Improve relationships with an effective stakeholder relationship management strategy

What is a stakeholder relationship management strategy?

Stakeholder relationship management is the process of building and maintaining relationships with different stakeholders and communities connected to your work.

While you might hear the term "stakeholder management" often, it's important to remember that you are managing the relationship, not the stakeholders themselves. This focus on managing relationships is vital because strong, positive, long-term stakeholder relationships are at the heart of successful projects.

A stakeholder relationship management strategy is a deliberate plan for building and nurturing these relationships. It guides how you identify your stakeholders,  the individuals or groups involved in or affected by your project or organization, understand their needs and concerns, and communicate and engage with them throughout the project lifecycle.
This strategy ensures stakeholders feel heard and valued by focusing on open communication, trust, and collaboration. When effectively engaged, stakeholders are more likely to support your goals and contribute to your project's success.

A clear stakeholder relationship management strategy helps prevent misunderstandings, address issues early, and create stronger, lasting partnerships that benefit your organization and the communities or groups you serve.

What we cover in this blog:

1. What are the benefits of a stakeholder relationship management strategy?
2. What are the benefits of a stakeholder relationship management strategy?
3. How to build relationships with stakeholders
4. How can active listening be used to build better stakeholder relationships?
5. How can influencing techniques help enhance stakeholder relationships?
6. How do you keep all your stakeholder information organized?
7. Expert tips for engaging with stakeholders

What are the benefits of a stakeholder relationship management strategy?

An effective stakeholder relationship management strategy offers several key benefits that help ensure the success of your projects and organization.

• Reduces project risks by identifying potential issues and concerns early through proactive engagement.
• Strengthens your reputation, as stakeholders appreciate transparency and consistent communication.
• Helps you gain buy-in and support from critical stakeholders, which can be crucial for smooth project delivery.
• Ensures you meet regulatory and compliance requirements by keeping stakeholders informed and involved.
• Provides a competitive advantage by fostering loyalty and trust that sets your organization apart.

These benefits create a solid foundation for lasting stakeholder partnerships and project success.

Now that we've explored the benefits, let's move on to the essential steps you can take to build and manage your stakeholder relationships effectively.

How to build relationships with stakeholders

1. Identify Your Stakeholders

2. Map your stakeholders

After identifying your stakeholders, the next important step is to map them by applying a stakeholder classification model. This involves categorizing stakeholders based on their power level, interest, influence, or impact on your project.

Using a stakeholder classification model helps you prioritize which stakeholders need the most attention and resources. It guides you in allocating the right amount of effort, time, and budget for effective engagement. For example, stakeholders with high power and interest typically require more frequent communication and deeper involvement, while those with lower interest or influence may only need periodic updates.

By leveraging a stakeholder classification model during the mapping process, you can develop targeted engagement strategies that maximize your project's success and build stronger relationships.

This model classifies stakeholders based on two key factors: their power to influence the project and their interest in its outcomes:

• High power, high interest: Manage closely and engage regularly.
• High power, low interest: Keep satisfied, but don't overwhelm with details.
• Low power, high interest: Keep informed and consult as needed.
• Low power, low interest: Monitor with minimum effort.

This grid helps you tailor your communication and engagement strategies based on where stakeholders fall in the matrix.

Salience Model

The salience model assesses stakeholders based on three attributes:

• Power: The stakeholder's ability to influence the project.
• Legitimacy: The stakeholder's legal or moral right to be involved.

• Urgency: The degree to which the stakeholder's needs require immediate attention.

Stakeholders possessing more of these attributes warrant a higher priority in your engagement strategy.

Mendelow's Matrix

Like the Power-Interest Grid, Mendelow's Matrix groups stakeholders by their level of interest and power to influence project outcomes, helping determine appropriate management strategies.

Influence-Impact Grid

This model focuses on the stakeholders' influence over decisions and their impact on the project, helping teams decide how intensely to engage each stakeholder.

Using these classification models allows you to focus time and resources where they'll have the most impact, ensuring your stakeholder relationship management strategy is practical and efficient.

How does stakeholder mapping contribute to managing stakeholder relationships effectively?

Stakeholder mapping (or classification) allows you to prioritize your efforts by categorizing stakeholders based on their level of interest and influence in your project. For example, you would typically invest more time and resources in building relationships with stakeholders in the high-interest/high-influence group because they have the most significant potential to positively or negatively impact your project's success. Their support or opposition can significantly affect outcomes, so strong engagement with them is crucial.

On the other hand, stakeholders in the low-interest/low-influence group may have less impact, so they typically require less intensive management. However, this doesn't mean you ignore them altogether. You still want to maintain basic communication and foster positive relationships across all groups.

By clearly mapping stakeholders and understanding their priorities, you and your team can focus your efforts where they matter most, ensuring efficient use of resources while building effective, lasting relationships throughout the stakeholder spectrum.

For a full breakdown on how to do a stakeholder mapping exercise, check out our blog → 

3. Learn about your stakeholders

After identifying and mapping your stakeholders, the next step is learning as much as possible about them. Understanding their perspectives and interests is key to managing relationships effectively.

Some important things to discover include:

• Are they likely to be positively or negatively impacted by your project? Are their current perceptions of your organization or project supportive, skeptical, or unsure?
• Their specific interests or concerns, such as financial, environmental, social, or emotional factors

This information helps you understand where each stakeholder stands: are they supporters, opponents, undecided, or neutral? Knowing this allows you to tailor your communication and engagement strategies. By focusing your messaging on what matters most to each stakeholder, you build trust and develop stronger, more meaningful relationships that can help your project succeed.

4. Plan with your team on how to strategically proceed

Planning isn't a one-time task; it should be ongoing throughout the stakeholder relationship management process. However, you've identified your stakeholders and learned what matters most to tit's them. It's time to pause and collaborate with your team to review and refine your plans.

Strategic planning helps you anticipate what resources, such as time, budget, or personnel, you'll need to engage effectively. For instance, if you spot a potential issue with one or more stakeholders during your stakeholder research, you can proactively allocate resources and develop contingencies to address it. This approach reduces risks and equips your team to handle challenges smoothly, increasing the chance of maintaining or strengthening those relationships.

In addition to resource planning, working with your team allows you to tailor your messaging, select the most effective communication tactics, and assign clear responsibilities for managing stakeholder interactions. Everyone being aligned and aware of their roles creates a more coordinated effort, ultimately helping you build and maintain better, more productive stakeholder relationships.

5. Engage more effectively with your stakeholders

When it's time to engage with your stakeholders,  there are several important elements to consider:

• What do your stakeholders need to hear from your organization? Tailor your messages to their specific interests and concerns.
• Do all your stakeholders need the same messaging? Different groups often require different information based on their priorities.
• How often will you be engaging with stakeholders? The frequency should match their needs and the project's timeline.
• How will you be engaging with them? Consider channels such as brochures, town halls, emails, social media, or meetings.

A key part of effective engagement is selecting the right level of participation for each stakeholder group. The Spectrum of Public Participation, developed by the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), identifies five levels of engagement to guide you:

• Inform: Share balanced, objective information.
• Consult: Obtain feedback and understand stakeholder views.
• Involve: Work directly with stakeholders throughout the process.
• Collaborate: Partner with stakeholders to develop solutions.
• Empower: Give stakeholders decision-making power.

Using this framework helps you tailor your approach and connect with stakeholders in ways that matter most to them.

Once engagement begins, your conversations may include:

• Communicating key messages that reflect stakeholders' perspectives and concerns
• Providing relevant project updates or explaining why there might not be any updates
• Answering questions and addressing concerns promptly
• Managing current or potential issues proactively

Engaging stakeholders can sometimes feel overwhelming, but it builds trust and strengthens relationships when done respectfully, intentionally, and consistently. This foundation encourages stakeholders to approach you openly with their questions and concerns.

For tips to improve how you engage with your stakeholders, check out our blog → 

6. Monitor your stakeholders

Monitoring your stakeholders is an ongoing and essential part of effective stakeholder relationship management. Because situations and opinions can change rapidly, staying up to date helps you respond promptly and adjust your strategies as needed.

As you monitor, consider questions like:

• Have stakeholders' opinions shifted, for example, from supporting your project to opposing it?
• Are there new stakeholders emerging that hadn't initially been identified?
• Have any stakeholders moved into different categories based on their interest or influence on changes?

Remember, some stakeholders may start with little engagement but become more involved over time. Tracking where each stakeholder stands allows you to allocate your resources and build, preserve, or strengthen relationships when they matter most.

Regular monitoring ensures you stay proactive, reduce risks, and maintain positive connections throughout your project.

For tips on effective stakeholder engagement tracking, visit our blog → 

7. Report on your stakeholder information

Throughout your stakeholder relationship management journey, you'll gather a wide range of valuable information, such as:

• Stakeholder contact details
• Records of communications and interactions
• Stakeholder issues and concerns
• Maps highlighting areas of interest or engagement locations
• Notes and observations about stakeholders
• Commitments or promises made to stakeholders
• Assigned tasks

Keeping this information well-organized and easily accessible is crucial, as you'll often need to generate reports,  whether to meet regulatory requirements, update decision-makers and stakeholders, or ensure your team stays aligned.

Producing clear, insightful reports helps increase transparency and provides a comprehensive view of your stakeholder engagement efforts. This supports better decision-making and deepens understanding of stakeholders ' perspectives and the overall progress of your engagement activities.

Are you new to stakeholder engagement? This practical guide is the perfect starting point → 

How can active listening be used to build better stakeholder relationships?

Active listening is a powerful skill that can significantly improve how you build and maintain relationships with your stakeholders. Unlike simply hearing words, active listening entirely focuses on the speaker, understanding their message, responding thoughtfully, and remembering what was said. Here's how it helps enhance stakeholder relationships:

Builds trust and respect

When stakeholders feel genuinely heard, they are more likely to trust you and respect your organization. Active listening shows that you value their opinions, concerns, and feedback, strengthening your relationship's foundation.

Clarifies needs and expectations

By carefully listening and asking clarifying questions, you can understand what stakeholders truly need or expect from your project or organization. This reduces miscommunication and helps you tailor your engagement approach to their priorities.

Identifies underlying issues early

Stakeholders may communicate concerns indirectly or hint at problems. Active listening helps you pick up on subtle cues, tone, hesitation, or inconsistencies that can reveal hidden issues before they escalate.

Enhances collaboration and problem-solving

Engaged listening fosters open dialogue and mutual respect, encouraging stakeholders to share ideas and collaborate more openly. This can lead to better solutions that consider diverse perspectives.

Demonstrates commitment and accountability

Listening attentively and following up on stakeholder concerns shows you're committed to meeting their needs, enhancing accountability, and encouraging ongoing engagement.

Tips for practicing active listening with stakeholders:

• Maintain eye contact and use body language that shows you're engaged
• Avoid interrupting while stakeholders are speaking
• Paraphrase or summarize what you heard to confirm understanding
• Ask open-ended questions to encourage deeper discussion
• Provide thoughtful, timely responses and follow up on key points
• By making active listening a core part of your stakeholder engagement strategy, you build stronger, more trusting relationships that support project success and long-term collaboration.

How can influencing techniques help enhance stakeholder relationships?

Influencing techniques are essential tools for building and nurturing strong stakeholder relationships. They help you gain support, resolve conflicts, and foster collaboration by encouraging stakeholders to understand your perspective and align with your goals, all while maintaining trust and respect.

One key influencing aspect is building credibility and trust through consistent, honest communication and demonstrating expertise. When stakeholders trust you, they are naturally more open to your ideas and more willing to collaborate. Another critical step is understanding what motivates your stakeholders,  their values, needs, and concerns. This allows you to tailor your messages in ways that resonate meaningfully with them.

Influencing also involves promoting win-win solutions. Instead of trying to "win"  at the expense of others, you focus on mutual benefits, which helps create positive and sustainable relationships over time. Managing resistance is another critical skill; when stakeholders push back, effective influencers respond empathetically, reframing messages and aligning outcomes with stakeholder interests to reduce opposition.

Strong communication is at the heart of influence. By using storytelling, presenting compelling data, or appealing to shared values, you engage stakeholders emotionally and intellectually, helping build a deeper connection to your project.

Techniques such as active listening, reciprocity, social proof, framing, and negotiation contribute to this process, enabling you to encourage collaboration and advance your goals with wider support and less friction.

How do you keep all your stakeholder relationship management information organized?

While spreadsheets or a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool might seem convenient for managing stakeholder relationship management data, they often fall short when supporting future-focused, long-term relationship building. These tools can become unwieldy as your stakeholder base grows and your engagement efforts become more complex.

To build strong and lasting relationships with stakeholders, you need a repeatable and scalable process that includes a centralized, collaborative database of all stakeholder information. This is where specialized software explicitly designed for Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) becomes invaluable.

SRM software is built to handle the unique needs of managing stakeholders. It allows you to compile, organize, and easily access contact details, communication history, engagement data, commitments, and more,  all in one place. Using the right SRM tool helps your team stay coordinated, improves transparency, and enables you to respond quickly to changes or emerging issues. Investing in a dedicated SRM solution makes managing complex stakeholder relationships more manageable and increases your chances of long-term success.

To understand how stakeholder relationship management software can improve stakeholder trust and relationships, check out our blog → 

Next steps: expert tips for engaging with stakeholders

Now that we've covered the stakeholder relationship management strategy bits, it's time to focus more. You'll seek more resources to help you along your stakeholder relationship management journey. Kim Hyshka from Dialogue Partners, a trusted Jambo partner, worked with us to create information on her top four tips for engaging.