Manage Stakeholder Engagement

00:01 Hello and welcome.

00:03 This module will focus on the ménage stakeholder engagement process in the PMBOK guide.

00:11 The exam importance is rated as high.

00:15 Because you need to place a great deal of emphasis and effort in proactively influencing stakeholders.

00:23 And this is where it happens.

00:26 The difficulty in memorization are both ranked as medium.

00:32 The manage stakeholder engagement process is one of four processes in total in the stakeholder management knowledge area.

00:41 The particular domain tasks.

00:44 That this process focuses on and helps us to understand better, are these two executing tasks? Now remember and the PMP exam, 30 per cent of the questions come from executing the main tasks.

01:00 So do pay particular attention to these two.

01:04 Task six, manage the flow of information by following the communication plan in order to keep stakeholders engaged and informed. You can see that task also overlaps with the executing processes in the communications management knowledge area.

01:23 Task seven Maintain stakeholder relationships by following the stakeholder management plan in order to receive continued support and manage expectations.

01:38 The key themes of this process are that you as project manager and remember, you've got ultimate responsibility, accountability and authority for your project.

01:50 So you are making sure that stakeholders are heard, understood and that their needs are addressed.

01:58 Remember, your goal is to proactively influence your stakeholders to get their support for your project, or at least stop them opposing your project. So the key way to do this is to be proactive, not reactive and influencing.

02:17 And we'll look closely at some of the key influencing skills that you need in order to be a great influencer of stakeholders in this module.

02:26 Remember that stakeholder expectation or engagement management begins early and goes on throughout the life of the project.

02:36 And in my experience, the most successful project managers I've met have been the most successful influencers of stakeholders.

02:46 So practice these skills, but know that for the exam, it's seen as critical. The particular inputs that we will go looking for include, well, obviously our stakeholder management plan because it provides guidance to us on exactly how we're going to do this work. So we will look to the stakeholder management plan I mentioned before the overlap between stakeholder management and communications management because it's through effective communications that we will try to influence our stakeholders.

03:22 So the communications management plan is very important to have as an input to it will outline our key messages and our overall approach to project communications. We'll also want our change log.

03:36 Now that's an interesting input, but it's an important input because it allows us to communicate to stakeholders where changes are at.

03:45 That their change requests have been received.

03:47 They are being considered and perhaps that decisions have been made to either approve or decline those changes.

03:54 We may also look to relevant organizational process assets, such as those parts of our project management methodology, dealing with how we manage stakeholder engagement. The particular tools and techniques that we may find useful include an analysis of communications methods. Now we looked at these in depth during the communications management modules.

04:21 But they include your decision about how to communicate with stakeholders and the key thing to remember here is not every stakeholder wants to be communicated to in the same way with the same content at the same time.

04:36 And in fact, never make the mistake of assuming that all stakeholders are the same, nor that stakeholders like to be communicated in the way you like to communicate. You need to do an analysis of which methods work, for which stakeholders some stakeholders will want face to face forms of communication.

04:57 Others will want emails or phone calls or regular internet updates. Some stakeholders will want lots of text.

05:07 Some will want pictures.

05:08 Some will want graphs.

05:09 Some will want numbers.

05:11 It's up to you to figure out which communication methods work best for which stakeholders and apply those methods appropriately.

05:22 Being a interaction between people, you and the stakeholder, it's also going to depend a lot on your particular interpersonal skills and your management skills.

05:32 And we'll take a look at those shortly.

05:35 But it is these skills that we know are the greatest indicator of project success, not your ability to put together a project budget or a project schedule. Those are the hard skills or the technical skills of project management.

05:50 And let's be honest.

05:53 A piece of software could do it, but a piece of software can't influence people and lead people and be empathic towards people, and these are all elements of successful interpersonal and management skills.

06:06 So use them to influence your stakeholders.

06:10 But a tip? They'll also help you get ahead in your career.

06:14 So focus on the development of these soft skills.

06:20 One of the ways to keep stakeholders informed is with the issue log.

06:25 Now the issue log is a register or a log where you can write down all of the stakeholder issues.

06:32 Now it gives stakeholders a great way to see that their issues are important to you and that they're being considered and possibly being taken care of.

06:41 Now, not all issues need to be resolved in a project.

06:45 Compare that to risks on a risk register at the end of a project, all risks will be closed. But at the end of the project, not all issues need to be closed.

06:55 And don't forget, an issue could become so important that it escalates to become an item on our watch list, a lower order risk or maybe even escalate to our risk register.

07:06 So remember, issues may become risks.

07:11 Let's take a closer look at some of those key interpersonal skills that you need in order to be a successful influencer of stakeholders, the particular interpersonal skills that you do need to work on and do need to demonstrate leadership, your ability to take a leadership role and assume the mantle of leadership.

07:33 Remember, leadership has to be appropriate.

07:37 Leadership is situational, and the style of leadership that works in one situation may in fact be completely inappropriate for another situation.

07:46 You'll need to demonstrate your team building skills.

07:49 Obviously, the stakeholders will try and influence with this particular skill.

07:53 Our team and here you're trying to take a collection of talented and professional individuals and turn them into a high performing team.

08:04 You'll need to demonstrate your ability to motivate people to find out what actually motivates them and offer them those things.

08:12 You need to have superior communication skills, and this means the ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of stakeholders. So you need to understand what works for them.

08:26 You need to obviously have great influencing skills and these are your political skills, the ability to get people to see your side of the argument and for you to see theirs and understand you will need to be able to make decisions.

08:42 And there are some decision making processes you will need to learn about, and we covered those in the H.R.

08:47 management processes, the human resource management processes.

08:52 You'll need to demonstrate a high level of political and cultural awareness.

08:58 It's a key component to influencing people is understanding where they come from and what's important to them politically or culturally.

09:09 Yes, you'll have to have excellent negotiation skills, know how negotiations start and the games that are played in order to get to a successfully concluded negotiation, you will need to trust people and show empathy towards people for without it.

09:26 People won't trust you.

09:29 You'll need to have great conflict management and resolution skills so that you can finally and fully resolve conflict between stakeholders. And you'll also need to demonstrate some coaching skills.

09:42 And this is where you take on the role of coach and provide that mentoring or coaching to important stakeholders as well.

09:51 So those are the key interpersonal skills that you'll need to be able to demonstrate in order to help you manage stakeholder expectations or engagement successfully. The management skills, which are in addition to the leadership skills.

10:09 Include your presentation skills.

10:12 Can you effectively present information to stakeholders in a way which ensures that they understand the message you're trying to get across? Practice your presentation skills as often as you can.

10:26 They are an important skill to have.

10:29 Negotiation skills are also considered a key management skills, like the interpersonal skills we just covered.

10:36 So your ability to negotiate with people, understand what your bottom line is and what you're trying to get, but also what their bottom line is and what they are trying to get is an important negotiation skill.

10:49 The other management skills include time management skills, you need to be organized. You need to show that you're organized.

10:57 It gives people confidence, but it also allows you to perform at your best, most efficiently and effectively.

11:04 So don't be the person who's always late.

11:06 Don't be the person who's always promising to deliver things by a certain date and never delivering them. Manage your time well.

11:14 And practice your public speaking skills.

11:19 People will respect you for your public speaking skills.

11:23 Always be sincere.

11:25 Don't think public speaking skills are the ability to be a car salesman. Sincerity matters when it comes to public speaking. If you're a nervous public speaker, just remember that in my experience, most of the time, the audience never picks up how nervous you are.

11:47 Nerves will go with time and practice.

11:52 So take the opportunities to practice your public speaking skills, they are an essential management skills for the proactive influencing of stakeholders.

12:04 I want to focus here on the Kickoff meeting.

12:08 It's not recognized as one of the specific tools and techniques and this process.

12:13 And in fact, it's part of the communications management processes, but it's important to look at it here was our Kickoff meeting is actually an excellent way to manage stakeholder engagement and expectation because it transmits a message of confidence to the stakeholders and helps to get their buy in. The Kickoff meeting itself is done once we've done enough planning to begin execution.

12:40 So it's not done at the end of Planning.

12:43 It's done once we've done enough planning to begin execution.

12:47 So it's the last thing we do immediately before we begin executing tasks and we invite the relevant stakeholders along.

12:55 We share with them all of our plans and we get their feedback, but we also get their confidence and buy into the project.

13:04 So use the Kickoff meeting as an important stakeholder engagement and expectation management tool.

13:11 The potential outputs that we may generate as a result of doing this work include our issue log, and we'll take a closer look at that shortly.

13:21 We may also generate some change requests because while doing the work to manage stakeholder engagement or expectations, we may want to go back and change other elements of our project management plans, documents or subsidiary plans based on stakeholder needs or requests.

13:40 Remember, the change requests go on to be inputs into the Perform Integrated Change Control process.

13:48 We may also choose to make minor updates to the Project Management Plan.

13:53 Remember, major updates go on as a change request, minor updates you should be able to do without putting through your change control process.

14:02 We may also choose to update our project documents, things like our lessons learned and historical information, and we may also choose to update specific organizational process assets that tell us how we do stakeholder engagement management.

14:19 Let's take a closer look at the issues log that is the major output from this process and what it is, it's a log or a register or spreadsheet.

14:30 Then when we put down all of the issues that stakeholders have raised and it's a great way of keeping track of everything that the stakeholders raises issues, we put it there, we put the stakeholder identification next to it.

14:46 We put the issue itself.

14:48 We may even give it a priority.

14:50 Now we don't need to resolve all of our issues by the end of the project.

14:55 Some issues will stay unresolved, unlike the risk register, where all risks must be resolved at the end of the project and closed off.

15:04 There will be some open issues.

15:08 And the issues can also escalate to become risks should they become significant enough.

15:16 So remember that issues could escalate, perhaps initially to the watch list, that lower order of risk register and then ultimately to the risk register itself.

15:27 And one of the great things that the issues log does is it helps to influence stakeholders was it gives them a way to see that their issues are important, important enough to be noted down.

15:40 And hopefully being taken care of.

15:43 So the issues log is a great way to influence stakeholder engagement and support for your project.

15:50 It also gives you a way to remember who's raised which issues.

15:55 So in summary, this process has been about using our stakeholder management plan to proactively influence and manage stakeholder expectations to get them to support your project or at least not oppose it.

16:12 And that's our main focus.

16:14 Get those stakeholders on side.

16:17 I was once part of a project that I thought was going exceptionally well in terms of cost and time.

16:24 We were coming in under budget and ahead of time, and there was a stakeholder who told me in no uncertain terms, they didn't care about cost or time. They cared about a whole lot of other matters.

16:39 So I had to change my whole stakeholder engagement strategy.

16:43 No longer did I report to these people the cost and time, but we focused on actually their concerns.

16:49 It taught me a lesson about actually understanding what stakeholders want from you and not assuming they want what you want to give them.

16:59 So remember that in order to be successful at influencing stakeholders, you will need to utilize your leadership and management skills to achieve this. And the exam will assume that you have a great level of leadership and management skills and you know how to use them to influence people.

17:21 So thank you very much.

17:22 This has been an introduction and an overview to the manage stakeholder engagement process in the PMBOK guide.