How do you align internal Stakeholders?

Aligning internal stakeholders can be challenging, but also rewarding and necessary. When you think about career growth, this is one skill that will level you up. Why? It’s human nature to have opinions and perspectives that we hold strongly. Sometimes these opinions may not be the project driver or the subject matter expert. To meet business objectives, you’ll need to gain buy-in, alignment and ultimately respect from your stakeholders.

How do you start building this alignment? It all starts with communication, transparency and micro-moments of trust. You need to build relationships to help align stakeholders. You need to strike a balance between collaboration and teamwork while having clear ownership and accountability.

Oftentimes you’ll also find alignment comes from an ongoing cadence of performance readouts. You’ll meet less friction when you can get ahead of questions. For example, can you automate a report sent on X sequence to keep stakeholders informed? It’s important to maintain a healthy ongoing dialog to keep alignment as this is not a static exercise; it will have to be adaptable.