Jun 15

How to Supercharge Your Stakeholder Management Skills

Being able to engage effectively with stakeholders is a big part of a timetabler’s job.

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You’re relying on multiple departments to give you the information you need to collect and record timetable and curriculum data. And that means having to ask lots of people for lots of information!

Often, this is the bit that can be tricky. Your stakeholders, like you, are busy people, and can sometimes need a bit of cajoling.

The trick to getting the information you need, when you need it, lies in building good, solid relationships with them. And that takes time and, we think, a little bit of skill, too.

Over at The Timetabling Academy, we’ve got some great workshops that take you through how to build and nurture your stakeholder relationships – whether with academics or any other colleagues you need on-side to do your job well.

One tip we often share in these workshops is to put yourself in their shoes, before you approach them with an ask.

This way, you can understand their pain points, and frame solution-based requests that’ll help your stakeholders to see how responding will benefit them.

Let’s take an example.

How to put yourself in your stakeholders’ shoes

Say you’re kicking off the data collection process for a new timetable and need all your academics to provide their data to you by a certain date.

In the past, you may have made the ask, but also spent a good deal of time chasing up your request when people don’t come back to you by your deadline.

Sound familiar?

Next time you kick the same process off, try asking yourself these three key questions about your stakeholders first. Below we’ve listed them, with some prompts underneath to help you think about how you might answer them.

1. 
What do I already know about my stakeholders’ world?


For example, are they time poor and likely to be juggling lots of deadlines at once? Where is my request likely to sit in their list of priorities?

2. Do my stakeholders understand what I’m offering to them?


Do they understand the bigger picture – for example how efficient timetables contribute toward a better student and staff experience all-round? Are there any gaps in their knowledge I can fill, that will motivate them to fulfil my request?

3. What will my stakeholders gain from engaging with me?


Do they know how responding to my request will benefit them directly in the long-term? For example, will it mean being able to provide better room allocations for their classes?  

By answering these three questions, you can start to see how you might frame your ask around more than a simple request for the data, by adding in some context that acknowledges their needs (and therefore motivates them to respond!).

For example, acknowledging they’re busy, you might think of a way to simplify a spreadsheet to make it quicker and easier for them to input the data you’re asking for. Or you might highlight how the time they spend on your request will benefit them later on, because you’ll be able to allocate rooms best suited to their teaching style.

Get into the habit of asking these three key questions every time you engage with your stakeholders and you’ll soon build great working relationships with them.

Learn more about managing stakeholders like a pro

Discover everything you need to know about working with stakeholders like a pro over at The Timetabling Academy. Join live, collaborative workshops, delve into our huge range of learning resources and problem-solve with timetablers from universities around the UK in our friendly forums. With a whole host of hot topics in timetabling covered, it really is the best place to boost your skills!

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