Engineering Executive Influence
Strategically manage executive stakeholders and establish strong credibility BEFORE you meet them — using guiding questions, six core principles, and specific actionable steps
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One of the key competencies that I have coached over the years is managing executive stakeholders.
Being able to manage your stakeholders is absolutely crucial to having success in your projects and initiatives, and therefore achieving the career success that comes with it.
Today, I want to distill the lessons that I have taught and coached into a focused, actionable newsletter. This edition covers everything you need to know about managing your executive stakeholders BEFORE you are in a meeting or conversation with them.
I’ll break it down into the following critical areas (this is actually where the majority of the work is done):
Three parts of managing executive stakeholders.
Three guiding questions to get deeper alignment.
Three keys to cultivate stakeholder management.
Six principles to build a strong reputation.
Three strategies to establish a credible track record.
And three foundational steps to relationship building.
In a future article, I will detail what you need to know to be as effective as possible in the conversation or meeting itself.
With that in mind, here is what you need to know to get started.
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10,000 Foot View
At a high level, there are three main parts of managing executive stakeholders.
Those three parts are identify, align, and maintain.
A breakdown of each:
Identify your key stakeholders. Who actually matters to your outcomes and success? What do they own? How do they influence each other?
Align on outcomes. What does “good” look like for your stakeholders and for the business? Agree on the results, the inputs you’ll move, and the near-term milestones that prove progress.
Maintain with predictable communication. Use lightweight communication tools like a one-page brief, a simple update rhythm, and a decision log.
A quick exercise that you can do right now is list out your top five stakeholders, and then write the single outcome that they care most about this quarter. Now, if I called those people, would they agree on the priority that you just wrote down?
The answer needs to be yes to consider yourself aligned with them.
Deeper Alignment
Once you have identified your stakeholders and aligned with them generally, it is important that you start to deepen that alignment. This means understanding their metrics and ways of measuring, their motivations, and their communication and decision-making style.
Three guiding questions to get you aligned with any executive or peer:
Goals: What’s their scoreboard? Which inputs and outcomes are they on the hook for this quarter?
Motivations: What do they care about—speed, reliability, customer trust, cost? What do they fear—surprises, reputational risk, missing the number?
Style: How do they decide—narratives or numbers, pre-reads or live debate, quick pilots or consensus?
When communicating with senior leaders, be quick, be bright, and be gone. This means make your point, answer questions, and exit. Senior leaders are busy, so when you demonstrate respect for their time, they will be more open to listening to you again.
To communicate with them efficiently and effectively, frame and then land. Start with what success looks like to them; then deliver your recommendation.
The takeaway: Treat each stakeholder uniquely enough that your communication is effective for them.
Executive Coaching Exercise: Go back to your list of stakeholders that you made earlier. Next to their name and priority, list their key motivation and preferred style. Now you have a field guide for how to communicate with each of them.
Stakeholder Management is a Process
If you have completed the exercise, you have made yourself a great starter guide for managing your executive stakeholders.
However, that isn’t it.
Stakeholder management is an ongoing process. It requires you to build your credibility through continued behaviors.