition jeopardizing their success.
Why do I need to improve engagement with stakeholders?
Building and maintaining positive relationships with your stakeholders is critical to the success of any project. When stakeholders feel included and valued, they become allies who support your goals, provide constructive feedback, and contribute to smoother project execution.
On the other hand, poor stakeholder engagement can lead to misunderstandings, resistance, and even active opposition. Negative relationships may cause delays, increased costs, or, worst case, the cancellation of your project altogether. Beyond immediate project issues, strained stakeholder relations can damage your organization's reputation, making future collaborations and initiatives more challenging.
Improving how you engage with stakeholders can prevent these pitfalls by helping them:
- Better understand your projects: Clear, transparent communication ensures stakeholders know project objectives, timelines, and potential challenges.
- Feel included and valued: When stakeholders are actively involved, they develop a sense of ownership and commitment to the project's success.
- Build stronger, trust-based relationships: Trust is foundational for cooperation and long-term partnerships, which can open doors to new opportunities.
Ultimately, boosting your engagement with stakeholders creates a positive environment where collaboration thrives, risks are minimized, and projects stand a greater chance of success.
How do I improve engagement with stakeholders?
Jambo customers are constantly seeking new ways to improve their relationships with their stakeholders, so we have compiled this list of tips by speaking with them often and learning from their experiences. Boost your engagement with stakeholders with these 10 tips from Jambo customers.
1. Begin conversations with stakeholders early
Beginning conversations early with stakeholders is essential to building trust. The goal is for stakeholders to hear about your project from you, not online or from the dreaded rumour mill. If stakeholders feel left out of the process, they may have a bad taste in their mouth from the beginning, leaving you with some unhappy and disengaged stakeholders.
You can help avoid this situation by identifying the key stakeholders who need to be engaged in the very early stages of a project and reaching out to them as soon as possible. This shows them you respect their opinions and makes them feel included in the process.
2. Set a schedule for communicating with stakeholders
We've all heard the horror stories of stakeholder engagement open houses being held just before a feedback deadline, or a rescheduled stakeholder engagement session with minimal notice to those concerned. This can aggravate stakeholders and can lead to less-than-desirable situations.
Consider creating an engagement schedule. By setting timelines upfront and communicating them to your stakeholders, you increase awareness and better prepare them for the engagement you intend to have. This also helps mitigate stakeholder angst over insufficient time to prepare or respond during the designated engagement period.
3. Be honest with stakeholders
It's impossible to improve relationships with stakeholders without being honest. Develop trust by being transparent with project plans. Don't risk hiding things because you will likely be found out (and that won't be easy to get out of.) Consider providing visual aids like maps of project plans or hard-copy project update reports. These are great opportunities to be transparent, open, and honest with your stakeholders.
4. Stay consistent with your messaging
Develop key messages early on and use them consistently. If you need to change your message, clarify what has changed and why. With archived information easily accessible online, it's no longer possible to change direction without the risk of being called out for inexplicable changes.
5. Communicate with stakeholders often
Make sure that communication is scheduled often. Communication to stakeholders doesn't stop after your initial project stages are over; regular communication is key to gaining stakeholder support. Issue regular project updates to stakeholders. Determine if it's possible to show how stakeholder feedback or problems have been addressed. When stakeholders feel like they've been heard, they're typically much happier and more likely to support your project.
6. Show you're listening to your stakeholders
One complaint often heard from stakeholders is that they aren't being listened to. When meeting with stakeholders virtually or in person, make eye contact, smile occasionally and ask questions throughout your conversation. A good idea is to bring a notebook to jot down key points and mention your intent to summarize the bullets after you leave. This helps stakeholders feel their engagement session is being taken seriously. You can also summarize what you've written to the stakeholders. This allows them to provide clarification if needed.
7. Provide multiple ways for stakeholders to share their input
Another way to improve your stakeholder engagement is to give them more than one way to provide feedback. Stakeholders want the opportunity to voice their opinions, which must be easy and accessible.
Online engagement, such as surveys, can help lower barriers to engagement by increasing accessibility, but some stakeholders might have unreliable internet access or may not be particularly tech-savvy. In-person meetings require more time but allow you to learn more about each other's needs. Body language and tone of voice can't be expressed online through survey text boxes and multiple-choice questions. Try connecting with a resistant stakeholder in person rather than relying on their online feedback so that issues can be resolved with limited misunderstandings.
8. Involve your stakeholders rather than inform – or better yet, collaborate and create together
Simply informing stakeholders of your plans is often insufficient and can result in costly problems later. If you aren't familiar with the IAP2 spectrum for public participation, you should check it out. It was designed to assist in selecting the level of participation that defines the public's role in any public participation process. It can also be used as a guide for large and small stakeholder engagement projects. Keeping the spectrum in mind when developing an engagement plan is beneficial.
9. Maintain a history of engagement with stakeholders
Having access to historical stakeholder data is essential. You need to start now if you aren't tracking all your data. Stakeholders often get frustrated when they communicate with the same organization on multiple occasions and are asked the same questions repeatedly. Having easy access to the whole history of interactions with a stakeholder before meeting with them means you're prepared to start the meeting on a good note.
Our tip is to record every interaction with your stakeholders. Knowing what was discussed before and extra things like their preferred name or even their favourite drink can help build and gain their trust. This information can be used by everyone in your organization who might communicate with the stakeholder (now or in the future), so the information must be easily accessible. Using cloud-based Stakeholder Relationship Management software (SRM) like Jambo is a great way to help you and your team securely log, track and manage all your stakeholder data.
10. Be flexible and consider your engagement plan as a living process
As plans are executed, unexpected things will inevitably pop up and require changes to keep everything moving. Be flexible enough with your plan timeline to allow things to change, like the feedback deadlines or tactics you use to engage. By listening to your stakeholders and exercising a bit of give-and-take, you can build better relationships with them, which will benefit your project in the long run.
How do I keep stakeholders engaged?
Keeping stakeholders engaged means continuously demonstrating that their involvement matters, that their voices influence decisions, and that you value their time and insights. This kind of engagement fosters trust and loyalty, which are invaluable to overcoming challenges and sustaining momentum throughout your project.
Equally important is adapting your engagement approach as the project evolves. Stakeholders' priorities, concerns, and availability can change, so remaining flexible and attentive creates space for meaningful dialogue and collaboration. By prioritizing openness, transparency, and respectful communication, you make a collaborative environment that encourages active participation and strengthens your stakeholder relationships, ensuring they stay connected and invested from start to finish.
How to engage unengaged stakeholders
Engaging stakeholders who appear unresponsive or indifferent can be challenging, but it is crucial for project success. The first step is to understand the reasons behind their disengagement, whether it's a lack of information, low perceived relevance, competing priorities, or past negative experiences. Once you identify these barriers, tailor your approach to address their concerns.
This might mean simplifying your communication, demonstrating the project's direct benefits to them, or reaching out through a different channel or format that better suits their preferences. Personalizing your engagement efforts shows respect for their time and perspective, making them more likely to take an interest. Building trust is also key to activating unengaged stakeholders. Creating safe spaces for open dialogue, where they can voice concerns without judgment, helps break down resistance. Offering small, manageable ways for them to get involved initially can lower the barrier to participation and gradually build their investment in the project.
Regularly following up and recognizing their contributions, no matter how small, reinforces their value and encourages ongoing engagement. Through patience, empathy, and thoughtful communication, you can turn disengaged stakeholders into active supporters.
The impact of improving stakeholder engagement
Improving how you engage with your stakeholders prevents problems and fosters a positive environment where collaboration thrives. Clear communication, meaningful inclusion, and building lasting trust create stronger partnerships that support your project now and open doors for future opportunities.
Investing time and effort into stakeholder engagement pays dividends through smoother project execution, reduced risks, and a reputation for transparency and respect.
