In stakeholder engagement, social capital often refers to the social relationships and networks formed based on shared values and trust, which can facilitate cooperation. It's the level of mutual recognition, understanding and trust established by the firm with its stakeholders.
At its core, social capital often involves acting in alignment with honesty, integrity, reliability, respect and trust. In this blog, we will delve into social capital, exploring how to build it with stakeholders and how SRM software can assist.
The way you build social capital may vary depending on your relationships with stakeholders and communities, their interests, or the impact of your project on them. This ties back to their values and history with you and other organizations. Therefore, building social capital requires getting to know your stakeholders and communities to understand their perspectives, enabling you to engage with them in a meaningful and effective manner.
The more you demonstrate a genuine commitment to shared values, the better you'll understand each other and develop trusting relationships. As relationships become stronger and that social capital continues to grow, those relationships can shift into partnerships where both parties are mutually invested in your project and the organization's success. This is vital as it can help you reach your goals, gain support, make a more meaningful impact, and even lower risk when things don't go according to plan.
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Sometimes things don't go the way we plan. Issues can arise, and you may need to request leniency from your stakeholders and communities. In this situation, having already built some social capital can help you preserve those vital relationships and protect your project from unnecessary risk and your organization from reputational damage.
This becomes possible because your stakeholders and communities have already seen examples of you upholding those values, acting with integrity, and speaking honestly. They already know you’re reliable and trustworthy, so social capital can help you ask for some grace during a difficult situation based on the good faith you’ve earned.
However, even with some social capital already built, you still need to navigate these situations with clear, honest, and respectful communication.
When you make a mistake, you want to acknowledge it, apologize, and work towards finding a solution. You want to tell the affected parties that you remain committed to the relationship (your partnership) and that you’ll do what you can to make it up. It’s also important to make time to understand how your stakeholders and communities perceive the issue.
You want to be very honest about what has happened while taking accountability for your actions or failures and then describing what will happen moving forward.
Communication is a big part of this work, so if you don't know what to do, don’t be afraid to ask and be open to hearing possible solutions. (However, be honest about what's on or not on the table regarding potential solutions).
Consider utilizing one of the following questions:
Building social capital involves fostering trust and understanding. This all takes time and involves showing your stakeholders and communities that you understand their values and will be respectful of them in your project; that you'll take care to ensure the work you're doing is not in conflict with those values.
Remember, social capital is something that's earned, not given (which also means it can be lost!).
How you build social capital might include:
Depending on how you're working with your stakeholders and communities, consider asking them at the beginning of your project: “In a year from now, what would success look like for you?” Having this conversation at the beginning of your project can help you maintain trusting relationships, even when your project faces unexpected changes or challenges.
This question provides a reference point when you need to make a challenging decision or need to change course. You can say, "Previously, we talked about what success would look like, and to get us there, we have to change course. With this in mind, is that vision of success still true for you today?” This can help show your stakeholders and communities that you continue to care about those identified values and are committed to shared success moving forward.
Social acceptance is a critical indicator of whether a project or organization has garnered the approval and support of its community and other relevant parties. This term is often synonymous with stakeholder acceptance or community acceptance.
You can leverage social capital to achieve social acceptance within communities. The first step is to recognize the inherent networks, norms, and trust that define any community. The foundation of social acceptance is cultivated through robust relationships, which are built by participating in activities that resonate with the cultural values and interests of the stakeholders and community.
To successfully utilize your social capital, you should actively engage with the community by supporting events or initiatives, demonstrating a commitment to it, and displaying a strategic understanding of what they value most. Supporting initiatives that align with community objectives reinforces a collaborative approach that values respect and transparency, making it easier for communities and stakeholders to accept your project.
Discover how this mining company maintain their social capital by managing social acceptance→
In stakeholder engagement, Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) software can help you maintain and even build social capital. An SRM is a way to keep all your stakeholder information consistent, organized, and available in one location. With access to all your stakeholder information at your fingertips, you can plan for more effective engagements and ensure that you and your team are more informed, able to communicate, and act in alignment with your shared values. This can help build stronger relationships with your stakeholders and identify meaningful ways to earn social capital.
From the conversations you're having to any issues or commitments that might arise, an SRM helps you understand what's happening in your project and what needs to be done next.
With an SRM, you're not relying on memory or handwritten notes to remember important tasks or information. This dramatically reduces the likelihood of anything being lost or forgotten, which is essential because that's often when trust is broken and social capital is lost.
An SRM will give everyone in your organization access to the information they need, so there's a baseline understanding of:
This line of sight allows you to have more meaningful and focused conversations, which helps make it clear to your stakeholders and communities that they are a priority.
An SRM provides a centralized location to log all your data, enabling you to compile it into valuable reports. Reports can help you summarize your efforts, show your progress, and highlight your commitment to accountable, dependable, and transparent engagement.
Learn 4 ways SRM software reports can help your engagement projects succeed →
An SRM supports two-way dialogue because it allows you to track what you're saying and hearing, so you can understand both sides. By accurately tracking what your stakeholders and communities say to you and incorporating it into your SRM, you're respecting the time they've taken to share their feedback with you. You can then use your SRM to compile notes on what you've heard and share it back with stakeholders to make sure you captured it right and create understanding.
An SRM facilitates internal knowledge transfer, allowing new team members to review your data and easily learn from it, thereby understanding your project, engagement history, and what they need to be mindful of to maintain social capital.
For certain regulatory requirements, you must submit your records to the relevant stakeholders and communities before submitting them to the regulator. You are saying, “this is what we’re submitting to the regulator. Do you have any changes?”
You’ll need to show the regulator that the community has seen it and signed off on the records as being accurate and truthful. With an SRM, you can compile a record of your full engagement history to meet regulatory expectations while showing your stakeholders and communities you’re committed to transparency and honesty.
When a new contact joins or takes over at an organization, you can quickly lose earned social capital because they may not know your history and experience. You can't assume that the social capital you built with their predecessor will remain.
With an SRM, you can run a report on the history of engagement with the organization to share with the new contact and bring them up to date. This can help demonstrate how you've collaborated in the past and that you're a reliable and trustworthy partner.
A tip from Jambo’s stakeholder engagement specialist
If a new consultation manager joins a community, you can pull a shareable report from your SRM to summarize all the data related to the engagement that has occurred in their community. Sharing this report can start the relationship with the new manager in a positive way.
For example, you might say, “We've really appreciated your partnership and collaboration with us over the last year. In that time, we've sponsored x number of events and had x number of workshops with your community, which we've summarized here in this report.”
Key takeaways1. Stakeholder data is valuable - use it to build relationships and trust. |
The stakeholder data you collect throughout your project can provide a wealth of insights and information that you need to build social capital, mitigate risks, and achieve positive project outcomes. To learn expert tips to get the most out of your stakeholder data, check out our blog.