Engaging stakeholders – how do you do this effectively and get stuff done? First, it’s all about balancing relationships and transactions. Jamie offers a framework for understanding your interactions with others and how to read situations to establish positive connections.
You work with a wide range of stakeholders, from peers, subordinates, and superiors to suppliers, customers, regulators, and so on. In every interaction with these stakeholders, you need to carefully balance the need to build a relationship with them (relating) with the need to work together and get things done (transacting).
There’s a balance to be had: relational vs transactional.
Allow me to explain by introducing the Transactional Relational Spectrum.
The Transactional Relational Spectrum
Every conversation contains a series of interactions. We can classify these interactions as being more transactional (outcome focused) or more relational (relationship focused). Classifying them this way, we can map them out on a spectrum like this:
- Completely Relational
- More Relational than Transactional
- Equally Relational and Transactional
- More Transactional than Relational
- Completely Transactional.
To put this all into context, let’s take a typical everyday situation: ordering coffee at a coffee shop.
Completely Relational
You spend your whole time chatting with their barista about their weekend, what they got up to, how their kids are, while a queue of increasingly impatient caffeine-starved customers builds behind you.
More Relational than Transactional
You spend several minutes chatting with the barista before ordering your latte, and then you continue your conversation with them while they prepare your drink.
Equally Relational and Transactional
You greet them politely, engage in about 20 seconds of small talk before giving your order and leaving them to it, thanking them when they pass it to you, and wishing them a wonderful day ahead.
More Transactional than Relational
You greet them politely, give your order, then move to the side to wait until it’s prepared. When you collect it, you thank them and then get on with your day.
Completely Transactional
You get straight to business: “A medium latte, please.” You scan your card to pay, move to the side and start replying to emails on your phone.
None of these are good or bad. They have different consequences. More interactions on the relational side of the spectrum increase your chances of building a personal relationship with this person. More interactions on the transactional side of the spectrum improve the efficiency of achieving whatever outcome you set out to achieve.
However, problems arise when we interact differently from what the situation calls for.
If we took the first example of being Completely Relational, that barista may very well get fired from their job. You had a lovely chat, but they didn’t do their job.
Let’s take the last example of being Completely Transactional. That barista may feel you come across as cold and apply the same level of coldness to the preparation of your beverage.
We are constantly faced with these kinds of dilemmas in the workplace. Let’s examine two types of cultures. An overly transactional approach to managing workplace relationships, governed by far too many processes and policies, and with far too few genuine relationships developing.
And the opposite culture – where everyone gets on so well that nothing gets done, and negative feedback is not tolerated.
A healthy balance needs to be achieved, which is best achieved by reading what the situation calls for and using skills from either end of the spectrum to adapt.
Allow me to demonstrate with a simple fable.
Engaging Stakeholders: The Settler Fable
Imagine a beautiful, tropical island, hidden in the middle of the ocean.
This island is teeming with life. Just off the white sandy beaches are beautiful coral reefs with all manner of sea life. Palm trees line the beaches, and there is a seemingly endless supply of coconuts. Further inland lies a tropical jungle and further inland still are rivers, lakes, and mountains.
For almost a millennium, several tribes have inhabited this island. They’ve coexisted peacefully with mutual respect, trading and building relationships.
But one day, a group of settlers from distant lands arrives on their strange-looking ships and builds a settlement on the shore. They don’t dare venture inland yet, clearly being cautious of the unknown, and are unaware of the existence of these other tribes.
These people are different from the tribes that inhabit the island. The languages they speak, the clothes they wear, and even the way they behave are completely different. So, the tribespeople watch suspiciously from a distance, taking their time to consider what to do about these new arrivals.
Shortly afterwards, another group of settlers arrived on another part of the island. Then another, and so on. One day, the tribes decided to contact these new settlers.
They approached the different groups of settlers, offering food gifts as gestures of goodwill and making great effort to let the settlers know that these tribespeople had been here for a long time already.
At first, things are challenging.
The different groups of settlers, whilst clearly from different lands, are not that different from each other, suggesting their places of origin may have been quite close. Some individuals can even speak the same languages as the other settler groups, so they quickly establish bonds.
However, the tribespeople are very different from the settlers. As quickly as some of the different settler groups are able to establish bonds, the tribespeople and settlers seem to grow more and more distant.
Things grow tense. The tribes resent the settlers crossing lines, settling in places they shouldn’t, taking things and mistreating the island.
But leaders from the different settler and tribe groups step up and make an active effort to build relationships between all the different groups. They spend a lot of time with each other, eating and drinking, playing games and building good will. Over time, they find ways of communicating effectively and build trust.
Eventually, they start to establish a shared understanding. They agree on which parts of the island belong to which groups, what resources each group can keep and trade, and the common rules that govern everyone’s behaviour. They create trading posts, open a town hall, and hold festivals to unite all groups.
With these new ways of co-existing and collaborating, the different groups live peacefully for many years.
Until one day, things change.
In just a few months, a new settler group arrives from a distant land. With them, disease spreads through the island, killing several people. At the same time, a change in weather brings a drought, leaving some groups starved of the resources that were previously so plentiful.
With these changes come many challenges. The new group of settlers seems to be immune to the disease, has little respect for the original groups and views this moment as an opportunity to take control. The original boundaries that were drawn years ago no longer serve everyone fairly. The drought has left some groups with less food than others. The disease seems to have had a larger impact on the tribespeople than the settler groups, and the tribespeople grow fearful and resentful.
As tensions start to boil over, leaders from each group recognise that this could go in two directions: either all-out war, in which they destroy each other, or they come together again like the original settlers and tribespeople did and find new ways of co-existing.
Relate to Transact
In this fable, the tribes and new settlers initially have no established ways of coexisting and collaborating. They also lack transactional structures that can facilitate their coexistence and collaboration.
Building relationships, trust, and shared understanding helps them create transactional structures (such as shared understandings and common rules). These transactional structures not only help facilitate their coexistence and collaboration but also help sustain their relationships.
However, there is a fundamental risk with this approach: they depend on certain conditions, and the moment those conditions change, like when a new group of settlers arrives, those transactional structures stop working.
People are thrown again into the chaos of the unknown. In this situation, conflict can easily arise, and the rules of the jungle start to take force as those with more power dominate those with less power. People become cautious of each other.
You’ve no doubt seen this play out at work: a good customer contact retires, and you lose the client. Your company merges with another company, and your original ways of working change. The team you used to work with is now competing with you for resources. This new uncertainty creates all sorts of chaos, power battles, disorder, etc.
In such a situation, there are two outcomes: war or peace.
Balancing Help and Hurt
When we lack the structure to facilitate our coexistence or collaboration with others, we are vulnerable to those who have more power than us.
All sorts of political dramas play out in the workplace. One incompetent person influences their boss, leveraging this relationship with an authority figure to the detriment of everyone else.
Or at the beginning of a new project with no established way of working, a team member with the loudest voice argues and everyone feels forced to fall in line.
Or a salesperson who happens to be the only person in the company with a relationship with a key account worth 80% of the company’s revenue threatens to leave for a competitor if the company doesn’t meet their needs.
In such circumstances, we need to protect ourselves from exploitation by developing our power bases – by increasing the number of ways we can help and hurt the other person.
Power is quite simple. If you can help someone, you have the power to influence them. If you can’t help them but can hurt them, you still have the power to influence them.
For example, I work with one big consulting company where inexperienced consultants sometimes work on projects with leaders they don’t like. In these circumstances, the leader has a lot of power.
They can help these inexperienced consultants by giving them a good recommendation, lowering their workload, being nice to them, giving them more training opportunities, and giving them more time off. Equally, they can hurt these inexperienced consultants by saying bad things about them behind their backs, increasing their workload, being mean to them, and giving them fewer opportunities and less time off.
On the surface, these consultants have far less power, but with a bit of creativity, they can unlock more power sources. For example, they can help their leaders by doing a good job, cooperating with them, positively influencing the team, developing stronger client relationships and saying nice things about their leader behind their back. Equally, they can hurt their leader by purposely doing a lousy job, not cooperating with them, sabotaging team efforts, using the client relationship for their benefit, and saying bad things about their leader behind their back.
The ultimate source of power for the consultant, though, is the ability to walk away. If they have a better job offer waiting for them, they can walk away from the toxic leader, leaving that leader in a difficult position because they’re understaffed.
Hurting other people intentionally may seem unethical, but it’s not clear-cut. For example, we could hurt people by simply not helping them (e.g., deciding to quit the project halfway through instead of seeing it through to the end). Sometimes, intentionally hurting someone is our only way of protecting ourselves from exploitation.
If we spend a bit of time brainstorming the ways we can help and hurt the other person, we unlock new sources of power that can protect us from exploitation. Hopefully, we have no need to hurt the other person, and we can use our power to help them start building a strong relationship of trust with them.
I can’t stress enough the importance of trust and a shared understanding with flexible structures that work for everyone. When we understand where our influence comes from, whether through the ability to help or the risk of harm, we can safeguard ourselves and create good working relationships. The key is knowing how to read situations, strike the right balance and use influence wisely to build strong and positive connections.
Find out more in my upcoming webinar on Wednesday, 2nd April where I share how to communicate with impact and strengthen stakeholder relationships.
