Stakeholder dialogues
Overview
Stakeholder dialogues are conversations an individual conducts with someone you would like to learn something from as part of the sensing phase. The dialogues allow you to step into the shoes of your interviewees and see the world from their perspective.
Purpose
To learn about yourself, your organization or community and what is truly important to you.
Guiding Principles
Create transparency and trust about the purpose and the process of the dialogue; establish a personal connection early on. Explain that you are there to learn from them by listening to their story, their goal and how they do things.
Suspend your voice of judgment (VOJ) to see the situation through the eyes of your stakeholder. What matters at this point is not whether you agree with what they are telling you. What matters is that you learn to see the situation through the eyes of another person.
Access your appreciative listening (your open heart): Connect to your stakeholder with your mind and heart wide open; thoroughly appreciate and enjoy the story that you hear unfolding; put yourself in your stakeholder’s shoes.
Access your listening from the future field (access your open will): Try to focus on the best future possibility for your stakeholder that is wanting to emerge. What might that best possible future look like?
Leverage the power of presence and silence: One of then most effective interventions is to be fully present with the stakeholder. Do not to interrupt them even when he or she has a brief moment of silence.
Process
Step 1
Preparation Identify 2 to 3 individuals to learn from through stakeholder dialogues. Define/revise the sample questions to suit your specific context. Decide whether to send the questions to your stakeholder in advance.
Step 2
Before you meet your stakeholder allow for some quiet preparation or silence. For example, take 10-15 minutes prior to the dialogue to relax and anticipate the conversation with an Open Mind, Open Heart and Open Will.
Step 3
During the dialogue, listen with your Mind and Heart wide open, take notes. Feel free to ask questions spontaneously: Feel free to deviate from your questionnaire if important questions occur to you. The questionnaire is designed to serve you and your work – not the other way around.
Step 4
Take some time to harvest your dialogue, by doing journaling, based on the following questions: Who did you have a stakeholder dialogue with? What was most interesting about what you heard in this dialogue? What are the challenges this person currently faces? Where do they see emerging possibilities in their work? By conducting this dialogue, what did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about how to create generative conversations? Given this experience, what ideas or practices could you now implement in your own context?
Logistics
People & Place
Stakeholder dialogues work best face-to-face. If an in-person dialogue is not possible, conduct them by phone/skype.
Time
45-60 minutes (ideal).
Materials
- Paper and Pen
Dialogue Questions; these are some sample questions you may use or you can create your own:
o What is your personal story that brings you to where you are today?
o What do you love about what you do?
o What do you think works really well in your system?
o What works less well?
o What other key challenges do you encounter?
o How do you solve them?
o If you had all the powers in the world, what would you do differently in the things you do?
o Who would you work with to bring about the change?
o My organization’s biggest challenges are:...
o What advice would you give us for us to realize our mission?