How do you satisfy stakeholders in your training and development projects?

One of the top ways to identify stakeholders quickly is by using a stakeholder analysis grid. This tool allows you to categorize stakeholders based on - their level of influence and - their level of interest in the project. By assessing their power and level of involvement, you can quickly identify key stakeholders who have the potential to significantly impact or be impacted by the training and development projects. This method helps you prioritize your engagement efforts and focus on those stakeholders who are most critical to the success of your initiatives.

As a former HR Head, I managed training projects for 1000s of employees in many countries, the hard part was to meet the dissimilar needs of sponsors and learners. Here is what worked for me. ? Sponsors: they think they know the best solution and start instructing prematurely. I gradually changed their view of me from an “order taker” to a “trusted advisor” by listening & and probing. ? Learners: their needs are often different from what sponsors want. For example, sponsors wanted body language training, but learners needed consultative selling. I solved this issue by “managing the expectations” of learners early on. As HR Partners or Consultants, we must strive to satisfy & balance both sides for our projects to be branded successful.

As VP of a Young Hotel Brand - discussing with enthusiastic prospective partner’s association opportunity , my empathetic approach with a review of Sales , Revenue & Market Share analysis – push us a lot to prioritize the stakeholder to opt for the best suited brand for their New upcoming Hotels or Existing Hotels. Listening and understanding the challenges, opportunities and providing a successful module for both Hotel Owner & Hotel Brand is what always encourages me to discuss more with Hotel Owner and encourages them to grow more rapidly. Managing Expectation & Create a beautiful strategy is an "ART" of continuous learning .

Key aspect to approach a training and development project is to identify and recognize the individual and business goals as the 1st step. Stakeholders identification would follow from there as next step.

1. A collaborative training needs analysis. Clarity and agreement on what needs to be trained, refreshed and introduced with the end users buy in and sign off. 2. Pilot sessions to trial and test the materials to ensure they are understood and fit for purpose. 3. Training plan and schedule to capture all who require training, with built in contingency for sickness and or non-attendance. 4. Feedback and assurance from the end users about the relevance of the training provided. 5. Refresher training scheduled in advance to make sure the training received does not become outdated. Finally, worth considering people have different learning styles and other factors such as neurodivergence.

3 important things to communicate early and often are: Project goals and objectives: Clearly communicate the purpose, goals, and expected outcomes. This helps stakeholders understand the overall vision and align their expectations accordingly. Project progress and updates: Regularly update stakeholders on the progress, milestones, challenges, and changes to timelines or deliverables. Risks and mitigation strategies: Communicate potential risks or challenges that may impact the project. This demonstrates transparency and allows stakeholders to provide input or support. By consistently communicating these key aspects, you provide stakeholders with a clear understanding of the project’s direction, progress, and potential risks.

Ultimately stakeholder communication is all about relevance. Most of your stakeholders are likely involved in multiple projects at a time and you may only get 30 minutes of their attention per week at most. So you've got to tailor your communication to the audience and keep it clear what the key points and any action items are if you want to get them to pay attention.

Consultation is key! - Listen to what they are currently doing, recognise the good work they are doing. - Listen to their issues and work together to identify processes to reduce the issues - Document in a procedure (or similar) document - Share the documented procedure for consultation and ensure it meets their needs I have been successful in receiving approval first time to implement new procedures.

Providing clear objectives and purposeful updates often are essential to maintaining stakeholder trust and alignment. However, a regularly missed aspect of these communications is speaking in the stakeholder's language. Instead of using L&D/HR phrases or concepts, listen to how your stakeholders communicate about the project and rephrase your updates in similar words and tone - this will promote buy-in and build a framework for trust.

Communicate with perspective and purpose to energize stakeholders for intended action. Rest of metrics will follow when evangelization meets energy at ground.

Additionally, once engaged in a project be sure to perform a strong analysis of the situation so you can report back to the stakeholder before starting design. You may report back information they weren't aware of or reveal a need to adjust the scope of their request. Either way, often times this extra leg work produces information useful to stakeholders in a number of ways.

You’re there to facilitate conversation and make a difference in the business of these stakeholders. If you didn’t involve them it would merely be babysitting. They will be responsible for implementation after and often give you a lot of credibility to bring your content down to earth

Many times we identify the right stakeholders, communicate the right message at the right time, but fail to engage with them in long term perspective. This leads to their shift in ideas and perspectives, leaving room for dilution of overall impact and outcome of project or the program. It is important to design a strong and effective stakeholder management strategy for any project manager/leader. It is important for stakeholders to remain associated with a cause and find purpose in the company / project / program, this leads to long term involvement and in turn give a point of leverage for building trust and transparency.

Engaging stakeholders is key towards effective training & development. Here is how one can do it: 1. Seek requirements from the stakeholders: Why is the training needed? What are the outcomes expected? What developmental areas are they looking at? 2. Design content in line with the expectations. 3. Keep stakeholders informed about training plans, mode of delivery, expectations from the cohort. 4. Provide feedback and insights from the training programme. 5. Request stakeholders to have communication with the cohort on the training programme to drive the key message.

Involving stakeholders is a major step in translating an effective learning and development project. Involve them at three levels : 1. How will this training bring business impact? 2. Determine the key metrics along with your stakeholders to set the right expectations. 3. Effective communication around the training from their mail box.

It is important to understand both business impacts (i.e., revenue, cost, risk) and how these new skills will impact stakeholders' careers. For example, some may want to be more effective leaders and others are looking at future promotions. It is also important for stakeholders to understand the potential consequences of not completing training and development projects (non-promotable, employee turnover, competitive disadvantage, etc.).

Even though this step is like the 4th one on this list, you should be thinking about this from the beginning. Identifying, involving, and communicating with your stakeholders should all be done with the purpose of ensuring that they are alignment. Any level of misalignment needs to be cleared up before you get too far into the work, or you run the risk of upsetting folks by failing to meet their expectations. It's best to agree on KPIs and metrics early, so that throughout the planning process, you can report on them and keep folks updated. When I ran recruiting for leadership development programs, I was consistently sending reports on the # of applicants and their demographics to ensure diversity.

All employees have right to develop themselves and we shall give credit to employees who voluntarily take training to develop themselves. Therefore, training should be part of an individual’s KPI. This, will encourage individual to participate in self development either voluntarily or by designedly (as company’s request). As part of an individual KPI, self development will automatically involve stakeholders to align the set targets with the individual performance. This is just a simple step in how we can align stakeholders interests with training by involving them directly.

Your stakeholders will always want more than you are able to provide. A few years back, I was laterally transferred to a Leadership and Development Director position and while the previous director had done well to assemble the team and establish facilities, tasks were coming from multiple sources and unrealistic commitments were made and broken. During alignment, it is critical to ensure that everyone understands which projects have priority and how that will affect resource allocation and therefore completion. Also, as new data and concerns emerge, priorities will change. Ensuring that all projects go through a work acceptance process, including evaluation of prioritization and communicating changes to affected stakeholders is critical.

One of the things I use, especially when it comes to training staff, is using a competency gap analysis. This allows us to identify specific competencies needed for the job and identify the competencies of the individual doing the job. This way we can align organizational expectations to our training objectives. I also use a risk matrix to identify the impact and probability of risks so we can implement effective strategies to deal with them. I se the TAME acronym to work with key stakeholders when dealing with risks. Transfer (shift the risk to a third party), Accept (acknowledge the risk and deal with it), Mitigate (lessen the risk by reducing impact/probability), Eliminate (remove the risk completely).

Stakeholders are a critical factor in the successful deployment of your training and development project. Whether they're helping you build it, are the sponsor of the project, or are customers of the output, they're the people who will validate that it's delivering the outcomes you aimed for, and will ultimately be the arbiter of whether or not your training and development solution has been worth the times and money invested. For these reason, along with many others, it's critical to ensure you're pro-active with stakeholder engagement. Consider risk management - if something looks like it's going to derail the project, informing your stakeholders as soon as possible will enable a collaborative approach to risk management.

I put managing ties with stakeholders at the top of my list when I'm in charge of a training project. This means figuring out how to deal with any potential conflicts, risks, or problems, like changing needs or a lack of resources. Stakeholders often have different goals or ideas, and I'm always ready for that. I use tools like risk files, issue logs, and backup plans to help me deal with these problems. It's important to negotiate and find middle ground, and I keep an upbeat and professional attitude throughout the process. It's about building trust and making sure everyone feels like they're important.

Be pragmatic. The business is looking for solutions that are easy to execute and that are not overly complex. Once you come up with a plan, go through it several times to filter out unnecessary steps...

That’s why having an Organizational Psychologist matters, they can address the psycho-social realities of a company’s culture and or intricate project dynamics to move personalities out of the project success equation.

This is critical which is why the key stakeholder interview is vital to success as we discuss the main constraints that we may face based on their perspective. This early identification can help me navigate potential risks and challenges I may experience in the project. Completing a project scope statement early on, gives me an overall perspective of things to constantly monitor (outcomes, exclusions, constraints). I also use a project status report to give them insight to current challenges and to seek input. Another tool I use is the project change request when any requests are made to ensure that they are aligned with the project purpose and to discuss potential project impact.

Communicate, communicate. communicate. As part of the needs identification process, confirm with your stakeholders what their preferred communication style and frequency is. Provide regular progress updates and be transparent about any challenges or issues. Request feedback and address concerns. Trust is built through responsive and reliable communication.

I cannot do what I do without the help and investment of other team members. I make it a point to thank them verbally and in writing during the development phase, actual training, and in the follow-up messaging. They are critical to the success of training initiatives, and I want to make sure they know how much I value their time, efforts, and expertise.

Appreciate them by looping back! A simple email update even a quick chat. Share your own feedback and how they can help drive the change in behaviors in their teams (modeling the behavior, encouraging to implement the learnings)

Thank them when they provide things. Understand it’s still a sale for you and you need to give to get. Understanding their languages of appreciation and communicating with empathy will go a long way to keep things moving and increase chances of a positive experience

Appreciate also means building a language around success and common goals. Example: Look at what “we” accomplished in “our” journey. It’s a then versus now perspective.

To satisfy stakeholders in training and development projects, 1. Start by conducting thorough needs assessments to identify their specific goals. T 2. Design tailored training programs that align with those objectives. 3. Regularly communicate progress and seek feedback to make necessary adjustments. 4. Additionally, measure the impact of training on key performance indicators and demonstrate the return on investment. 5. Ensuring open channels of communication and delivering tangible results will help satisfy stakeholders in your projects.

Understand Stakeholder Needs: By thoroughly understanding stakeholder needs, you ensure that the training and development project aligns well with the expectations, leading to increased stakeholder satisfaction.

Proper needs assessments/analyses are key to starting off on the right foot. I have been involved in projects where stakeholders work behind the scenes, making it difficult to maintain progress or evaluate the project's impact. In this way, a team charter or collaborative guidelines can support the clarity of who does what and when. This "blanket statement" holds all parties to the project and confirms the partnerships early on. When paired with regular communication, stakeholders and leaders are engaged and understanding of what the project entails.

Check-in with stakeholders after the solution has been provided and executed. Ensure they have the tools to follow up on the intervention, and hand control over to them... with your support

The steps related to involving your stakeholders and aligning with them should take place before a training project is even proposed. Key stakeholders should be involved at the start at the strategic level regarding which projects to prioritise and implement, and they need to give you the go-ahead around type of interventions and budget approvals. From there, once the programme is agreed in principle, then the wider stakeholder mapping can be completed, and the engagement process can take place from the start to the end of the project.