Most change does not fail on its technical merits. It fails because the people who need to support it were not involved, were involved too late or were never told what would change for them. Stakeholder Engagement is a custom course for teams leading change projects who need to bring colleagues, senior leaders, unions, partners or elected members with them.
The course is built around delegates' own projects. Each delegate maps the people who matter, identifies what each of them needs to hear and plans the conversations ahead. We use realistic practice, including difficult meetings, with feedback from the trainer and the group.
The course is credit-rated by Brackenfield Business School, so delegates can count it towards further study.
Project and programme leads, change practitioners, transformation teams and managers about to lead a significant change, in groups of six to fourteen from the same organisation.
Stakeholder Engagement is delivered through these modules:
Identifying everyone who can affect or is affected by your project, what each of them cares about and how much influence they have over the outcome. Delegates build a map of their own project's stakeholders and agree with the group where their effort is needed first in the coming months.
Explaining a change in terms each audience understands, from a board paper to a five-minute team briefing. We look at how to describe what will change for each group, and how to be honest about what will be harder before it gets easier. Delegates draft and test a short message for one audience.
Handling resistance, disagreement and bad news calmly and fairly. Delegates practise in realistic scenarios drawn from their own projects, including meetings with senior leaders, staff representatives and partner organisations, with feedback from the trainer and the group on what helped and what made the conversation harder.
Planning regular contact through the life of a project, spotting the early signs that support is fading and acting before it turns into opposition. We cover how to involve people in the design itself, so the change becomes theirs as well as yours, and how to hand over relationships when the project team moves on.
Case study
A county council had 64 change projects, a savings target and no common way to deliver them. We helped it cut the list, agree one method and train its people.
Find out how we did it: Improving change-delivery capability in a county council
White paper
Most service firms treat regulation as a cost to contain. This paper argues that outcome-based rules give operations leaders a strong case for simpler processes and less rework.
Download white paper: How to make regulation work for you
News
A ten-month programme for managers who run public services, built around a live improvement project in each delegate's own organisation. The first cohort starts in January 2027.
Read full article: Halveron opens a service academy for public-sector leaders