Relationship Building: Influencing Stakeholders

Relationship Building – Influencing Stakeholders

The building and sustaining of relationships is important for business success. Our 7 steps to successful relationship building highlight the importance of stakeholder analysis and understanding. We combine this with the application of appropriate influencing styles to suit specific stakeholder values and needs to support improved and sustainable business performance.

1.       Identify stakeholders – Who are the people and groups affected by your business and what you do?  By engaging with the right people and groups in the right way you can make a big difference to the achievement of goals and outcomes.

2.       Analyse relative power - Which people/groups are important to your value creation process[1]? Conduct a power- interest[2] analysis in order to understand the degree of their power over your organisation and their interest in your business.

3.       Identify appropriate influencing styles –Use of the push/pull framework[3] offers a range of alternative influencing styles to suit different stakeholders.

4.       Tailor strategies – By combining the power/interest and push/pull analyses, strategies can be tailored to suit each stakeholder or stakeholder group.

5.       Prioritise actions to achieve quick wins and develop a forward strategy to ensure stakeholder satisfaction and achievement of organisational goals on a short, medium and long term basis.

6.       Implement – importance of designated responsibilities for implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Constant review is needed to take account of the changing status of stakeholders and groups over time as the busines environment changes.

7.       Gather feedback and refine strategies to support continuous improvement in stakeholder relations.

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[1] R Edward Freeman on value creation: http://bit.ly/yvyNLF

[2] Mendelow’s (81) Power Interest Matrix adapted by Johnson and Scholes (99): http://bit.ly/yK0xww

[3] Ashridge Business school on Influencing Skills: http://bit.ly/wpx4pf

The Human Factor

We recently had the opportunity of presenting to a group of fellow IOD members on the topic of communication styles and influencing strategies.  Our starting point was to explain why we felt the need to remind ourselves why it is important to remember that in any interpersonal communication there are two or more human beings involved and the complexities that this brings to any interaction.  Our business model is built on People in terms of how we do business and what we do.

This was all set against a backdrop of the digital world and the social media environment in which we all inhabit to a greater or lesser extent.  This too brings a range of personal and business challenges to the themes of personal and mass communication.

Our final point was to advocate a balance of use and appropriateness towards the personal and digital worlds of communication.  They can co-exist perfectly and can provide effective and efficient ways of reaching out to our target audience but in the words of one academic:

“It’s so rewarding to connect with human beings. It’s so good for our bodies to do this. Everything we know as psychologists tells us it’s the most wonderful thing. So if we’re losing that, I think that is distressing.”

Sara Konrath, Research Assistant Professor, University of Michigan

Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, 2010.

In a recent article by McKinsey, business people are called to think about the effect of the human factor on the subject of service design and delivery.

https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Marketing/Sales_Distribution/The_human_factor_in_service_design_2922

What’s your view?  What impact will the digitial world ultimately have on the human factor?