And don’t underestimate informal leaders. They’re often the real opinion-shapers.

Engage Early, Engage Often

Waiting until the change is “ready” before you begin engaging is a common mistake. If you catch people off guard, they will catch you off guard, usually with resistance.

Instead, engage early. As early in the project as possible. I’ve heard people say, “engage even before all the answers are known”, but really, the purpose of engaging is to get the answers.

Make sure your stakeholders know their input is welcome, even desired. Change is psychological. You need to know how the stakeholders think in order to craft the communications. Set up Q&A sessions, or webinars that allow live feedback.

Make sure that communication is two-way and that your stakeholders are aware of it.

Think of you stakeholders as co-creators, not just recipients.

Tailor Your Messaging

Not all stakeholders speak the same language. At a very high level, there are three personas:

- At the top of the totem, executives want to know about risks and their mitigations, how the change aligns with the organisation’s strategic goals, and what, if measurable, the change’s ROI is. And it should be measurable.
- Managers need information to support their teams and are the ideal point to insert communications to the end users. They need to understand the motivations for the change, how it links to corporate strategy, and what the skills gaps will be for their respective teams.
- End-users will turn to their managers for information and guidance. They need to understand how their daily efforts will change and what benefits they can expect to see.

A little bit of work will subdivide these high-level personas into more discrete personas, each with their own messaging requirements.

Build and use a messaging matrix that answers for each persona:

• What does this change mean for me?
• Why should I care?
• What support will I get?

Remember: clarity reduces anxiety, and relevance builds trust. It’s not possible to over communicate.

Activate Change Champions

During your initial conversations with stakeholders, keep an eye out for internal influencers. They can amplify engagement in ways no email ever will.

Look for stakeholders who believe in the change, can communicate well and are respected by their peers. Deputise them to be part of your early adopter/early engagement team and provide them with the information they need to support you, like talking points and FAQ sheets.

Set up a centralised communications hub, like a Teams channel or a Slack channel, that change champions can use to share benefits and good news stories with their peers.

Change champions create peer-to-peer influence, which is far more powerful than top-down directives.

Build Feedback Loops

Engagement doesn’t end once you’ve delivered the PowerPoint. People need to feel heard, seen, and valued throughout the journey.

Build feedback into your plan:

Pulse surveys: Don’t over-survey, but for long projects send out the same set of questions checking change knowledge, sentiment and readiness at strategic points in the change journey (after major announcements, training sessions or go-live). Use a tool that provides anonymity. Mix quantitative and narrative questions.

Focus groups: Set up focus groups with a diverse set of participants. Come prepared with half a dozen open-ended questions. (What concerns you about the upcoming change? How would you like to best receive updates?, etc.) These sessions can be held face-to-face or virtually, ideally with a neutral facilitator. These sessions provide rich qualitative data about the human side of change and are an early-warning system for resistance patterns, misinformation or misconceptions.

Q&A Sessions: Provide an anonymous channel for submitting questions. For larger organisations, the event works better virtually, but if possible, do this face-to-face. With a facilitator moderating and managing time, go through the questions. Leadership should answer candidly and with empathy. If some questions don’t get answered, put out follow-up communications to address them.

Lunch and Learns: Smaller, informal sessions are scheduled over lunch. Invite participants to bring a sandwich and have SMEs present key aspects of the upcoming change. Allow plenty of time for discussion, and schedule these session weekly or fortnightly to accommodate busy schedules.

Monitor sentiment trends and identify concerns early. Then, and this is crucial, respond. Demonstrate to people how their input shaped the approach.

Recognise and Celebrate Engagement

When you’re getting the engagement you are looking for, celebrate it. I’m a proponent of regular (usually fortnightly) business change updates. Sometimes, it’s a meeting with affected parties with the latest change status. Sometimes, it’s a newsletter that goes to a broader audience. Regardless the format or channel, give shout-outs for engaged teams. Share any quick wins. If you’re managing Agile change, with incremental deployments, provide case studies of improvements brought about by the change.

Momentum matters—and stories are stickier than statistics.

Final Thoughts

There will inevitably be something about the change that might have an adverse effect on stakeholders, especially if the change results in headcount reductions. If this is the case, announce it as early in the change process as possible.

Involve HR with these communications. Initial messaging will necessarily need to be vague: “We anticipate that as a result of this change, there will be a reduction in workforce. More details will be forthcoming, but be assured that everything we do will be as transparent as possible.” Then, as the changes come closer, involve all of those affected in the communications.

I’ve been on the receiving end of two such force reductions, on either end of the empathy scale. The first, my manager told me as an aside in a team meeting that “No, actually, you won’t have that position after the change”, just before the change was implemented.

The second time, we were notified from the CxO level in an all-hands meeting, months before the change, that “changes will be happening that will result in reducing our workforce, there will be ample notice and stay tuned for workshops on how the process will work.” We became directly engaged in the process. It wasn’t foisted upon us.

Much less stressful.

Get the bad news out early. Let those impacted have the time to adjust.

Stakeholder engagement is not a “soft” part of change—it’s the strategic glue that holds your initiative together.

When people feel informed, involved, and empowered, they stop resisting and start owning.