Colin Gautrey

Nine Stakeholders You Can’t Afford to Ignore

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People tend to focus on stakeholders who are nearest, best known, or most liked, rather than the ones they should be engaging with. Remember, a stakeholder is someone who has a stake in your success, either positive or negative. Because of this, in Advocates & Enemies I ask people to become familiar with how power works in their organisation, so they can identify the right stakeholders. In addition, to stimulate the hunt for the right people, I also outline a range of groups where people can look for them — such as customers, suppliers, etc. It is the final two categories where the surprises and opportunities can come from. People who you never realised could help or hinder and may not be connected to your work at all. Such as... Read More

Aristotle, Rhetoric and Influence

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On the conference stage, I often refer to Aristotle’s abhorrence of rhetoric as part of my argument that even if you don't like a subject, mastering it can still be preferable to ignoring or denying it. You may not like office politics, but avoiding it offers unscrupulous characters an opportunity to take advantage of you. Despite his dislike of the topic, Aristotle is regarded as the greatest teacher of rhetoric. He maintained that it gave power to weaker arguments and, thus, wanted to equip his students with the ability to defend their position against those with questionable motives. However, the study of rhetoric is also useful if you want to become more influential at work today. Like the Read More

Managing People with the Stakeholder Influence Process

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In my book, Advocates and Enemies, I outlined the Stakeholder Influence Process as a means of achieving the influence you want in and around your work. What I didn’t elaborate on in the book was how you can also use this process to manage your team members and direct reports. If you believe that influence is a key part of their work, show them how to use the process. At your one-to-ones, you can ask them to talk through their progress by referring to the Stakeholder Influence Map. Remember, this is a process of enquiry. It poses the questions around a simple structure to elicit new actions to advance towards the objective in mind. As such, it becomes a great coaching tool for your people — all you have to avoid is the risk of putting forward your own ideas about what they should be doing! Here’s a quick approach you can follow… Read More

Challenging Formidable Characters

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Some senior people have a reputation for demolishing people in big meetings. Not only do they have strong opinions about the task in hand, they also exercise considerable skill in destroying any challenges to their opinions. Or so it seems. This approach is often accompanied by a brusque style, blunt to the point of rudeness, and they have very high levels of determination. If you operate at middle to senior levels in any large organisation, you know who I’m talking about! Challenging these people can be Read More

Diagnosing Your Opposition

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One of my favourite phrases relating to Stakeholder Management is, “if you don’t have any opposition, you aren't trying hard enough” (refer to Chapter 7 of Influential Leadership). While I am not suggesting that you should go looking for opposition, if you are ambitious, it is important that your plans and ideas are strong enough to provoke disagreement, or at least vigorous debate. When disagreement arrives, it is often veiled in a cloak of assumptions and faulty communications. So, it is important when deciding how to respond to pause for a moment to check out what could be going on. Even if you cannot figure out the root cause, going through the process will highlight the gaps in your information. If someone is opposing you, it could be due to one or more of the following Read More

Engaging Your Critics

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In the lexicon of my book, Advocates & Enemies, a Critic is an individual who you have a great relationship with (trust, openness and frequency), but they disagree with what you are seeking to achieve. Because of the strength of your relationship with them, these are special friends who can provide immense benefit to help you stretch your performance and pressure test your proposals. If the relationship is poor, they will more likely be an Enemy (okay, a strong word to use, but provocative by intent). So engage positively with Critics because they can help you so much. The best approach to engage with them depends on the type of Critic they happen to be. If you pause a few moments to reflect on this, you are likely to be able to engage with them far more effectively. In the book, I highlighted a number of different Critics… Read More

The Big Seven Stakeholder Management Mistakes

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These are the seven most common mistakes I see people making when it comes to Stakeholder Management. If you can avoid all of these, whatever process you are using, you will enhance your success dramatically.

Mistake 1: Not doing it.

Often methods of stakeholder management are only called for when something is going wrong. If things are generally going in the right direction you may not even hear the word stakeholder! Stakeholder Management should be a proactive process that can make things which are going well go even better!

Mistake 2: Doing it late.

Struggling with the problems that are being thrown up by people, dealing with symptoms and issue logs usually doesn't get to the root causes or the strategic solutions. Stakeholder Management should be an approach to stop problems cropping up in the first place and being ready with mitigating actions should the worst come to pass.

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