Many folks aren't engaging enough with all of their stakeholders, leaving out groups necessary to move the project forward or who will be using the project’s outcomes. When we don’t engage with our stakeholders during project planning, we often find that these stakeholders are unavailable when we need them to complete a critical project task or that a project process doesn’t work well with the stakeholder’s processes. This lack of engagement can cause delays in our projects.

But we can also over-engage with our stakeholders by asking every stakeholder for feedback at every phase of a project or by creating project teams that are too large to manage. When we over-engage, our projects can become stuck or take too much time to complete.

Not all stakeholders need an equal role in or equal input to your project.

So how can we effectively engage with our stakeholders?

1. Clearly identify and document all project stakeholders so that they stay front of mind in project planning and communication.

2. Assign each stakeholder or stakeholder group a specific role in your project. A stakeholder's role may be limited to a single project phase, task, or feedback point.

3. Create different feedback points and varying levels of engagement appropriate to these different stakeholder roles.

By planning for stakeholder roles, we are able to engage the right people at the right times in the right ways.

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