Five Tips for Getting Stakeholders to Read Your Knowledge Mobilization Messages

If you’ve had any experience sharing research findings with people outside the academy, then you know that knowledge mobilization is never about merely conveying knowledge. Nor is it about ensuring knowledge gets understood. Fundamentally, it’s about building relationships.

Often, however, we get so involved in the process of producing easy-to-digest content that we overlook the relationships that need cultivating.

Take the simple example of writing a news release for your organization’s website. In this case, you likely have a model to follow, maybe even a template that specifies the structure, word count, formatting, and byline. If you’re practiced at this form of communication, you can probably crank out the release in one to two hours.

But how do you get the release noticed? Ah, there’s the rub! I’m not a public relations (PR) specialist, but I value the work colleagues in that field do because it’s not just the headline that will draw eyes to your content. It’s your relationships.

A successful PR consultant will have strong personal relationships with editors and journalists at newspapers, magazines, industry journals, and prominent blogs. They’ll be able to get you more visibility with a single phone call or email than you can achieve by pitching your release cold to a dozen different media outlets.

When we think about the “research pipeline,” it’s easy to forget that people form the pipe. Whether you’re trying to draw attention to a podcast episode, a briefing note, or a training event, the challenge is identical to the challenge of publicizing a news release. To mobilize information, you must engage with and mobilize people.

A Lesson from Software Development

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of technical writing training with IT consultants, especially with project managers. This work taught me a lot about the difference between mobilizing knowledge and mobilizing people, and about the costly consequences that can happen when you ignore that distinction.

This point came home during one project management conference, when I was delivering a workshop on crafting effective user requirements. If you’ve never encountered this kind of dense technical document, I can best describe it as a sophisticated laundry list. It presents, in granular detail, all the functions and features a piece of software should include to address the needs of the target users.

For a nontechnical reader, especially someone in senior leadership, the level of granularity can result in an excruciating reading experience. When you’re not immersed day by day in the minute complexities of software design, it takes a lot of effort to make sense of lists embedded in lists, embedded in “use cases.”

During my presentation, when I asked about what can go wrong with user requirements, I thought I’d hear that requirements documents languish on the CEO’s desk, delaying the project. But the biggest problem the group brought up was that leaders sign user requirements without reading them. As a result, projects get started on time but then hit huge roadblocks when the software is built “to spec” but doesn’t meet the expectations the CEO had in their head.

Savvy project managers understand that they need to “sell” the CEO on taking the time to grapple with technical information outside their comfort zone. This means thoughtfully framing the user requirements with a persuasive introduction that connects the technical information to the CEO’s strategic goals and in some cases, their personal interests. But the “selling” also starts before the CEO receives the requirements document. It begins with relationship-building.

Whenever you’re asking a nonexpert to process information from outside their field, you’re asking them to invest effort and energy. They’re more likely to do this if they trust the source the information is coming from, and if they trust that the pain of sifting through the details will pay off.

Five Trust-building Tips to Improve Uptake

So how do you build positive relationships with stakeholders so they’ll take your knowledge mobilization messages seriously? Start building trust from the moment you first connect with them, and personalize each interaction.

Here are five simple practices you can adopt to strengthen your relationships with stakeholders and convince them to pay attention to what you have to say.

1. Take the time to introduce yourself. When I worked as a learning designer for an eLearning company, I’d often be invited to meetings as a “plus one,” a wing woman for my boss, the CEO. Usually, the client knew something about the company, but they knew nothing about me. In many cases, they assumed that my role was clerical, when in reality it was strategic.

To work effectively with the client, I needed them to understand my true role. Otherwise, they would dismiss my questions and suggestions, assuming I was simply there to execute instructions from either my boss or them. This misunderstanding would either slow down the project or prevent us from achieving the kind of innovation that happens only through genuine collaboration.

I learned, therefore, to overcome my natural reticence about myself and take the earliest possible opportunity to let people know who I was and what I’d done during my career. Initially shy about mentioning my PhD, I started using my degree in my signature and letting people know, early on, that my expertise as an instructional designer came with academic experience.

When I was asked to take the lead on a project, I also implemented an agenda for the kick-off meeting that invited everyone on the team to share something about themselves and their interest in the project. In a culture that was “go-go,” making time for this kind of chitchat was unusual, but creating space for this kind of human interaction always helps projects run more smoothly.

2. Identify shared passions. One of the best ways to build rapport with a new acquaintance is to figure out what you have in common.

My daughter taught me this principle. When she was in elementary school, she spent summers hopping from one themed camp to the next (dance one week, drama or sports the next). At the end of the first day at a new camp, she’d come home excited about a new friend she’d made. When I asked this friend’s name, the answer was often “I can’t remember.” But then my daughter would start gushing about what drew her to her new pal, saying something like this: “But we have a lot in common! We both like guinea pigs and hulahooping and white rice. And guess what? She has a sticker collection too!”

To identify the interests you share with your stakeholders, you’ll need to go beyond their LinkedIn profile, which, in some cases, may provide little more than the person’s name. Check out their LinkedIn activity. What do they post about? If they don’t author posts, what posts do they repost or comment on?

You’ll also want to search other social media, where they may show their more authentic selves. And don’t overlook the power of quick Google search. That could turn up a local news story about a charity they’re involved with, or an appearance on a podcast, or a blog article or op-ed they’ve written.

Once you’ve gained insight into the enthusiasms you and your stakeholders share, find casual ways to weave them into your initial communications with them. You might be surprised to discover how revealing a shared interest in a hobby, region, or cause quickly takes your relationship to a deeper level.

3. Set clear expectations. Whenever we meet someone new, our threat-sensitive brain wonders “Is this a safe person?” Even when we’re not physically threatened, this is the default path our thinking, and our emotions, take.

When a stakeholder first meets you, they probably have a lot of questions about how “safe” you are. Consciously or unconsciously, they may be asking themselves, “Is this a person who will…”

• rob me of time I could be spending on more worthwhile projects?
• jeopardize my reputation or status in some way?
• undermine my efforts to pursue another project or competing interest?
• make it difficult to achieve the outcomes I want to achieve?
• lower the standards of quality that are important to me?
• misunderstand, underappreciate, or mangle work I’ve done?
• steal credit for work I’ve done or am doing?

This isn’t paranoia. This is just human survival instincts at work.

To assuage such fears, be clear from the get-go about roles and responsibilities. For example, whenever I interview a researcher to write a research impact story, I let them know upfront that they’ll have the chance to review the draft article.

In one memorable instance, the researcher let out an audible sigh of relief in response to this news. He’d recently been misquoted by a journalist and was still stinging from that experience. At the beginning of the conversation, he seemed guarded, and I wondered about the quality of material I’d be able to gather. But as soon as I let him know how the process of working with me would work, the conversation flowed much more freely, and the story practically wrote itself.

4. Follow through. Another thing I’ve learned through my experience with clients in software and engineering companies is that most complex projects fail. Widely cited industry stats for both IT and construction, for instance, put the project failure rate at 60 to 80%. (A project “fails” when it doesn’t meet the budget, outcomes, timeline, or other criteria established at the beginning of the work.)

In many contexts, I’ve learned, you can instantly score credibility points just by following these basic principles:

• Show up to meetings on time.
• Deliver assigned work on time.
• Provide regular updates.
• Give advance notice as soon as you think you might need more time to complete a particular task.

While these habits may seem like common sense, it is surprising how rare they have become in a world where “schedule slippage” has become the norm. You build trust every time you do what you said you’d do, on or before the deadline.

One easy way to prove your trustworthiness is to make sure you leave every meeting with an action assigned to you, something you’ll be able to deliver by a specific date. If the meeting hasn’t resulted in your being assigned such a task, then consider volunteering for one. Trust is built through small, consistent actions, and sometimes you have to create your own opportunities for those.

5. Be expressive. Through my years of writing coaching, I’ve discovered that many people dissociate from their natural personality when it comes time to put their thoughts into print. Many professionals develop a so-called “professional” writing voice that doesn’t sound at all like the authentic voice they use in meetings or presentations.

A few years ago, an engineer who’d taken one of Clarity Connect’s group programs summed up this phenomenon when he thanked me for helping him no longer “write like a robot.”

People relate to ideas through other people. So don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through your communications. Yes, that means it’s OK to use exclamation points in your emails, maybe even emojis if you think that would help you create an emotional connection with your target audience.

I’m not suggesting that you ignore style standards for certain kinds of formal documents, such as briefing notes or proposals. Nor am I losing sight of the need for you to comply with brand guidelines; as part of a team or an organization, your communications need to reflect the corporate voice as well as your own.

But don’t be afraid to include subtle human touches in your communications. When an AI editing tool prompts you to make a sentence more concise, make sure that you’re not sacrificing nuance for clarity’s sake.

For example, an AI tool once prompted me to alter a sentence in which I’d used the phrase “I have the sense that” to introduce an observation. My robot-helper wanted me to either remove the phrase or use “I think that.” While such an edit would have made the writing more concise, it also would have changed the meaning I intended to convey. In this particular case, I wanted to let the reader know that there was more to the situation than met the eye and that I was interpreting it through my intuition, honed through years of experience.

The concepts of “stakeholder engagement” and “stakeholder management” can overcomplicate the task of mobilizing knowledge, which is already challenging enough, thank you very much. At the end of the day, each “stakeholder” you interact with is just another human being, and the most powerful moves you can make to gain their attention are often tiny and intimate.

Intimacy is, in fact, a keyword to consider as you think about how you can become more effective at building trust with your stakeholders. How can you get to know your stakeholders better? How can you transform your relationship with them from professional to personal?

No matter our rank or title, we all want to be known. We all want to feel seen and understood. The more time and effort you spend letting your stakeholders know that you see and understand them, the less energy you’ll have to spend creating detailed stakeholder plans. Humanizing the knowledge mobilization process is always the most efficient and productive path forward.