In today’s hyper connected and complex world of work, it’s hard to work on a project, deliverable, or initiative that hits a business goal without working with other people inside your organization. Rob Cross, an author and expert on digital collaboration estimates that collaborative work has increased over 50% over the last decade. And in many cases, these are not going to be people who will always do what you tell them to do. Much of the work all of us do today is through and with others toward a common goal. While individual effort and effectiveness matters, so does knowing how to use lead without authority and influence others. A critical element of this is being able to have strong stakeholder relationships so that you can get things done. 

But doing this isn’t always easy. While your projects and goals might be important, other people have their own work going on. Furthermore, many of us are constantly in meetings, getting interrupted, and struggling to be productive on our own. 

One way to navigate this is by investing in building strong stakeholder relationships. Being able to proactively identify the most critical stakeholders to your job and work, and to intentionally invest in growing these relationships can lead to improved results. 

 

But how do you do this, in a way that is both effective, and feels authentic to you?The following are five practical ways that you can proactively strengthen your stakeholder relationships.

5 Practices For Proactively Building Stakeholder Relationships

1.Understand Rewards and Incentives

At the end of the day, an organization is just a system of people working toward a shared goal. Before you focus on building stakeholder relationships to achieve your business goals, you need to understand the broader system of your organization

 

Being able to understand and develop that “organizational IQ” of what’s going on around you is critical to understanding A) why people are motivated to do things they do and B) how people are connected to one another. These things often govern how your stakeholders focus their efforts on their work, who they choose to work with or align with, and what motivates how they show up to working with you

As Charlie Munger once said, “Show me the incentive,” and I’ll show you the outcome.”

To start, focus on understanding the “3 R’s” of working with your specific stakeholder. Those are: Rewards, Relationships and Rules:

• Rewards – What are the measures and metrics that matter to this stakeholder? Do you know their OKRs, or KPIs, or metrics that their team is focused on?
• Relationships – Who are the other people who are important to this individual? Who are the “stakeholders” stakeholders
• Rules – What are the implicit and explicit norms and behaviors for how to work with this stakeholder?

Doing this before you start working with a stakeholder is ideal, but it’s never too late to start if you haven’t done it yet. Some of this information you can get because it’s made available inside your company. Other parts of it may come directly from engaging 1:1 with your stakeholder, or even talking to your manager or other more experienced members on your team. A manager I know created a “stakeholder guide” which is a document that maps out the key stakeholders for the team, as well as each of the team’s goals and objectives. Armed with this information, you have the insights you need to 

2.Proactively Engage Your Stakeholders 

Building trusting relationships with stakeholders, peers, and leaders does not happen overnight, but rather, through time, and work. The challenge is that many of us wait until we have to work with those same people, and we’re both trying to build trust and connection and get things done at the same time. A better approach is to intentionally create time, and through repeated and deliberate practice, cultivate relationships with key people, so that when you do have to work with them you’ve already built connections that make it easier to work together.

There’s a famous proverb that says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” This proverb applies to relationships with your stakeholders. You will be in a far better position to work together collaboratively and effectively when you’ve taken the time proactively to engage with them, get to know them and build trust with them versus going to them when you need to ask them for something. 

So how can you proactively engage with stakeholders to build a strong working relationship? Here are a few examples of practices I’ve used over the years:

• 1:1s – These are short conversations where you get to know your stakeholders better. These can be about anything but the rule of thumb is to try to make sure you listen just as much if not more than what you speak in return. Pay attention to understand what they are working on, what they are struggling with, and to identify opportunities where you might be able to help them
• Ask For Feedback – If you are early in the process of working on something, invite key stakeholders into the conversation and creation process by asking for their feedback and input. We all want to know our opinion matters, so give them a chance to co-create with you
• Loop them into a conversation – Silos exist in companies small and large. It’s hard to keep track of all the projects and initiatives that are going on. If you see two disparate people who have something they could help each other with, or benefit from being connected, connect the dots between those individuals. We all probably have one colleague who just seems to be in the know on everything.

 

3.Focus on Creating Small Acts of Trust

All of us have some sort of control over the work that we do. With that discretion in mind, we tend to choose to work with people that we know, like, and trust. But trust isn’t something that just magically happens overnight, it’s built over small moments and actions that over time, can add up. I like to think of trust like a bank account, and just like a bank account, you can make “trust deposits’ that you can use over time.

Now, when most people think about trust, they think, “I’ll give trust when someone reveals themselves to be trustworthy.” In this case, it makes sense to reverse that. If you want to work effectively with this stakeholder, flip the script and focus on “creating trust” so that they begin to trust you.

Trust can seem like an amorphous thing, even its definition “a firm belief in the character, strength, or truth of someone or something” feels high-level. But when we think about trust, it actually boils down to two types:

• Cognitive Trust – Your belief about someone’s competence and ability. Does someone believe you can do what you say you can do?
• Affective Trust – The warmth and rapport that you share with someone. Does someone genuinely like you?

The reality is that to trust someone enough to want to do something for them, you need to have both cognitive and affective trust. But research shows that we need to focus on affective trust before cognitive trust if we want to build relationships effectively with others,

The good news is that trust can be built over small actions over time. Say for instance, you are proactively engaging your stakeholders and consistently finding ways to connect with them. Over time, they are going to get to know both what you are working on and what your priorities are. When it comes time to ask that person for something, say like their support for a project you are working on, or maybe some resources, that if that individual trusts you, but also through that engagement building, is familiar with your work, they probably are more likely to want to support your cause. 

So how can you build cognitive and affective trust? You can do this right through the interactions you have with your stakeholders each and every day. This is true, whether it’s a synchronous conversation or an asynchronous conversation, as well as a live conversation or meeting, or just through communications. 

Here are some examples:

• Affective Trust

• • • Listening to others
    • Being slightly vulnerable 
    • Asking thoughtful questions
    • Checking in on someone’s well-being
    • Spending time to get to know someone
    • Showing genuine care and concern

• Cognitive Trust

• • Doing what you say you will do
  • Sharing knowledge and expertise
  • Providing updates proactively
  • Being transparent and open

 

#4) Build a Relationship Where You Can Win Together

In any relationship, it’s easy to view the relationship like many other dynamics: us versus them. These relationships oftentimes lead to a transactional nature where you trade one thing for another. These are fine, but often don’t lead to long term effectiveness and value. In order to effectively build a stakeholder relationship that creates mutually significant value for both sides, I would argue for another approach. Instead of focusing on what you want to get or gain, focus instead on how you both can win together. This requires a bit of a mindset shift into how we view the relationship. 

To do this, I’ve developed a framework I call the “3G’s of Winning Relationships.” In any given relationship, there are three things that you want to look for:

• Give: In this relationship, what can I give to help and support the other person?
• Get: In this relationship, what would I like to receive?
• Generate: What might we be able to co-create together to help others and ourselves? This one often is the most overlooked one, but also the most powerful, as it creates possibilities and opportunities.

Using this mindset creates a much more expansive and collective approach to working with your stakeholders. Instead of viewing things in a transactional way or in an “eye for an eye” way, you can think about this: how do we make 1+1 = 3? This approach also changes the nature of the relationship. Instead of only you and your stakeholder only coming to each other for when you need something, you start to engage and interact for a multitude of other different reasons, like if you see an opportunity they could pursue, a person that might help them be successful, or a joint project that would benefit both of you. This approach in those circumstances does two things. First, the very nature of reaching out to the person with a thought or idea, makes them see you as looking out for their best interests (which strengthens the relationship) Second, it generates possibilities and opportunities – even if the idea doesn’t come to fruition, it may spawn another idea down the road. It also brings the two of you closer together in your own relationship, and that strength is critical when you do eventually have to ask them for their support they are more willing to provide it.

#5)Elevate Their Work

Zig Ziglar once said, “You can have anything you want in life if you just help other people get what they want.”  Your success is often correlated to the amount of people that want you to succeed. Your stakeholders by the very nature of having to work with you are the exact people who might want to help you succeed, but only when they know that you want them to succeed as well. This is why to the degree that you can, you should help them win.

Finding ways to support your stakeholder in their work can go a long way into building an effective stakeholder relationship. When you help others win, you have people who want to help you win. This might seem counterintuitive – why should we help others if we want to succeed on our own?

So what does “helping” look like? One way you can do this is by getting into the mindset of the 5 minute favor. A five minute favor is something small (that takes about 5-10 minutes) that you can do that means a big deal to someone else.  It’s a small effort, that can go a long way in showing other people that you both acknowledge and see their work and B) care about their success. As an example, I often will write reviews of my favorite podcasts. These often take me only 5-10 minutes to do, but I know that they mean a lot to podcast hosts. All of us can find ways to incorporate 5 minute favors into our practice of building stakeholder relationships. 

• Celebrating their wins publicly – If they do a great job on a project, shoot them an email congratulating them, and share it publicly in your slack or communications channel
• Give Them Feedback – Most of us don’t get enough high quality feedback. If you see them doing a great job at something, proactively provide them feedback to let them know what specifically they are doing and why they are doing a great job
• Help Them Learn – Once you know their professional interests, find some articles that you can send their way that are relevant to those professional interests to help their own learning and growth.

At the end of the day, whether you work in a 100,000 person organization or you’re like me and work by yourself, we all need the support and help of our stakeholders to achieve our business goals. Investing in building strong stakeholder relationships is a worthy activity because it noy only helps you achieve your goals, but generates possibilities and serendipity. Doing this also has another effect: 

It helps you be seen as someone who is invested in building relationships with others, which in turn brings you into connection with these kinds of people. 

Ultimately, stakeholder relationship building is like a flywheel, and the more you do it, the more you can generate results and opportunities for yourself.