How do you determine stakeholder communication needs?

1 Identify your stakeholders

The first step is to identify who your stakeholders are and what their roles and responsibilities are in relation to your project. Stakeholders are anyone who can affect or be affected by your project, such as customers, sponsors, team members, managers, suppliers, regulators, or competitors. You can use various tools and techniques to identify your stakeholders, such as brainstorming, interviewing, reviewing documents, or using stakeholder maps or matrices. The goal is to create a comprehensive list of all the relevant stakeholders and their attributes, such as their names, positions, contact details, interests, expectations, influence, and power.

2 Analyze your stakeholders

The next step is to analyze your stakeholders and understand their communication styles and preferences. Communication styles are the ways that people express themselves, listen, and respond to others, such as assertive, passive, aggressive, or passive-aggressive. Communication preferences are the modes and channels that people prefer to use for communication, such as email, phone, face-to-face, or video conference. You can use various tools and techniques to analyze your stakeholders, such as surveys, questionnaires, feedback forms, observation, or personality tests. The goal is to determine how each stakeholder likes to communicate, what their communication strengths and weaknesses are, and how they may react to different communication situations.

4 Plan your communication strategies

The fourth step is to plan your communication strategies and prepare the communication materials and resources that you will use to communicate with your stakeholders. Communication strategies are the approaches and methods that you will use to deliver your communication needs effectively and efficiently, such as formal or informal, written or verbal, one-way or two-way, proactive or reactive, or persuasive or informative. You can use various tools and techniques to plan your communication strategies, such as communication calendars, templates, guidelines, checklists, or protocols. The goal is to align your communication strategies with your stakeholder analysis and communication needs, and to ensure that your communication is clear, consistent, timely, and relevant.

5 Execute your communication strategies

The fifth step is to execute your communication strategies and communicate with your stakeholders according to your plan. Execution is the most visible and critical part of communication, as it is where you actually interact with your stakeholders and convey your information and messages. You can use various tools and techniques to execute your communication strategies, such as presentations, reports, newsletters, meetings, webinars, or social media. The goal is to communicate with your stakeholders in a way that meets their communication styles and preferences, and that achieves your communication objectives.

6 Evaluate your communication effectiveness

The sixth and final step is to evaluate your communication effectiveness and measure the results and outcomes of your communication. Evaluation is the feedback loop that allows you to monitor and improve your communication performance and quality, as well as to identify and address any communication issues or gaps. You can use various tools and techniques to evaluate your communication effectiveness, such as surveys, questionnaires, feedback forms, metrics, indicators, or audits. The goal is to assess how well you communicated with your stakeholders, how satisfied they were with your communication, and how your communication contributed to your project success.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?