Mastering Project Communication: Stop Spinning Your Wheels

Simple strategies for streamlining stakeholder communication

Effective communication is the backbone of any project – especially stakeholder communication.  Master it and you’ll not only streamline your project, but you’ll also achieve what you set out to do with more impact, precision and effectiveness.

What is stakeholder communication?

This covers the way you get in touch with any individual invested in your project – your project team, sponsors, steering committee, customers, and even end users – and usually includes emails, meetings, and some form of reporting mechanism.

Most of us are used to using these types of communications, but not everyone uses them effectively – which is key to mastering stakeholder communication.

Tip #1 Create a communication plan

Is this really necessary on top of your project plan? Yes!

To make it clear to everyone how you’re going to communicate with them, you need to plan out what kind of communication you’re going to use, when you’ll use it, and how often you’ll get in touch.

Sharing that with all your stakeholders at the start of your project will help you manage everyone’s expectations around project communication.

Tip #2 Listen as much as you share

As project managers we’re used to sharing status updates, giving instructions, and updating our teams constantly, but one of the most important things we can do to communicate effectively is spend time listening to our stakeholders.

It helps us build trust with them, and it’s also where we pick up key information that can be crucial to our project’s success.

More tips for mastering stakeholder communication

I have a few more tips to help you become a communication master. Head over to YouTube and check out the video I made that covers my whole list of strategies.

If you really want to make sure you succeed as a project manager, be sure you check out my SLAY Project Management course where I take you through all the steps of successfully managing a project from start to finish. You’ll get all kinds of templates including ones that will help you communicate with ease.

Adriana Girdler, PMP | Creator of Slay Project Management™

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