Walk a Mile in Your Stakeholders’ Shoes
Picture this:
You’re lacing up for a run with a buddy. As you get into your warm-up stretch, you suddenly realize, “agh, I forgot my sneakers!” Fortunately, you two are the same size and since you’re starting at his place, he’ll just loan you an old pair of his for the day. Crisis averted, you’re on your way to crush some early morning miles together.
For the first few minutes, you’re relatively comfortable. You’ve run in shoes similar to these in the past, so you assume that you should be alright for a few miles in them. As time ticks on, your comfort decreases. Step by step, your feet smash into the soles previously molded to your friend’s feet. Bald spots in the cushioning poke at you. The arches are all wrong. These shoes are simply not going to cut it for much longer.
“Hey, these shoes are killing me,” you tell your friend, a wince spreading across your face. “Really?” he replies through labored breath, “I just wore them last week and they were totally fine. They’re not that old.”
But their age has nothing to do with the problem at hand, does it? Nor their style, nor their color, or price, or brand.
It’s about the way the shoe has molded to your friend’s feet – and only his feet. His shoes are reflective of his unique experience. Every quirk in his stride is recorded in the soles of these shoes – from his slightly larger left foot to his oversized middle toes – is it any wonder that you’re suffering through every step in such a foreign home?
When you break it down, the same holds true when you consider working relationships – especially those between creative teams and their clients/stakeholders. When approaching any project, request, or challenge, all parties involved will have different needs, expectations, and perspectives – all of which are based on one thing: unique individual experiences.
As a member of a team, you may prefer specific processes that have worked seamlessly for years. But the reality is that it doesn’t really matter if your approach works for you if it only works for you. If you don’t consider the needs of your clients or internal stakeholders as you build your they might wind up feeling like they’ve been left in the dust.
Fortunately, this is where you can flex one of the muscles that you probably have in spades: empathy. As marketers, empathy is an essential element of the work we do on a daily basis. A deep understanding of our prospects’ wants, needs, fears, and motivations is necessary for our work to be effective – without it, the messages we bring to life fall flat the moment they reach their intended audience.
What happens when we translate this skill into the way that we interact with our client/stakeholder relationships?
Here’s what happens:
When we stop for a moment to consider how others’ experiences and perspectives might (or might not) fit into our ways of working. In many cases, it’s something like magic.
Our guidance for you is this: regularly take a few moments to connect with your key clients/stakeholders in open conversation about what’s working for them when they interact with you and your team and what isn’t. Ask for critical feedback on things like your team’s briefing methods, request management, or even communication styles – even if it might make you uncomfortable. And finally, make a commitment to truly consider everything you learn about their perspective in your interactions with them going forward.
This adaptation doesn’t have to feel like a burden. As evidenced by these past few years, our work and the ways in which we approach it are constantly evolving. If we consider that our partners are also experiencing this constant evolution and give them credit in that regard, they will be much more likely to give that credit back.
