What do you do if your senior stakeholder management performance is falling short of expectations?

1 Assess your current situation

The first step in improving your performance is to evaluate your current performance and identify areas that require improvement. Review feedback, metrics, and deliverables from your senior stakeholders to gain insight. Ask yourself some critical questions, such as how satisfied they are with your communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills, how well you understand their needs and goals, how aligned you are with their strategic vision and priorities, how often you deliver value and exceed their expectations, and how you handle conflicts, risks, and changes. Be honest with yourself and seek feedback from others who can offer a different perspective for an even more comprehensive evaluation.

2 Set SMART goals and action plans

The next step is to set SMART goals for your senior stakeholder management performance. These goals should reflect the expectations and standards of your senior stakeholders, as well as your own professional development. Additionally, you should create a clear and realistic action plan for each goal that outlines the steps, resources, and support needed to achieve it. For example, you can increase the frequency and quality of communication with your senior stakeholders by sending weekly updates, scheduling monthly meetings, and asking for feedback regularly. Additionally, you can enhance your understanding of their needs, goals, and preferences by conducting a stakeholder analysis and creating a stakeholder map. Furthermore, you can align your work with their strategic vision and priorities by reviewing their objectives, aligning your deliverables, and reporting on your progress and impact. Moreover, you can deliver more value and exceed their expectations by identifying opportunities, proposing solutions, and delivering results that add value to their business outcomes. Lastly, you can handle conflicts, risks, and changes more effectively by anticipating issues, communicating proactively, and resolving them collaboratively.

3 Monitor and measure your progress

The third step is to monitor and measure your progress and performance against your SMART goals and action plans. You can do this by tracking activities, outputs, and outcomes, as well as collecting feedback from senior stakeholders. Additionally, you should review your performance regularly and adjust your goals and action plans as necessary. To monitor and measure progress, you can use a dashboard or spreadsheet to track communication, collaboration, and problem-solving activities with senior stakeholders. Surveys, interviews, or feedback forms can be used to measure satisfaction, engagement, and trust levels. Metrics, indicators, or reports can help measure alignment, value delivery, and impact on strategic objectives and business outcomes. You can also use checklists, logs, or records to measure conflict resolution, risk management, and change management skills.

4 Seek feedback and coaching

The fourth step is to seek feedback and coaching from your senior stakeholders and other sources to improve your performance and skills. You should ask for feedback on a regular basis, both formally and informally, with an open mind and a positive attitude. Additionally, it's beneficial to seek coaching from your manager, mentor, or peers who can lend guidance, advice, and support. For example, you could request feedback from senior stakeholders after each deliverable, meeting, or interaction. A feedback template, form, or tool can help you collect and organize feedback from your senior stakeholders and other sources. Moreover, a coaching plan, session, or tool can be used to set goals, actions, and follow-ups with your coach.

5 Celebrate your achievements and learn from your mistakes

The fifth step in improving senior stakeholder management performance and skills is to celebrate your achievements and learn from your mistakes. Recognize and reward yourself for reaching goals, delivering value, and exceeding expectations. Reflect on mistakes, failures, and challenges and use them as opportunities to grow and improve. To do this, share success stories, document achievements, mistakes, and learnings in a journal or diary, and use a learning plan or resource to develop skills.

6 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?