Managing Stakeholder Attitudes

 

by Lynda Bourne

A person’s attitude is derived from their perceptions of a person or situation. In the project context, it is often the stakeholder’s perception of your project and how its outcomes will affect the stakeholder’s interests.

Fortunately, perceptions — and therefore attitudes — are negotiable and can be changed by effective communication.

In my research, I’ve found two key dimensions to attitudes: 

1. How supportive or opposed the stakeholder is toward the project. 
2. How receptive the stakeholder is to communication from the project team. While receptiveness may seem less important, you can’t change a stakeholder’s level of support if they refuse to communicate with you.

Levels of Support

Support can range from active opposition to active support. The project team needs to understand the stakeholder’s current level of support and then determine what is a realistic optimum level to facilitate the project’s success.

However, what represents a realistic optimum level varies. For example, environmental activists can never be realistically expected to support a new road through a wilderness area. In this circumstance the realistic optimum may be passive opposition as opposed to active opposition. On the other hand, your project sponsor should be an active supporter.

Creating Open Communication

The key to achieving either of these objectives — and support in general — is open communication. If the stakeholder is unwilling to communicate (either because they don’t like you or they are just too busy), you need to devise ways to open channels.

This may involve using other stakeholders in the network, using someone else on your team as the messenger, changing the way you communicate or just plain persistence.

If you can’t gain credibility — one of the key factors within your control that will influence the effectiveness of your communication — with a particular person because of their perceptions of you or your project, make sure you find a credible messenger to carry your communication.

Communication is a two-way process. Only after communication channels are open can you start to listen to the other person and understand their needs, concerns or ambitions. Once these are known, you are then in a position to either explain how the current project meets those needs or consider risk mitigation strategies to modify the project to reduce issues and enhance opportunities.

Communicating for Effect

The whole point of stakeholder management is to optimize the overall attitude of the stakeholder community to allow the project to succeed.

This requires:

• A focus on the important people at the current point in time.
• Understanding and managing their issues.
• Communicating to achieve the desired changes in attitude — communicating for effect!

Communicating for effect means focusing your communication efforts where the need is greatest:

• If people are at or above the optimum target attitudes, the purpose of your communication is to maintain the status quo.
• If less important stakeholders are below your desired optimum, you devote as much effort as can be spared from your limited resources.
• Important stakeholders who are below optimum need heroic communication efforts to change the situation and maximize the project’s chance of succeeding.

Remember, a very significant proportion of the risks around most projects are people-based. The only way to identify, manage and/or mitigate these risks is by effective two-way communication designed to effect changes in attitude.

How do you focus your communication effort for maximum effect?