How to Identify and Engage Stakeholders With Happy's Workshop

Hi, I'm Rachael. I'm a Project Management Facilitator at Happy, and this video is to tell you about our Stakeholder Engagement Workshop.

If you're trying to get something done at work, whether that be introducing something new or making a significant change, you will have stakeholders. Traditionally, we think of stakeholders in the context of project management, but all of us have stakeholders all the time.

We can define stakeholders as anyone who will be impacted by the change you're trying to make. We can call that interest. Also, anyone who has an impact on your ability to deliver that change. We can call that power.

Why is it important to know who your stakeholders are? Well, too often when we're trying to deliver change, we fail to take that first step of even knowing who the stakeholders are, let alone engaging with them.

And if we don't engage with them, then we don't know what they need us to deliver and we can end up guessing and potentially getting it wrong.

Let's take an example of quite a tangible change. I'll imagine I'm leading a project to deliver a software update to a system that we use at work. If I don't find out from the people who are going to use it what they need, I'm guessing, and I could get it wrong. If I'm at least in conversation with them, I can work to find out what features and functionality they want, and I can hopefully deliver some of that with the project team.

I can also work to soften the blow if there are features that we can't deliver for some reason. That's likely to mean fewer problems as the project progresses. The other benefit of knowing who your stakeholders are and understanding them is you can work out if you've got any potential detractors, anyone who's not on board with your project.

And you can then engage with them and see if there's anything you can do to get them on side.

On the Stakeholder Engagement Workshop, you'll discover tools to find out who your stakeholders are, and we'll look at techniques for prioritising those needs.

We'll also spend time learning and practicing the communication skills that will help you navigate conversations with those stakeholders, including the tricky ones. To see the full outline, public dates and details of private courses, please visit Happy's website www.happy.co.uk and search for stakeholder engagement.