Templates
Skill

Stakeholder Management

The ability to ensure that teams are protected and expectations are set correctly

Stakeholder Management

Level 1

Is able to keep tangential teams informed and expectations managed around everyday work updates. Uses judgement about others' reaction when disclosing information and opinions.

  • Managing Goals and Expectations: You lead on successful projects with external clients, internal stakeholders or partners with a successful outcome, ensuring goals are understood throughout.

  • Foresight: You work to inform departments, stakeholders or clients of an issue they face without being asked or expected to do so.

  • Engendering Trust: You bring stakeholders or clients into a process in a way that makes best use of their time and their strengths.

  • Protecting the team: You manage a client or stakeholder relationship for a project.

Level 2

Known for being efficient and reliable, and doing what they say they will do. Proactively managed expectations even when it results in frustration or personal reputation risk.

  • Managing Goals and Expectations: You lead multiple smaller projects with external clients or internal stakeholders, with a successful outcome.

  • Foresight: You anticipate issues or requirements on projects in advance and work to raise those with key people outside your team. This has resulted in noticeable efficiency gains.

  • Engendering Trust: You run several small to medium sized projects in a leadership capacity, working closely with clients and stakeholders with positive reviews.

  • Protecting the team: You create space for others in your team to do their best work by managing client or stakeholder relationships.

Level 3

Is able to proactively inform stakeholders both within and outside the organisation with pertinent and timely information, including bad news. Able to read and adapt to personalities across the organisation. Has good relationships with all key stakeholders.

  • Managing Goals and Expectations: You lead multiple larger projects with external clients or internal stakeholders, including managing bad news and scope creep or timeline slippage, with successful outcomes.

  • Foresight: You look for misalignment across large scopes of work involving multiple clients or stakeholders, and ensure that they're smoothed out in advance.

  • Engendering Trust: You've repeatedly proven yourself able to work closely with clients or stakeholders in ways that earn respect and results. You use their time wisely and lean into their knowledge.

  • Protecting the team: You protect direct reports from difficult stakeholders across multiple projects.

Level 4

An expert at understanding everyone's motivations and drives, and adapting communication and priorities to fit them. Protects others, including when it results in hard conversations. Maintains good relationships with all key stakeholders even when challenging.

  • Managing Goals and Expectations: You lead entire client or stakeholder relationships over the course of multiple quarters across successful and unsuccessful projects whilst maintaining good outcomes.

  • Foresight: Your foresight has been proven over multiple projects involving multiple teams. You act as the stakeholder or client in order to tease out extra requirements, due to your deep understanding of their incentives.

  • Engendering Trust: You're a key contact for stakeholders or external clients, funnelling work and information to them as you see fit. They ask for you to be involved in processes and meetings due to your respect for their time and needs.

  • Protecting the team: You protect embattled teams from being thrown off course, identifying difficult clients and stakeholder roadblocks, resolving issues.

Level 5

A seasoned facilitator, mediator, champion and aide. Seen as eminently trustworthy, honest, efficient. Tasked with major updates, meetings and relationships across the business. Exceptional relationships across the company and industry, and a known skill for diplomacy.

  • Managing Goals and Expectations: You've lead an entire suite of work across the business, involving multiple challenging stakeholders or clients, over the course of several years, maintaining and strengthening relationships and trust to the point where you're central to those relationships company-wide.

  • Foresight: You're able to anticipate and debug fundamental issues and misaligned incentives across the entire product suite, business or client base. You have used this across dozens of projects to ensure that projects run smoothly every time even with difficult stakeholders.

  • Engendering Trust: You are a key ally to stakeholders and clients, respecting their expertise while pushing them for decisions, time and resource when needed, across all large scale projects.

  • Protecting the team: You're a fierce defender of the productivity of the wider organisation, ensuring that the rest of the business or key clients understand what they do at all times and protecting them from undue overhead.