Working with Stakeholders: Advice for All Product Roles

The first step to effectively working with stakeholders is understanding them and what their priorities are. Map out your stakeholders and identify their concerns, goals, and motivations.

We all have stakeholders

Whether it’s managing expectations, building trust, gathering feedback or negotiating priorities, the ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders is a universal challenge for all of us in the product team. It's not just a skill for Product Managers but something that every role, regardless of function or seniority, can work to improve. I’ve had the privilege of several non-PMs reaching out to me for advice on how to work with stakeholders; some have even sought me out for coaching on this specific issue.

Stakeholder management is complex, as each stakeholder brings unique personalities, beliefs, and assumptions. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. Your role is to guide them and facilitate consensus-building. While this may seem daunting, there are strategies you can employ to enhance your effectiveness in stakeholder management, regardless of the situation.

Who are your stakeholders?

If you’re a Product Designer, your stakeholders are your manager, engineers, the product owner and maybe even marketing. Engineers must communicate effectively with their front-end and back-end team members, designers, and product managers. Depending on your organization, you could have other stakeholders as well.

Understand your stakeholders

The first step to effectively working with stakeholders is understanding them and what their priorities are. Map out your stakeholders and identify their concerns, goals, and motivations. This will help you tailor your communication and engagement approach to their needs. For example, if you know that a stakeholder is very concerned about cost, you can frame your communication around how your proposal will save money.

I find it helpful to group people into communication buckets to limit the number of unique communications I need to send out and, when in doubt, error on the side of over-communicating. This is often done with the following quadrants:

Manage Closely: These stakeholders have significant power to impact your project and a high interest in its outcomes, making them key players to engage closely and manage strategically.

Keep Satisfied: These stakeholders possess the power to influence your project but have low interest in its results. It's important to keep them satisfied and informed to ensure they support your initiatives.

Keep Informed: Stakeholders in this quadrant are highly interested in the project but have limited power to influence it. Keeping them informed helps maintain their support and can leverage their high interest to benefit the project.

Monitor: These stakeholders have minimal interest and influence over the project. Monitoring them is usually sufficient, as they require less active engagement.

For a handy stakeholder map template (which includes the aforementioned communication buckets), check out this interactive template I created:

Be proactive

With any project, it’s crucial to know your stakeholder map (this doesn’t have to be a physical map like the one mentioned above; just being mindful of the different expectations could be enough). This will help you identify stakeholder concerns, goals, and motivations and tailor your communications to meet their needs. By engaging your stakeholders early (being proactive) and more effective, you build stronger relationships and improve your chances of success. Proactive and early communication can help remove roadblocks and build trust.

Communicate regularly

Talking openly about what you’re working on can help minimize surprises. Use appropriate channels depending on the stakeholders and what the updates are about. Difficult timeline and resource discussions should happen synchronously and in person, but status updates and support requests could happen asynchronously through Slack or other messaging tools.

Listen and be open (empathize)

Stakeholders need to feel heard and valued. Listen actively to their concerns and be open to feedback. Even if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, take the time to understand their perspective. This will help you build trust and credibility with your stakeholders. Remember, stakeholders are often subject matter experts in their areas, so their input can be incredibly valuable.

Be transparent (set clear expectations)

Transparency is key to building trust with stakeholders. Be upfront about what you can and can’t deliver, and make sure you communicate any changes or updates as soon as possible. This helps stakeholders manage their expectations and feel more in control of the process. Additionally, if you can’t deliver on a particular request, be clear about why and offer alternatives if possible.

Build relationships

Building strong stakeholder relationships can help you navigate difficult situations and achieve better outcomes. Take the time to get to know your stakeholders and understand their communication preferences. Invest in building rapport with them, whether through regular check-ins, informal conversations or shared interests. Do this before you need a favour or need their buy-in on something. If the first time you talk to a stakeholder is to get buy-in on your new progressive idea, you won’t get very far without having already established a relationship.

Be flexible

Stakeholder needs and priorities can change, so it’s important to be flexible and responsive. Be open to new ideas and be willing to pivot your approach if it makes sense strategically. This will help you build credibility with your stakeholders and show that you’re responsive to their needs. This doesn’t mean caving to every need and want, but more importantly, you should show understanding and empathy for their point of view while explaining why something isn’t possible right now.

Conclusion

I realize a lot of this seems straightforward to some of you. Yet, I’ve been on the receiving end of some terrible communication around very impactful changes and requests. This goes both ways; the stakeholders themselves (of which you are one as well) need to communicate well. When done right, I’ve been able to bring others along. For the ride and educate them on the prioritization process, eliminating any need to convince people we’re on the right track.

Working with stakeholders is really just working with other people. It’s an essential part of achieving higher engagement and success in any role. By understanding your stakeholders, listening actively, being transparent, building relationships, and being flexible, you can build trust and credibility and achieve better outcomes. This advice applies to anyone in any role and can help you build stronger relationships and succeed in your role.