Every achievement or setback of your team affects the success of others in your organization—laterally, upward, and ultimately reaching your end customer. In other words, it impacts all your stakeholders.

Without regular feedback on how you are meeting your stakeholders' needs, you may as well be coming to work to play Jenga. In the dark. With mittens on.

So, if getting feedback regularly from our stakeholders is so important, why are some managers still not doing it?

• We just forget that it’s a great thing to do.
  
  

• We’re so busy, we don’t make time for it.
  
  

• It feels weird to proactively ask for feedback (but only the first time you do it).
  
  

• You’re afraid of what you’ll hear!
  
  

How should you go about getting feedback from your stakeholders?

There are two key parts to getting this right:

Part A: Run stakeholder interviews.  And listen.  

This is similar to conducting a mini review on how stakeholders experience their interactions with you and your team.

Every quarter we recommend catching up with a representative from each of your stakeholder groups individually, (ideally over coffee and a cheese scone to make it less formal and encourage openness) and asking them these 5 questions:

Question #1:

In terms of how we are working with you, what is going well and what’s the impact on you?

Question #2:

What’s not going so well and what’s the impact? Is there anything we are doing that hinders you in some way?

Question #3:

What would make things better? How specifically would that help you?  How would it help us?

Question #4:

Has anything changed in your world that means something also needs to change in ours?    Do you need something new or different from us? 

Question #5

Is there anything else you want to share that would help our performance, or that you wished I’d asked you about today?

Alternatively, if you can see a benefit in speaking to more than one person from a stakeholder group, consider running conversations as focus groups.  In this instance, invite your whole team to be there also so they can all hear what’s being shared and help you capture notes.  This will speed up the debrief and solutioning afterward (see Part B). 

Part B: Do something with the feedback that you get from your stakeholders 

Think of all that feedback you’ve gathered in Part A, as an absolute gift. Debrief as a team afterward, and share the suggestions that your stakeholders have made for making things better.  Plan how you will implement the suggestions (if feasible) and who will do it.  Report back to stakeholders what you will do differently and how it links back to the feedback they gave you. Thank them for their feedback and schedule in next quarter’s interview or focus group.

In our experience, asking stakeholders the five simple questions listed above regularly is important because:

• it helps build great relationships, meaning stakeholders will feel more comfortable approaching you if things aren’t going well in real-time
  
  

• it ensures you and your team stay agile, and responsive and that you’re delivering outputs that are relevant to your stakeholders
  
  

• as you and your team continue to improve WHAT and HOW you deliver to your stakeholders, the team’s reputation and kudos will grow, earning them (and you) praise and recognition
  
  

• the pride and warm fuzzies that come with that for all of you are priceless.
  
  

Extracted Gem

Each quarter, conduct interviews with your key stakeholders using the five questions recommended in this blog. This practice will help you and your team deliver impressive results, fostering a sense of pride and high motivation in the work that you accomplish together.