Engaging stakeholders? If you’ve ever tried herding cats, you’re on the right track. If not, try this…

In this series, we give you simple and compelling industry insights into all of Engineers Australia's Stage 2 Chartered Competencies that will help you prepare your Evidence Statements for assessment for that highly-prized Chartered status.

They have been prepared and condensed by Fellow Chartered Professional Engineers and Engineering Executives based entirely on their personal experience and engineering practice at the highest level of the profession in complex industrial settings.

5. Engage the relevant community and stakeholders

Stakeholders are one of the most important cohort you'll meet in your engineering and business career. The problem is, there's usually lots and lots and lots of them!

Concerned already? Well wait, there's an even bigger problem. Through the communities they serve, they grant your business a "social licence" to operate and in the modern world that's just as big a deal and the licences that the government issues!

If you get them offside or choose not to listen and understand, life can get miserable and complex so engagement is critical, especially where environmental and/or cultural considerations are in play.

To engage with this group that wields so much power, you're definitely going to need a plan - a Stakeholder Engagement Plan so you know who to engage, on what, how often - and even how. There are many options and mediums.

One the big problems for early career professionals is they think stakeholders come with a fixed mindset and immoveable positions but you're an engineer, right? You use data and evidence to establish and shift thinking every day of your working life. Turns out, same applies to stakeholders. Show them the data!

And while you're at it, remember stakeholders are actually just people. Building relationships is a great way to gain a detailed understanding of their values, motivation and how their positions were developed.

But get to know them, understand them and build a service model that serves the communities they represent and that otherwise miserable and complex life of yours just got a whole lot easier!

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