Stakeholder Clarity & Buy-In: Communicating Across Every Level of Leadership

Why do some leaders build trust with both their teams and their stakeholders - while others create confusion with the same information?

In this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded, Cynthia Kyriazis and Drea Martin explore engages deeply with stakeholders and its close relationship ensure buy-in - two leadership traits that determine how effectively leaders communicate across different audiences.

At first glance, both traits appear similar. Both require communication, trust, and transparency, tut their focus is different. 

Ensuring buy-in is about helping team members understand, align with, and support the mission. 

Engaging deeply with stakeholders is about providing investors, boards, and other key stakeholders with the clarity and information they need to make informed decisions. 

The challenge is knowing what information each audience needs and what they don't. 

Leaders who struggle in this area often make one of two mistakes: sharing too much information, which creates confusion or sharing too little, which creates doubt. Effective leaders learn how to communicate honestly while tailoring the message to the needs of the audience.

The discussion also explores practical coaching techniques for helping leaders prepare for stakeholder conversations, understand audience priorities, and build confidence in high-stakes communications.

You'll learn:

• The difference between engaging stakeholders and ensuring buy-in
•  Why different audiences require different levels of information and context
•  How oversharing and undersharing both erode trust
•  A practical framework for preparing stakeholder communications
•  Why audience awareness is one of the most important leadership communication skills. 

Great leaders build trust by communicating the right information to the right audience at the right time.

Ready to explore your leadership traits? Connect with us on LinkedIn or visit www.plllab.com to see how we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Transcript

Welcome And What We Decode

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:00

Welcome to Leadership Traits Decoded. I'm Cynthia Kyriazis, Chief Experience Officer at the Culture Think Tank.

Andrea Martin 0:07

And I'm Drea Martin, Chief Operating Officer of the Crucible. We are collaborative partners at Performance Leadership Learning Lab, where we transformed leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:20

Today we're unpacking the leadership traits essential for building, investing in, and scaling successful companies. Our insights come directly from data-driven metrics within our platforms solution. So let's dive in. Well, good afternoon, Andrea. How are you doing? Yeah, doing well. How are you? Good. I have given some thought to our traits discussion today, and I think we'd I'd like to combine two of the

What Deep Stakeholder Engagement Means

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:44

traits. Okay. If we will, see how they play off of one another. And the first one is something that is called engages deeply with stakeholders. Yeah. What I want to share with you is, and because I'm a coach and consultant, I of course hear the word deeply, and I want to know what you mean by deeply for the traits.

Andrea Martin 1:03

Yeah, great question. So let's take a step back first with engages deeply with stakeholders. And the the meaning there and kind of how we define this trait is by building meaningful relationships and trust with the people of interest. So these stakeholders, people who have a stake in it. Okay. And what this word deeply really represents is, and this is kind of a distinction too, because I know this trait came up when we were talking about directness, it's not just the ability to communicate, but the ability to communicate with clarity in the situation that it is. So with the stakeholders, giving them the necessary information.

Cynthia Kyriazis 1:35

So it's about clarity and necessary information, right? Yes. Okay. All right. So I want you to go ahead and speak to that, but I also want you to circle around to some degree because we've also decided that the trait that's entitled ensures buy-in is something that plays off and plays with this particular trait on connecting with stakeholders.

Buy In Versus Stakeholder Updates

Andrea Martin 1:55

Yeah. So the reason that these two connect well is because they are, it's the same focus. It's how do you make sure that you're sharing information with an audience that's appropriate to that audience so that they are bought in and understand what's going on. But it's the two different sides, is how we define it. Ensures buy-in is focused on making sure that the people who need to be bought in on the mission understand. So that's usually the team involved, people who are working on whatever this kind of joint mission is, that they are bought in, understand, and kind of have that necessary alignment within that group. While engaging deeply with stakeholders is that other side, it's looking up the investors, the stakeholders, the people, the board, the people who need to be reported to to some extent about what's going on. So it's looking kind of up in the hierarchy and looking down in the hierarchy, making sure that both sides have necessary clarity and understanding.

Cynthia Kyriazis 2:48

Okay. Clarity and understanding are key words in that, in that uh, in that trait. I don't know whether to ask what happens when it's not deeply understood, when there is a lack of clarity that then there needs to be. What happens then?

When Board Communication Erodes Trust

Andrea Martin 3:01

Yeah. So, and this is something have a recent example that comes up with engages deeply with stakeholders. And this individual is actually pretty high and ensures buy-in. When it came to communicating with her team, she was very strong. She made sure that they were, they understood the kind of what was going on and that there was that necessary buy-in. But on the other hand, there was a little bit of a challenge for her when it came to engaging deeply with stakeholders. She wasn't as clear as she potentially could have been when it came to one information to pass along to the board. And what that resulted in is either she would give too much information to the board and they wouldn't know what to do with it, or she would paint the information in a way because she was sharing too much or not at all, that there was really a lack of trust of what was really going on and a little bit of doubt to the situation, because instead of sharing the story in the way it needed to be told to the stakeholders, she was sharing the information either too fully or not at all. So that they didn't really understand there was a lot of fear associated with what's actually going on. It's really that ability to tune into the audience that's a big factor of these two elements here. Because if you're able to share the necessary information to the right people and in a way that those people need to understand it, your team needs to hear a very different story than the investors do. And walking that line of how do you share it, both with honesty and clarity, of course, but how you can communicate both sides to keep all the parties necessary happy and functioning as they need to be. So people like the stakeholders know when there's issues that they need to know about and the team knows when there's issues that the team needs to know about, but those aren't always the same thing. So for a leader that's particularly potentially just has a lot of candor, is very honest off the bat, doesn't maybe put a necessary filter on who's my audience, do they need to hear this, who needs to know what. Sometimes that team aspect is a little bit easier because if you're very authentic with your team, you tell them everything that's going on, there's an just an inherent trust that's built because you're very transparent. That's great. But with stakeholders, that can be a very strong turnoff or just a miscommunication or just something that creates further doubt. So that was an interesting scenario, just having a conversation a little bit around how she can better understand who she's talking to, and maybe even just taking that step back before communicating to say what's working with the way that I'm the style that I'm using and what isn't working, and how can that be adjusted to better adapt and help everybody have the understanding that they need to have around the situation?

Cynthia Kyriazis 5:31

So it sounds to me that let's get clarity about who the audience is first, then let's develop clarity around what level of message they need to receive, and then what level of message is not appropriate for this particular audience. And it may be for the other one, it may not be, but just to get clarity around what we're doing and who we're doing it with. Right. Yeah. So I can see how ensures buy-in and engages deeply with stakeholders is connected, yeah, uh kind of intertwined. But again, with many traits, it's easy, it's important to see first step, second step.

Andrea Martin 6:05

Right.

Cynthia Kyriazis 6:06

Yeah. Thank you. That was awesome.

The Three By Three Coaching Framework

Andrea Martin 6:08

Yeah, I'm curious, kind of with your coaching experience in this space, if this individual that we worked with came to you, for example, and had to go through that process of asking more questions, maybe getting a better understanding. This individual had been with the organization for a while, but let's say they were new. Someone's new to an organization, you don't quite understand how the board works yet, you don't quite understand how the team works yet. How would you suggest that they take a step back and ask the right questions to really get a sense of the environment, to really be able to start to build filters might be the wrong word, because that that assumes that there is like a lack of transparent information coming through. But it is kind of a filter. It's how do you put the right because story also implies that there might be like fictitiousness about it. So I'm not trying to not try to imply you're supposed to lie to other people or anything of that sort. But rather, this like, how do you put the right lens and really focus and prioritize the information that needs to be shared with different parties.

Cynthia Kyriazis 7:05

This is a really good question. I try to work in threes. I try to think about what are the top three things that I need this new em person or employee to know because they've never spoken to a board before. My first three would be these are the three things that a board is most concerned with. Any board. In our situation, this is the one that stands out the most. They will be concerned about these things and they would like information about these things. The second would be what are the top three things I want to make sure that they understand about how we're handling this. Right? And again, I come up with one, two, three, and we have a discussion about that. And then the last thing is these are the three things that the these information is not appropriate for the board to know at this point. There may come a point in the future, so what we need to know is they're not ready yet for that. And then I would try to role-play a little bit with that to make sure they're comfortable, not stumbling, not feeling that they're going to get caught with a surprise question, uh, that kind of thing. And then I would turn around and do the same thing for the staff. I would say, you know, exactly the same. These are the top three that most boards look for. Those are the top three that we wanted to communicate to the stakeholders. And this is the things that we are not ready to discuss yet. It's not the appropriate time. Right. To try to give some type of sense of yes, no, green light, red light for people who have not done that. And I think that's a very easy conversation to have because the person that I'm speaking with that's delivering this information is going to have a lot more questions because they have a lot less experience than I do. So then there could be this dialogue back and forth until they're very, you know, quite comfortable with it's not gonna, they're not gonna cheer your head off or they're not gonna shoot the messenger. You just need to be able to be well versed and framed around this without going someplace that would not add value or benefit to either us or the board or the stakeholders.

Andrea Martin 8:53

Okay.

Cynthia Kyriazis 8:54

Does that make sense?

Andrea Martin 8:54

Yeah, it does. Interesting. Yeah. And I think a big piece in there too is you you do that first check, you ask those questions, you get as close to right as you can the first time, but then also keeping that open mind of when you're in a new situation, you learn about the different environments, whether that's the board or the team and how things resonate and what doesn't resonate and how you can actually communicate things

Feedback Loops And Closing Notes

Andrea Martin 9:16

more appropriately. So keeping that open mind of like you can get as close to right as you can the first time, but constantly adapting and realizing that like this is information that every time you share something, you will get feedback and you can use that feedback and make the next time better and kind of use that to your own advantage.

Cynthia Kyriazis 9:32

Yes, that's a really good point to bring up. That's a really good point because I was looking through the lens of the person del who is supervising the person who's delivering for their their uh their growth. So thank you very much for thinking of that.

Andrea Martin 9:43

Yeah, appreciate it. Perfect. This was fun. Yeah, any other thoughts on insurance buying engages people who've stakeholders. I think it just really reiterates this like communication need the importance of Latin space.

Cynthia Kyriazis 9:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just preparing yourself before you try to prepare others. Yeah. Oh, I like that. All right. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded. You'll be able to find all our episodes on the Performance Leadership Learning Lab website at www.pl.com. Or you can listen on your favorite streaming platform.

Andrea Martin 10:20

We'll be back soon to explore the next essential trait. Until then, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn if you have any questions or ideas.