Ryan Murphy

Setting team goals that the team are fully bought into is crucial. The team needs to understand the overall organisational direction and EXACTLY how your teams goals align with moving the needle on that direction. Give the team a say, do not just dictate a goal. Describe to them the metric you need to move, and decide as a team the goals which will get you there. If they have had an active say in the setting of this then they will be much more likely to get behind the goal and strive to achieve it on a deeper level.

Not everyone likes to be recognised in the same way. And recognition doesn't just mean 'shout-outs'. Some people like public recognition, some people hate that. Some people want more leadership opportunities out of good work. Suit to their needs. You can try public shout outs across their piers and senior managements, you can try giving them glowing feedback in 1-1s. One IMPORTANT thing to do to show you think they have done a great job is to let them do the 'end of project' stuff. For example, let THEM send the update emails, let THEM present to stakeholders, let THEM report on metrics, let THEM work with marketing to decide how to market to clients. DO NOT take the glory. Give the glory to them. That's true recognition.

If you are to use surveys, please make sure they are anonymous. No matter how good your rapport is with teams, there will always be an unease there otherwise. Also, make sure you ACT on surveys. Otherwise it quickly becomes clear to teams that it's a management reporting exercise and nothing will actually happen.

Communication with stakeholders is much deeper than an email. You need to understand what form of communication each stakeholder might connect with; email, long form documents, simple tables with numbers, graphics, presentations etc. There are MANY. The most important thing is to communicate what they care about. For example communicating project progress to your team looks very different to communicating that to the CTO. The level of detail is different. Importantly, try not to do all the stakeholder communication yourself. Let your team do it. Coach them in what good means here. Give them that visibility, don't take it for yourself.

Involving your stakeholders is about much more than just having them turn up to meetings. You MUST know them and what they WANT. A great way to do this is to set up co-working sessions where you and your stakeholders actively go and work with each other for a day in their domain. You will get a real understanding for their roles and the nature of what great would look like to them. For example, if a stakeholder is the customer service team; go and answer some calls for a day. Also it works two ways, have a CS rep come join your sprint planning session. Heck, even give them a discovery task.

A great way to understand a teams stakeholders is to build a 'Team Charter'. The process of creating a good team charter will involve wider collaboration with many folks. This process will help you understand who really has a vested interest in your roadmap and what they care about. It's not just important to understand who the stakeholders are, you MUST understand why they are your stakeholders and how your roadmap can aid them.