As a project manager, you may need to interact with a range of people. These could be the staff, technical leads, managers, clients, customers, suppliers and so on. These entities have different interests in the project and each may have his or her own agenda.

These people are known as stakeholders. Stakeholders are those who can influence the direction and outcome of the project. To successfully manage a project, you need to identify these stakeholders and learn how to handle them.

By identifying stakeholders you will gain the following:

• If you win the support of powerful stakeholders, you may get more resources, encouragement and enthusiasm. Their interest can influence others as well.
• By keeping the stakeholders in the loop, especially in the early stages of the project development, you can avoid surprises later. This allows you to formulate their expectations accurately and then live up to it.
• You get feedback from others on how they view the project. This allows you to guide the project in different directions if needed to make sure you match market conditions and deliver something useful at the end.
• By knowing what stakeholders want, you can meet up their expectations easier. If you don’t know who the influential stakeholders are or what they want to see come out of the project, you have a high risk of missing to deliver what they want.
• By integrating the opinions of powerful stakeholders into your project, you win their support and can use them and their resources against other stakeholders if they wish to change the direction of the project.

The first step to analyse your stakeholders is to identify them. Simply make a list of all people, companies and organisations that are somehow related to the project. In this step, you are simply identifying all players. Consider the following categories:

• Management
• Senior executives
• Partners
• Shareholders
• Lenders or anyone related to financial matters
• Government
• Lawyers
• Customers
• Team members
• Suppliers
• Academic peers
• The press
• The public
• Interest groups
• Your family

Since there can be many stakeholders associated with the project, you need to prioritize your interaction with them and how you plan to handle their influence. Stakeholders can be divided across two distinct dimensions:

• Power. This simply represents the power of the stakeholder in relation with the project. Some stakeholders might be powerful in their nature (such as a CEO) but not necessarily directly related to a project. Equally, some stakeholders may not be powerful in their world, but when it comes to the project might have the final say (a paying customer).
• Enthusiasm. This represents how interested a stakeholder is in your project and its outcome. Those who are excited and enthusiastic should be treated differently than those who are neutral, pessimistic or outright hostile.

Based on these two dimensions, you can divide your stakeholder in to the following four types:

• Powerful, enthusiastic. These are critical people with power who are also interested in the project. These people are your highest priority and you must take steps to learn from them, keep them happy and in the loop.
• Powerful, not enthusiastic. Although they are important, they are not all that interested in your project. Keep them informed, but don’t spend too much time on this. The usual mistake is to spend a lot of effort to make them more interested. Your efforts might be a waste of time and you could be better off concentrating on powerful/enthusiastic people.
• Weak, enthusiastic. Use the energy and enthusiasm of these people to get ideas and progress the project. Keep them informed though do not get carried away by their suggestions. You don’t have to respond to every single one of them. They can be very helpful with the details but always understand the limitation of their power.
• Weak, not enthusiastic. Limit the communication with these people as they can become a waste of time. You can keep them informed, but know the limits of your resources.

Successful project management depends on identifying stakeholders and knowing how to handle them. History shows that most projects that fail are as a result of bad communication among teams, management and stakeholders. A project manager, sitting at the centre of these interactions can significantly contribute to the success or failure of a project when handling stakeholders. A project management training course must address this critical area.

You can find more content on soft skills training material on leadership, management, conflict management, time  and emotional intelligence. You can find out more about this article in project management training materials. Also see free course material, quick team building activities, free team building exercises, assertiveness exercises and exercises to improve communication skills.