Course summary

This one-day course teaches the essentials of stakeholder engagement and relationship management. Projects have a greater likelihood of success when all leaders, managers and team members are proficient in engaging and managing relationships with stakeholders.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• identify and manage stakeholders by adopting a structured approach and using simple project templates
• develop a stakeholder management strategy using a structured approach and a simple template
• interpret varying stakeholder needs and describe how these impact a project
• describe the divergent interests of multiple stakeholders and their competing priorities
• extract stakeholder expectations and manage them accordingly.

Content

Identifying your stakeholders

• Defining a stakeholder
• Organisational structure and the influence on stakeholders

Engaging your stakeholders

• Who are your stakeholders?
• Power structures
• Analysing your identified stakeholders
• Understanding the value expectations
• Engagement strategies

Managing your stakeholders

• Stakeholder management strategies
• Maintaining commitment and relationships
• Stakeholder communications planning

Stakeholder challenges

• Understanding conflict
• Remote stakeholders
• Dealing with perception
• Vendors and suppliers
• Stakeholder overload

Even more

• Simple tools and templates that can be used on your project straight away
• Exploration of advanced tools beyond the course

Prerequisites

None

Who this course is for

This course is for professionals involved in planning, coordinating or delivering projects and business improvement initiatives in their organisation. It applies across structured and fast-moving project environments, including engineering, construction, health, education, government, commercial and non-profit sectors.

• Project managers looking to improve planning, delivery and oversight
• ‘Accidental’ project managers managing projects without formal training
• Team leaders, supervisors and business leaders responsible for project outcomes
• Project coordinators, business analysts and subject matter experts
• Change leaders, managers and support staff involved in organisational initiatives
• Anyone working on projects who wants to better manage timelines, stakeholders and priorities

Delivery style

This one-day course focuses on experiential learning. Content is broken into 10 to 15 minute blocks and immediately followed by group activities where the theory is put into action.

A range of interactive methods will be used including:

• storytelling and the use of professional examples to exhibit the concepts
• self-reflection and group discussions
• case studies where the concepts are actively applied
• individual and team activities and presentations
• suggested readings for after the training.

Materials

You will receive:

• online course materials (using Dropbox) with case study activities
• an online project management toolkit with templates
• a Statement of Completion.

In order to access online course materials, we recommend that you bring your own device (Windows or Mac) to class. You should ensure your device is fully charged as access to power is limited. Please note that the University does not carry any responsibility for your lost, stolen, or damaged devices whilst on the University premises.