FinPod

Meeyeon (00:13)
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of What's New at CFI. Today I'm joined by my wonderful colleague Ryan Spendelow Welcome Ryan to another episode.

Ryan Spendelow (00:24)
Hi, Meeyeon it's fantastic to be back again.

Meeyeon (00:27)
And today we are talking about a, course, what's new, a new course that we have called Managing Your Stakeholders. And managing your stakeholders, I think, is probably relevant to any part of life, whether you're a university student, an undergraduate or a graduate degree program, or you're starting your career or you're in the middle of it. Managing your stakeholders is generally kind of

very essential to how you succeed and progress in your career through promotions and whatnot. But in this course today, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions so that people can get to know what this course is all about. And my first question is, why do you think stakeholder management is such an important skill in today's workplace?

Ryan Spendelow (01:17)
That's a fantastic first up question and it really really is critical because nearly every professional role involves collaboration with either multiple individuals or groups and they all have a vested interest in your work. whether you're in finance, whether you're in marketing, project management, it doesn't really matter the ability to identify your stakeholders, be able to engage with them effectively.

and just manage them generally can be the difference between something like a smooth, successful project or your ability just to be impactful and effective in your day-to-day tasks. It can help avoid conflicts. And all this becomes so much more important because today's business environment is just so fast-paced, right? Decisions are data-driven, expectations are high. And so professionals really need to...

be effective in being able to balance stakeholder priorities and resolve conflicts and communicate efficiently to drive really positive outcomes for the organizations that they're involved with.

Meeyeon (02:25)
Now, the workplace today is very different from, I think, the way that I started my career, you know, several, like more than a decade ago. Zoom became a norm. Remote work became a norm with coronavirus. So there's a lot of innovation that's come. And just like general, I think, acceptance of technology.

And I think stakeholder management becomes more difficult for the person that starts a career in a remote job. How do you think that stakeholder management has changed for people that are in a remote environment? How can we set people up for success? How can CFI learners be mindful of that?

Ryan Spendelow (03:04)
Absolutely fair question to ask. the world has changed in terms of professional environments. have virtual teams have now become the norm rather than the exception. And in some ways, stakeholder management is no, hasn't really changed because we work in much more in a virtual world. Right now, look at me, I'm here in Spain, you're in Vancouver. We're working effectively together and we're totally remote. But

Some things still remain the same, whether we are engaging with stakeholders virtually or whether we're engaging with them physically in the office, right? You still have to identify who your stakeholders are. You still have to identify who the stakeholders with the power to influence you day to day are. You still have to be able to identify the stakeholders that have an interest in what you do but don't really impact your day to day work.

You still got to identify with the most appropriate way to communicate with your stakeholders. And that's maybe where things change a little bit. Whereas before maybe the way that we would engage and communicate with our stakeholders might be more meeting driven, more ad hoc because we see them around the office or what have you.

now that we work in the virtual world, many more of our interactions have to be more planned, they're virtual, and that puts a lot more emphasis on clarity of communication and what we're saying because when we are in this virtual world, when we engage with our stakeholders, you can't pick up on little things like maybe body language or you don't get that sense of...

the nonverbal communication that you do when you are engaging with stakeholders in a physical way. So rather than changing how we effectively engage with our stakeholders and manage our stakeholders and identify stakeholders, it does certainly change the way that we communicate with our stakeholders. So that's something that needs to be considered when we are determining with our stakeholders.

how often they might want to meet with you, in what way do they prefer to receive your communication, is it going to be in a virtual meeting or because we're in different time zones, because we're working virtually, is emails are more appropriate ways, so little reports more appropriate ways, messaging platforms like Slack the most appropriate way, video recorded messages to update a stakeholder, for example, using something like Loom might be the more appropriate way. So many things have remained the same.

in terms of stakeholder management, but the way that we communicate with our stakeholders just takes a little bit more thought in the virtual world that we operate in now.

Meeyeon (05:45)
Yeah, I think one of the interesting things that it does is it gives people, I think one of the ways that people can see it affecting negatively is that in the sense, if you're not always in office, you don't always have the opportunity to interact with people and you don't have that, what's the word?

that FaceTime with people so that they always see you there, you're always working hard, they don't have that like, like I know Ryan, I see him all the time. But the positive of that is that when it's in a virtual environment and you have these meetings, you have the time to prepare. You have the ability to be very purposeful about what you say, when you say it, and it allows you that time to be very prepared for and in control, I think, of the interactions in a way. Even though you might not be the one that's always scheduling the meetings and the interactions, you have

Ryan Spendelow (06:06)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (06:35)
you have full control of how you present yourself at that given time. You know exactly when it's in your calendar and you don't have to constantly be worried about FaceTime. So it's kind of like a plus and minus there.

Ryan Spendelow (06:44)
Yeah. Or

bumping into your boss as you walk around the corner and you've been trying to avoid them because you haven't quite got the report done in time. But just one thing to add on that one, which I think is an important issue to raise, just to wrap up that question of yours is in the virtual world that we, a lot of us operate on now, from a stakeholder engagement perspective, there's a lot of technology that you can leverage, right?

So for example, here at CFI, we have stakeholders that we engage with all over the world. have North America, Canada, the US, Asia, Europe. so leveraging things like Asana becomes a really important way on how we engage with our stakeholders. So leveraging technology in the virtual world is something that is a really useful tool that

we should be using within our stakeholder management.

Meeyeon (07:47)
And then another thing that we want to talk about is our course emphasizes stakeholder expectations and their motivation. And it would be wonderful to understand how generally finance professionals can actually go about uncovering these expectations and motivations effectively.

Ryan Spendelow (08:07)
Yeah, another really, really good question. And all comes down to asking the right questions. And so what we do in this course is we discuss how to approach stakeholders with thoughtful, open-ended questions that really reveal what they truly need, both on a kind of factual level and also on an emotional level. know, some stakeholders want to be updated with KPIs. Some stakeholders just feel...

what they want to be engaged in, that you show an interest in what they think their points of views are. But you won't discover any of that until you ask the right questions. so instead of looking at, example, instead of assuming what a senior executive wants, you might think that the senior executive is really interested in variances in budget or certain KPIs.

But rather than making that assumption, it's really important that you ask the right questions at the start. so asking that senior executive, what's the most important outcome for you in this project? Or how would you like to be kept informed? By actively listing and adapting your approach based on their responses to questions like that, you'll build stronger relationships and you'll align your work with their priorities. And ultimately, you'll form a much more collaborative working relationship with that stakeholder.

Meeyeon (09:35)
And then speaking of working together and understanding what the expectations are from the get go, what do you think are some common mistakes that finance professionals make when managing stakeholders and how can they avoid making those mistakes? So how can we learn, how can they learn from us instead of going and making the mistakes themselves?

Ryan Spendelow (09:55)
Yeah, that's another really, really good question. And to answer that question, I kind of think about what's the best way to communicate with our colleagues? What's the best way to communicate in a working environment, whether it's to our boss or whether it's to a colleague or whether it's someone that we manage? And the key thing is there is that you adopt your communication style depending on who you're communicating with. And in the same way, you've got to adopt

adapt the way that you engage with different stakeholders. so probably one of the biggest mistakes that you'll see is when somebody treats all their stakeholders the same. So for example, some stakeholders require frequent updates and with real detailed insights and others may only need an occasional high level summary. So if you're giving the stakeholder really

Detailed frequent updates and what they actually wanted was just occasional high-level summaries It's not a very effective way to engage with that stakeholder and vice versa if you give the stakeholder that wanted Frequent updates and detailed insights if you give them only an occasional high-level summary again That's not a very effective way to engage with that particular stakeholder. So you've got to make sure that you Adapt your approach to different stakeholders depending on the stakeholder in mind

And so using tools, and we talk about these tools in the course, using tools like stakeholder mapping and a really useful stakeholder mapping tool that we introduce in the course is called the power versus interest grid. So how much power your stakeholders have, how much interest they do. And that can help determine how much time and effort to invest in each stakeholder and what the appropriate way to communicate with those stakeholders are.

So that's the first one, adapting the first common mistake you see quite a lot is people not adapting the way that they engage stakeholders and treating them all the same. Another one is under communication or miscommunication and underestimating how negatively impactful that can be. Particularly when we're operating in, as you say, this virtual world, right?

a quickly fired off email can come across as dismissive. A small understanding can lead to sort of bigger issues because we're not there to read people's body languages when we work in a virtual world. But generally speaking in terms of stakeholder engagement, a big mistake is underestimating the impact of miscommunication. The key is in that respect is to...

when you're asking questions of your stakeholder about what they require from you, what's the best way to engage with them, what's the best way to interact with them is to also confirm what their expectations are really early and communicate proactively. Reach out to them, check in with them, ask them, are they receiving the frequency and the types of communication that they need to stay engaged? So making sure that you're proactive in that communication is really important as well.

Meeyeon (13:05)
And the one piece I wanted to touch on is I want to make sure that everyone that's listening, when we say that you want to make sure you're not treating everyone the same, we're not talking about a level of respect, right? The level of respect that you have for your boss, your colleagues, it's a much bigger thing to say, I treat everybody equally. I treat everyone the way that I want to be treated. That's, of course, a given. You want to be treating everyone with

I mean, at least for me, that's my motto. I want to be able to say that as an adult, I treat everybody the way that I would want to be treated, regardless of what interaction. But when we say that you don't want to be treating all your stakeholders the same, it's that just as Ryan said, if you have a, someone that is several levels, I guess, more senior than you, that would like,

frequent updates, you want to be able to understand what the frequency of those kind of updates are. And one of the best ways to often understand that is just by looking at their level of communication. Like, how do they communicate with you? Do they send you very brief emails? Do they like to send bullet point style ones when they get into detail? Do they send an attachment? These little things that you'll pick up along the way from their communication.

Also, another thing is like to directly ask them that will be covered in the course and whatnot. But it's just important to understand that when we say you don't treat them all the same, it's like you treat them all the same in terms of like, of course, like you have the same respect level for everyone. But everybody has a very different style in the way that like to they like to be communicated with. One person likes frequent brief updates. One person likes more spaced out, but very detailed updates. They might even want to have like a face to face Zoom meeting or whatnot.

And it's really important to understand how those things differ.

Ryan Spendelow (14:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and it's important to clarify those expectations, you know, really, really early on before any kind of miscommunication creates other, you know, bigger problems for you.

Meeyeon (15:08)
Exactly.

And in the course, we also talk about this is something that's very, very unique to finance. Handling, I would say like some people say difficult stakeholders, but the phrase that we most hear often is big personalities. And so, Ryan, what's your advice for finance professionals, very specifically finance professionals, dealing with someone that is particularly big in personality and that.

oftentimes, you know, that's a bit of a euphemism for particularly challenging.

Ryan Spendelow (15:40)
Yes, yes, we have a few euphemisms that we use, don't we, in that professional environment to describe challenging or difficult stakeholders. And while a lot of CFI courses are targeted directly at finance professionals, this Managing Your Stakeholders course effectively is really designed for any kind of person working in any kind of professional environment. It's just that most of our learners come from a finance background or the finance industry. But those difficult stakeholders...

I found in my experience in working in asset management, working in banking, that a lot of it comes from misaligned priorities. Things like resistance to change or personality clashes. are the three things. So by misaligned priorities, you might think that the most important thing on this particular work that you're doing is containing costs.

where one of your really important stakeholders just wants the job done really, really quickly regardless of the cost. So there's an example of two misaligned priorities. And if you're working on a cost basis, but it's taking you a lot of time, and a really influential stakeholder doesn't really care about the cost, they just want the project finished, that stakeholder then could become very difficult for you because you've got misaligned priorities. People generally can be quite resistant to change.

So if you're working on a project, and this is particularly for people working on change projects, the difficulty that you're faced with from difficult stakeholders often comes from them being resistance to whatever change that you're trying to implement. Or it just comes down to plain old personality clashes, right? You might be involved in a team or might join a project team or you might join a...

a team as a new analyst and two of your colleagues just seem to have this personality clash and then you might find out that nine months ago one of them got promoted and the other one thought that they were gonna get promoted. There was something historically that happened, So yeah, there can be quite a number of different reasons why you find that your stakeholders that you're trying to manage are difficult. One effective technique we teach to manage

challenging or difficult stakeholders is to use assertive communication. And what we mean by that is that you need to be able to state your needs clearly while acknowledging your stakeholders perspective. And we go through a few different examples and a few different techniques in the course, but just to give you an example of what that might look like. For instance, instead of saying, you're making this project impossible to somebody because your frustration balls over, right? You could say something like, I understand that this deadline is important to you.

let's discuss how we can meet it without compromising quality. So you're still kind of getting the same message over, but you're doing so in a way which is much more likely to diffuse the situation rather than inflaming the situation. And that really is the secret to managing a difficult stakeholder. How can you diffuse the situation, get them back down to a level that you can have an effective working relationship with that person?

And so to do that, we cover some techniques. And if you've gone on communication courses before, you might have come across things like the broken record technique or fogging, for example. But the key is when dealing with a difficult stakeholder, stay professional, control the narrative, and focus on problem solving rather than conflict.

Meeyeon (19:19)
And the most important thing, you say, is problem solving. Ultimately, whenever you're dealing with a stakeholder, you understand that you are working towards the same outcome. You have the same desired goal. And the idea is to always keep that top of mind. It's like, I'm not working against you. I'm not trying to make things more difficult. We're always trying to work together. And managing difficult stakeholders, at some point, it can feel like they are trying to do that. It's like, are you trying to work against the project?

Ryan Spendelow (19:29)
it. Yeah.

Meeyeon (19:49)
But ultimately everyone wants the same good outcome and to be able to continuously make sure that multiple different big, difficult, challenging, exciting personalities are on the same page is not the easiest task. so I'm excited for everyone to be able to take this course, to be able to mindfully sit down and kind of go through an exercise of how can you very purposely manage these difficult situations because

It's so important not in just, it's such an important skill not to develop in only a professional setting because I think that everybody develops this type of stakeholder management skill from so many different parts of life, whether it's going through university or going through difficult family relationships. But it is such an important skill to succeed at any point or any field of your life, but particularly in a professional setting, being a great manager.

of stakeholders is a huge plus, think, to career advancement.

Ryan Spendelow (20:52)
Now, 100 % endorse that. And I'd just like to say if any of our listeners have a wedding coming up that they're planning, this is a great course to do before that.

Meeyeon (21:00)
Ha

Okay, yeah, wedding planning has always difficult stakeholders. got in-laws, you got everyone that wants to be invited. There's a budget to work with. It's challenging, know, even my own. You know, there was like some, there were some stakeholders that were maybe not stakeholders in my mind, but they were.

Ryan Spendelow (21:08)
Let's not go down that rabbit hole, Meeyeon. Let's not go down that rabbit hole, yeah.

Much deeper vested

interest than just a stakeholder.

Meeyeon (21:24)
Well,

that has been a fun episode of What's New at CFI. I hope that everyone takes this course, because I think it's so relevant for any part of your life, regardless of what stage, but particularly in a professional context. And until next time, that's been What's New. I'm Meeyeon Ryan, and we will see you all next time.

Ryan Spendelow (21:44)
Thanks, Meeyeon