Two Simple Steps to Engage Stakeholders

The biggest killer for a data project is poor communication.

You can have the best team in the world. Without communicating the value your team can bring to the table, you will accomplish nothing.

Without understanding what your stakeholders need to bring the business to the next level, you will deliver nothing.

We know, as data professionals, are probably not the most people-oriented bunch. However, that shouldn’t stop you from mindfully engaging with your stakeholders.

You don’t need to be an extrovert to manage stakeholder relationships successfully. Trust me, it doesn’t require frequent cocktail parties and long meetings together. I’m an introvert, and I read economics books for fun. You get the picture. Some of you are probably more outgoing than me.

How do you mindfully engage your stakeholders?

Listen

You’re going to act as their therapist for all their data issues. People love to be heard.

I’ve been in enough meetings where an engineer tries to showcase their tech excellence by saying cool things they can build or talk about something unrelated to what stakeholders need. They don’t spend the time to understand what they need. (Same thing for stakeholders, but that will be another post.)

Stakeholders usually share what they need via email or maybe in an introduction call before this first meeting with engineers or data teams.

However, you need to make sure they describe what they need in their own words. Often, stakeholders believe they need machine learning models to explore the profitability of a product. It turns out they just need a dashboard to monitor sales.

Sometimes, they downplay what they need. It turns they need a complete cloud data architecture, and an automated data pipeline for their dashboards.

You won’t know that until you listen to what they say.

When they can’t articulate their needs, this is when you really need to be their therapist.

Ask what prevents them from doing their jobs and making important decisions.

What kind of information is missing?

You’ll have a clear picture of what needs to be done once they talk about what they need. It can either confirm what you learn from the introduction meeting or something totally different.

Now we need to finish this strong.

Paraphrase

You describe their data problems/needs in your own words. It can be weird at first because you feel you’re just repeating, not moving the conversation towards actions.

Your job doesn’t end when they’re done talking. Now it’s your turn to tell them what you hear.

This part is crucial. They need to know that you understand!

This is also the part where you build trust.

You must build trust with your stakeholders.

When they trust you, it’s easy to get answers and collaborate. It’s okay to feel awkward at first because you’re not used to doing this. (There is another level in paraphrase — speaking their lingo. That will come with time and additional learning.)

Here we focus on telling them what you hear in your own words. It might take a few rounds to nail down the requirements for a project. However, that will be time well spent because it’s painful to deliver the wrong thing, not to mention losing trust from stakeholders.

There. You’ll understand what you need to do for your stakeholders without saying much or taking them to cocktail parties.

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