Your strategic stakeholders keep tuning you out. Spoiler alert: They tune you out because your professional behavior turns them off. End of story: yours and theirs.
Listen to my YouTube keynote story of a major way professional behavior derails the strategic stakeholder support you need to move your career to the next level.
When you turn strategic stakeholders off, they return the favor by tuning you out. And, once that communication disconnect is established, stakeholders will not forget how your behavior impacted them.
Unless, that is, you decide to make some purposeful strides to change the story you tell.
Strategic stakeholders do not like to be on the receiving end of unconscious, or conscious, professional bias. Your bias yields their negative employee, stakeholder and customer experience.
First, your word choices matter: to them. Strategic stakeholders are valued co-workers, colleagues, investors, funders, partners and clients. Are your word choices showcasing their importance to you? Alternatively, is the professional terminology you use to tell your story excluding, marginalizing, or even intimidating, stakeholders?
Is the only story which your words communicate bridging or perpetuating communication gaps? Consider the long-term value of your tactic. Because when you turn them off, they tune you out.
Next, your reactions to their word choices matter: to them. Are the word choices of your strategic stakeholders full of discipline-specific or generational buzz words and lingo? Perhaps your stakeholders speak English as a second language, and their sentence structure is different than yours. Or, you both speak English. Check that off the list. Except the sentence structure these stakeholders use when communicating is not quite college-perfect. Because the highest academic degree they hold is a high school diploma, but they are masters at tearing down and repairing complex machinery.
And then what happens? Do you act like you are doing them a favor by even listening to their presentations, contributions during meetings and documented input-throughput-output? What is the long-term value of your professional behavior on the quality of long-term support of these stakeholders?
When your behavior turns them off, they tune you out. Plus, you lose professional credibility: to them.
Is the only story you are known for, in your organization, the experiential story of your professional behavior when working with strategic stakeholders?
Consider the impact of professional behavior on the colleagues and other stakeholders you rely on, when serving your clients. Are you are so dialed into maintaining negative professional behavior, that performance and outcomes are negatively impacted? It doesn’t have to be that way, anymore.
Take the next steps towards pivoting your professional behavior. Offer greater value to strategic stakeholders and clients you serve: today, tomorrow and in the future.
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Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset® Storytelling for STEM Professionals and Left Brain Thinkers speaking programs leverage purpose-driven value differentiation through storytelling, to create and retain successful employees and clients.
Find out more about Babette’s professional story here. Babette is a member of SME, ASQ, SHRM and the National Speakers Association. Her playbook of communication hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com. Babette’s speaker profile is on the espeakers platform. Contact Babette here.
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