Seminar: Stakeholder Management

Overview:

Introduction:

A stakeholder is a person, group, or organization that has an interest in an organization because they are affected by its operations or can affect Its operations. Stakeholders have an impact on every organization, public or private sector – some are internal, others are external, but the higher priority stakeholders must be engaged, their expectations understood, and strategies developed, planned, and implemented to recognize and address their concerns.  All groups of stakeholders must be recognized and treated equitably, as part of good governance.  Stakeholder management involves both hard and soft skills, with some understanding of human nature, culture and communications added, finished off with the ability to influence and negotiate with integrity.

This Stakeholder Management training course will introduce you to the relevant tools and techniques, as well as a leading standard, that will help you to engage and manage stakeholders effectively and efficiently. This will include learning the stakeholder management processes, developing an understanding of human behavior and how to influence it, analyzing and planning communication strategies, as well as using the techniques of principled negotiation and influencing without authority, to achieve your goals.  This will be achieved with a mixture of short theory blocks, backed up by many interactive exercises and role-plays, to help you practice your newly learned skills in a safe learning environment.

Course Objectives:

At the end of this course the participants will be able to:

• Explain the process flow, the processes, and key documents involved in managing stakeholders
• Describe how to analyze the stakeholder environment, identify/prioritize stakeholders, and recognize their expectations
• Create and promulgate communications that assist in engaging stakeholders
• Demonstrate an ability to recognize how personality and behaviors give an insight into how to best manage stakeholder aspirations and expectations
• Give examples of different types of culture and the impact it has on your stakeholders’ worldview
• Show how to undertake successful negotiations, using principled negotiation techniques

Targeted Audience:

• Executives and managers
• Junior managers and supervisors
• Professional managers and staff, including HR and finance
• Anyone who needs to understand Stakeholders and stakeholder engagement
• People involved in transformation initiatives
• Program, project and PMO personnel

Course Outlines:

Unit 1: First Principles, Identifying and Defining Stakeholder Audiences 

• Overview of stakeholder engagement and management
• The stakeholder engagement process and key documents
• Identifying stakeholders
• Producing the stakeholder register
• Creating and analyzing stakeholder profiles
• Assessing interests, positive and negative
• Analyzing the gap between current stakeholders and required perceptions
• Selecting a suitable stakeholder management strategy

Unit 2: Planning Stakeholder Communications and Measuring Effectiveness 

• Planning stakeholder engagement communications
• Identifying and delivering the key messages
• Creating stakeholder communications
• Planning and managing stakeholder meetings
• Dealing with stakeholder objections
• Escalating stakeholder issues for resolution by senior management

Unit 3: Interpersonal Skills in Stakeholder Management 

• Empathy and how it can assist in managing stakeholder relationships
• Trust – the foundation on which relationships are built
• Influencing, persuading, and manipulating – why they are different and the impact they have
• Personality factors affecting stakeholder management (including feedback on a personality type questionnaire, to be taken in class)
• Behaviors, their relationship to personality, and how to read them
• Influencing without authority – how to do it
• Emotional intelligence, what it involves and benefit