Strategic Stakeholder Relationships

top Overview

Genuine stakeholder engagement is becoming the preferred means for achieving strategic outcomes. In contrast, ‘stakeholder consultation’ is often cynically viewed as a rubberstamping exercise for pre-determined decisions: well-intentioned executives, managers, analysts and politicians while seeking to engage their stakeholders, often disengage the very people who are vital to their future. The result is lost opportunities to create mutual benefit and strategic value. Failure to engage effectively can be costly. The media is littered with stories of businesses investing heavily in a strategy only to find distrustful stakeholders thwarting implementation.

This practical Short Course will introduce you to contemporary thinking on stakeholder engagement, give you the tools to map and manage your stakeholder relationships and assist you in developing an actionable and measurable engagement strategy. You will leave the Short Course with one-page plans for more effectively engaging with two of your key stakeholders and an engagement scorecard for tracking organisational performance.

top Topics Covered

Stakeholder Engagement

  • What is stakeholder engagement
  • Why engagement has become important in the 21st century
  • The failure of consultation
  • Corporate social responsibility and engagement
  • Engagement life cycle
  • Practical examples from business, government, education, NGO’s

The 6F Toolkit™

  • Identifying your stakeholders
  • The 3c’s
  • Mapping your stakeholders
  • Identifying and assessing your key stakeholders
  • 6F model of engagement
  • Assessing your key stakeholder relationships using the 6F questionnaire

Engaging Your Key Stakeholders

  • Building engagement – what works
  • Deliberative dialogue – building engagement through puzzling together around contentious issues
  • Evidence based dialogues – moving beyond opinions to evidence informed dialogue

Writing a Stakeholder Engagement Strategy

  • Clarifying purpose
  • Gap analysis
  • Targeted strategies
  • Writing a “plan on a page” for 2 key stakeholders

Building a Culture of Engagement

  • Leadership that builds engagement
  • Rethinking your internal processes

Stakeholder Engagement Scorecard

  • Identifying what really matters
  • Reporting back to stakeholders
  • Governance and management reporting
  • Building an engagement scorecard

top Who should attend

This Short Course is designed for

  • Senior Executives
  • Mid to Senior Managers
  • Business Strategists and Policy Analysts
  • Relationship and Key Account Managers

Participants from business, industry, government, education, human services and NGO’s will benefit from this Short Course.

top Outcomes

On completion of this Short Course you will be able to:

  • Understand what stakeholder engagement is and how it is differs from other forms of relationship management
  • Identify your key stakeholders and undertaken a 6F audit of at least two relationships
  • Written a customised stakeholder engagement strategy for 2 key stakeholders
  • Develop an engagement scorecard for your organisation