Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders

Dealing with difficult stakeholders is difficult. It requires patience, commitment to maintain a working relationship and most importantly skills of dealing with difficult people. Very often, it is the skills of dealing with difficult stakeholders that is lacking. Consequently, people faced with such situations prefer to either walk away or they themselves become difficult and this only males matters worse. Until and unless concrete attempts are made to build the necessary skills to deal with difficult stakeholders, dealing with such people will remain a nightmarish experience.

This training program seeks to provide participants with a better comprehension of why some stakeholders are by nature difficult and what makes other stakeholders become difficult to deal with. Participants in this intensive two-day workshop will emerge with a better ability to manage difficult stakeholders. They will be exposed to a range of situations that will involve dealing with different types of difficult stakeholders. By being able to identify what type of difficult stakeholders they are dealing with, the participants will be aware of the right approach to use when dealing with them.

By the time the participants have completed this two-day workshop, they will be better informed about human failings that lead to conflicts and ultimately deteriorating relationships. They will learn how to manage difficult stakeholders using a structured approach that will reduce the intensity of destructive communications that difficult people typically engage in.

By the end of the programs, the participant will be able to:

1. Identify key stakeholders
2. Determine stakeholders requirements and expectations
3. Develop stakeholder maps
4. Prepare a stakeholder management plan
5. Connect with difficult stakeholders through analysis of their preference
6. Engage with difficult stakeholders
7. Identify ways and means of influencing difficult stakeholders
8. Collaborate with difficult stakeholders to achieve common interest

Introduction to stakeholder management

• Meaning of stakeholder
• Identifying relevant stakeholders
• Stakeholder analysis process

Difficult stakeholders

• Meaning of "difficult" stakeholder
• Types of "difficult "stakeholders
• Why stakeholders are difficult

Expectations and needs management

• Dealing with stakeholder expectations and needs
• Expectation and despair model
• Techniques of stabilizing emotional swings

Dealing with internal stakeholders

• Work focus vs. assertiveness matrix
• Dealing with different behaviors at work

Dealing with external stakeholders

• Human elemental preferences
• Personal elemental profiling

Dealing with different elemental preferences

Dealing with:

• "people centric" stakeholders
• "analytical centric" stakeholders
• "results centric" stakeholders
• "future focus" stakeholders

Summary of lessons learnt

The methodology for this course entails interactive lectures, individual reflection, group discussion sessions, video clip presentations, management games, self-diagnostic tests and case studies. Where possible, adult-learning principles will be adopted. It will involve ensuring that the participants first engage in group based activities to give them concrete experiences, followed by giving them an opportunity to reflect and conceptualize what was covered so that they are able to internalize the concepts covered.

• Stakeholder Management
• Towards Addressing the Needs of Difficult Customers through Effective Communication
• Creating Lasting Impressions Even in the Most Challenged Situation
• Handling Difficult and Demanding Customers
• Managing Difficult Customers
• More other Soft Skills Training Courses