Stakeholder Interviews

Stakeholder Interviews

Stakeholder interviews

Building relationships with more leadrs

A day or two after your call to the convener, you can piggyback on the convener’s email to reach out to the handful of leaders that you agreed with the Convener to interview. This will give the purpose of the call and the types of questions you’d like to explore with them. Here’s a DRAFT EMAIL from you to each leader you will interview. 

The main purpose of these interviews is two fold:

  • To give you a preview of the issues that may come up at the Leadership Design Workshop, so you are not blindsided and can prepare in advance for how to handle these if they come up
  • To enable you to develop options for sharpening the focus on the team during the 100 days. You can use these to help the leaders converge on one or more of these options at the Workshop.

Decide on the sequence of interviews with the conveners.  The video describe the benefit of arranging the interviews in a certain order 

 

Now you are ready for doing your 3-5 leadership stakeholder interviews. To get the most out of the interviews it is important to really listen to the stakeholders, here is some tips on active listening.

 You can use the same questions example as for the convener (previous section) to probe these topics with the leaders. Please feel free to build on these as you see fit. 

The other purpose of the interview is to build a relationship with them so you are not meeting them for the first time at the Workshop. This will be very helpful to you at the session. Here are some tips on how to use the call to BUILD THE RELATIONSHIP.

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Finally, you can use the interview to check with the leader if there are other leaders who they think should be invited. You can quickly go through the list you have or the category of organisations, and ask if other types of organisations are missing from your list. If there are additional suggestions, discuss these with the Convener, and make the decision with them. 

Here is some final tips about conducting the call.

Be prepared to do a compelling overview, in your own words. (Complete the assignment). You can also send follow-up briefing document(s) to the guides and to other individuals you interview. Find more of these under the Landmark material. 

To take full advantage of each interview, it would be helpful to spend 10 minutes after each call jotting down bullets of what you heard. You can transcribe these here and continue to build on them with each interview.  These will help you prepare a few slides that we suggest that you use to seed the discussion at the Leadership Design Workshop. 

Thought starter reflection questions

Jot down thoughts on these questions – to the extent they are relevant to your experience at the session:
  • When did the mood in the event shift from “why are we here?” to “this could be interesting – I am excited to be part of this.” What triggered this shift? 
  • When did you have to go “off script” on the agenda or to change the agenda? What triggered this? What did you adjust? How did it go?
  • What was most surprising to you at the event?
  • What new insights did you gain about the issue at hand, and about the way leaders in the system interacted with each other?
  • Where did the conversation get stuck? What got it unstuck?
  • How would you characterise the level of trust among participants in the meeting? To what extent did this shift as the meeting progressed? To what do you attribute this shift, if indeed it happened?

Thought starter...

Reflection Questions 

Jot down thoughts on these questions – to the extent they are relevant to your experience at the session:

  • When did the mood in the event shift from “why are we here?” to “this could be interesting – I am excited to be part of this.” What triggered this shift? 
  • When did you have to go “off script” on the agenda or to change the agenda? What triggered this? What did you adjust? How did it go?
  • What was most surprising to you at the event?
  • What new insights did you gain about the issue at hand, and about the way leaders in the system interacted with each other?
  • Where did the conversation get stuck? What got it unstuck?
These are 100-Day Challenge Mentors. 

They did some work before you received the Challenge Note. This included:

  • Writing the Challenge Note, and making sure that the leaders of all the organisations represented on the team are comfortable with it – and committed to supporting the work of the team
  • Helping the leaders of these organisation recruit you and your colleagues to the team
  • Gathering some baseline data and other information that will help you and your teammates set your 100-Day goal and develop your plan.
  • Making sure all the preparations are made for a successful Lift-Off workshop, when you and your teammates will meet and get your 100-Day Challenge started. This includes venue, facilitation support, food, swags, comms, travel arrangements and whatever else is needed.

 

Mentors will participate in all or part of the Lift-Off Workshop, mostly at the start to provide context and answer questions, and at the end to give you and your teammates feedback about the goal and plan you develop.

During the 100 days following the Lift-Off Workshop, here’s what the Mentors will do:  

  • They will check in every two weeks with the team leaders to see how the team is doing and what support they and the team need.
  • They will keep other organisational leaders informed and engaged during the 100 days, and pull them in to help as needed.
  • They will participate in the last part of the Refuelling Workshop, halfway through the 100 days, to see what additional support the team needs, and to begin to plan with the team for sustainability and scale-up.
  • They will work with the team at the Sustainability Workshop to finalise recommendations on sustaining the results and building on the work of the team.