We all have to deal with stakeholders, whether we are working in-house and have to handle colleagues’ opinions and agendas or externally as we work with clients every day.
It can be challenging. Heck, it can be downright infuriating and demoralising! It can leave you feeling utterly incapable of doing a good job.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that I spend more time discussing stakeholders with those I mentor than on any other topic.
After all, we are all good at our jobs. We understand user research, marketing and UX design. But Bob in compliance is a complete mystery to us!
Except he shouldn’t be! You see, it is the very fact that we are good at our jobs that means we are perfectly equipped to understand Bob and all the other stakeholders we have to deal with. We need to learn how to turn the skills we have developed in our role to our advantage when dealing with stakeholders
We know how to get to know an audience, find out what motivates them and then work with that to fulfil both their aims and ours. That is the definition of both UX and marketing. We need to turn those powers on our colleagues and clients.
How to Win Over Colleagues and Clients
If you want to persuade a stakeholder of anything, you need to do four things. Four things we already do regularly when trying to understand an audience in our work…
- Learn their pain points. – What are your clients and colleagues struggling with within their job? Once you know that, you can show how user experience design can help overcome those challenges.
- Use their language. – You wouldn’t use jargon in website navigation, so why do you use it when talking to stakeholders? Stop talking in UX design jargon and instead adopt the language that most resonates with your audience.
- Facilitate their goals. – Nobody cares about the user experience as you do. It’s not their job to. However, they all have their own goals and agendas. Find out what those are and show how a great user experience can help with that.
- Understand what influences them. – We know that users are influenced by all kinds of factors, from what they read online to family and friends. Your colleagues and clients are no different. Who or what influences them, and how can we influence the influencers?
In short, we need to put the same effort into winning over stakeholders as we do winning over users. You could even create empathy maps for colleagues and clients if that helps you.
We cannot simply expect stakeholders to fall in line because we ask them. They have their own agendas and priorities that we must understand and accommodate.
Perhaps it is time that we stop thinking in terms of stakeholders, clients and colleagues. Instead, we need to start to see them as just another group of users we must accommodate to do our job properly.
