Three Ways to invest in difficult stakeholders

Three Ways to invest in difficult stakeholders

When you are in the starting days of your fellowship you will find two types of stakeholders, one who will welcome you open-heartedly and the other who will not even listen to you properly. You are sitting in front of them talking about the things you want to intervene in that are allowed by the department to you. I also found these two types of stakeholders when I started working in my Bhanra cluster. However, some open-hearted conversations or my other intervention had helped me gain these difficult stakeholders' trust. From my experience of working with stakeholders, I am going to share the “three ways” that helped me to work and maybe these ways can also help you in some way. But firstly I want to give my definition of difficult stakeholders. A difficult stakeholder won't easily allow you to intervene in his setup and won't easily get ready to help you build a capacity of any kind.

1. Listen to these stakeholders as a priority

In our weekly learning spaces, we often heard that listening is also a skill, but how can this skill be used I found out interacting with my stakeholders. Because these stakeholders are fed up either from the department or some other reasons, they want someone with whom they can share their words of distrust. If you are lucky enough you will be the person with whom they will share the words. When you are sitting with them you have to be cautious of some things, such as not being judgemental, and not arguing about the things they share because they had their own set of experiences. Listening to them is the first step that will help you to build trusty relationships with them and a relationship is the key that helps you to unlock the potential of things you can do with them.

2. Clarify your role to them and say “I am on your side”

When you can sit with them and build a relationship where you at least can share why you are in their school and what you are going to do. This is very important because the conversation here you have will take your relationship further on the right track. So be true to yourself and tell them with an open heart why you are in their school and what you are going to do with them or their students. Tell them that you are only to help them not to build on more pressure upon them. You should be very specific and clear on what things you are going to help them with and make your “How” very strong. As strong as your “How” is their clarity on things in your role will become strong. At the start of this paragraph is said this is the most important part of your investment because sometimes we fail because we unawarely use words such as “Department or higher authorities told us to work in your school” which may help you to intervene in some things because they can't say anything against this point but this may also backfire is not willing to contribute their efforts with you, they don't listen to you from their heart which cause you a harm in unintended consequences.

3. Create success stories that will create influence.

We often hear that your work speaks louder than your voice and if you will easily get an example of yours to prove this statement right. This is one of the hardest but most effective ways to influence your difficult stakeholders. To create any success firstly you have to find the work in which you can create some improvement, there are two things that you should do to find that work. Firstly you can choose your interest in things such as classroom teaching, improving the life skills of students, social-emotional learning, etc. The other way to choose is which stakeholders want you to do. It’s not about what you are choosing to work on, the only thing that stakeholders are going to notice is what efforts you are putting in your intervention. If you are true to your efforts I am damm sure that you will be able to create the success story.? Once you can show any success story the stakeholders will trust you willingly and sometimes you don't have to even tell them that you did something they were looking you noticeably or unnoticeably when you are lost in your efforts. Also, the magic of a success story is that they will share your story with other stakeholders as well which will improve the image of your role, and you will become a family member or colleague with them.

End note:

These are the three ways that helped me in the fellowship period and helped me to gain the trust of my stakeholders and build a beautiful relationship with them. I am not arguing or proving that these are the only three ways to invest in difficult stakeholders If you read this and are not convinced that these will help you. Don't worry every cluster has its sense of problem be confident to create your own three ways or many ways to gain the trust of your stakeholders. I know you are creative enough to create your ways…… Good way ahead.