You're navigating the world of senior stakeholders. How can you cultivate strong relationships with them?

To cultivate strong relationships with senior stakeholders, focus on understanding their key priorities and aligning your efforts with their strategic goals (outside in approach vs inside out). Keep communication clear and concise, highlighting how your work supports the broader objectives they care about. Transparency is essential—keeping them informed about both successes and challenges builds trust. Proactively offer solutions to potential issues and show initiative, positioning yourself as a valuable partner. Finally, focus on creating mutual value and most of all trust by demonstrating how your contributions directly support their long-term vision, ensuring they see the benefit in working closely with you.

Building strong relationships with senior stakeholders starts with understanding their world. Take time to get a clear view of their motivations and challenges. Listen carefully and ask questions that’ll help you figure out what really drives their decisions. Keep it simple. Their world gets complicated quickly and if you want to be heard you gotta cut through the noise of the rest of the business. Cut the bullshit and be clear in your intentions. Say what you’ll do and do what you say. Ensure recommendations do more than support the immediate and build towards big picture. The goal is to prove yourself as a trusted partner who genuinely understands and cares for what the business is trying to achieves.

Understanding stakeholders' motivations and priorities is crucial. In my ventures, I've made it a practice to conduct thorough stakeholder analyses. This enables me to move quickly, take action at the same time be sure that the stakeholders' interests are being fulfilled and met.

Navigating senior stakeholders requires a blend of respect, listening, and adding value. I focus on understanding their key, key timelines and then I make sure to focus of adding value. By actively listening and bringing relevant insights to our discussions, I build credibility. I also make it a point to follow up on any commitments and be transparent about progress. This combination of responsiveness, understanding, and reliability helps cultivate trust and strong, lasting relationships with senior stakeholders.

"Seek first to understand, then be understood" Build on your listening skills, ask incisive questions, play back your understanding to ensure alignment. Gain an understanding of what has been done in the past, what worked, what didn't work and why? This rich understanding of the past and priorities will help you build a better plan for the future, and it will also help you sell your ideas better.

Stakeholders are people and how do people wish to be treated? People wish to be treated with respect, empathy, and part of a team. When engaging stakeholders, always ensure to see them as a team and not a competition. Secondly, let your stakeholders see you as a trustworthy and dependable team member. Finally, always put yourself in the shoes of your stakeholders. With their shoes on your feet, you will better manage your relationship with them proactively.

Consistency and reliability are key to building trust. In my experience, over-delivering on small commitments early on sets a strong foundation. When collaborating with a high-end automotive brand, I made sure to exceed expectations on initial deliverables. This approach turned a skeptical COO into a long-term partner for multiple projects.

Ditch the jargons!! Communicate clear and align things to the objectives of the business plan. Link things to revenue, customer acquisition and retention or profit.

Clear, concise, and timely communication is vital. I've learned to adapt my communication style to each stakeholder's preference. For a tech-savvy board member, I use data-driven presentations, while for a more traditional executive, I focus on narrative-driven reports. This tailored approach ensures that my message resonates effectively with each stakeholder.

Invest time to understand their scorecard goals and objectives. Ask them in you catchups to understand how you can contribute to help them achieve their objectives. Based my continuous catchups with my SVP, i could clearly understand that the project that i am working is a very highly critical and visible project and has to go-live on time. So i ensured that i discussed the challenges and strategic solutions with him on a frequent basis. This gave him a better understanding on how we are progressing and he was able to make informed decisions and drive us accordingly. This definitely contributes to strengthen relations and respect for individuals from both sides.

Finding common ground and aligning goals is crucial for long-term success. In a recent sustainability initiative, I identified overlapping interests between our company and key stakeholders. By framing the project in terms of both environmental impact and profitability, I secured buy-in from both sustainability-focused and profit-driven board members.

Focus on what matter to them and what delivers value for the customer. Operate at the intersection of those two needs. That's the sweet spot

Consistently showcasing the value you bring to the table is essential. In my consultancy work, I make it a point to provide regular updates on tangible results. This practice not only justifies the partnership but also leads to expanded engagements.

It is important to showcase your result oriented approach and consistently adhere to time. As part of my project while working on change requests, i put in efforts to analyze the requirement from every possible perspective and come up with possible approaches to solution it. This result oriented approach not only helps my Product Owner to take the right decision but also demonstrates the value that i am able to bring to the table. I also ensure that, i am responding back to clarifications on time. I prepare well before out meetings by identifying possible gaps that he would expect me to explore and share my findings on time which also demonstrates my value.

Show small results very quickly. It will help gain the buy-in for bigger projects. Focus on the low hanging fruits at the begining to gain credibilty

Don't focus on the politics. Be authentic, communicate clearly, and with compassion and respect. Own your actions and focus on the issues that matter. Be clear on your boundaries amd be brave