Making the best strategic use of your senior leaders to engage stakeholders is becoming ever more important in the evolving world of corporate communications.
Stakeholder engagement is no longer a peripheral activity – it is central to organisational resilience, reputation and the achievement of corporate outcomes. This is particularly true in public service organisations, where trust, transparency and accountability are paramount, and senior leaders need to be leveraged as strategic assets rather than mere figureheads.
In the case of NHS Resolution, the national body that resolves concerns and disputes in the health service, the stakeholders range from patients or their families making claims to NHS staff to partner organisations, such as healthcare regulators and membership bodies. Engagement is critical because collaboration is our preferred way to fairly resolve concerns, share learning from claims to prevent future harm and preserve resources for patient care.
Drawing from our experience, underpinned by research conducted by Opinion Research Services in August 2024, here are some tried and tested ideas and strategies for comms professionals – especially those in the public sector – who want to harness leadership visibility.
Strategic alignment: connecting leadership to corporate strategy
When instead of relying on informal contacts, you use deliberate, planned engagement, every interaction becomes purposeful, with strategic objectives supported through, for example, regular reviews, central management of contacts and proactive scheduling of meetings and briefings. Seek opportunities for your senior leaders to sit on external committees and reference groups to amplify their system-wide engagement still further.
Communications professionals can then act as gatekeepers, horizon-scanners and quality-assurers, ensuring that engagement activities are strategically directed and evaluated for impact.
Governance and controls: ensuring accountability
Effective stakeholder engagement requires robust governance and oversight. Holding senior leaders accountable for delivering objectives linked to strategy – including stakeholder management and engagement activities – helps ensure alignment with the business plan and strategic direction; board sign-off of engagement strategy is a critical success factor.
Communications teams must demonstrate the value of engagement with stakeholders, especially when budgets are under scrutiny. The mantra is clear: “Do it, measure it, report it.”
Communication and visibility: raising leadership profiles
Engagement is improved when you communicate strategic developments and major initiatives in ways that are sensitive to the external environment and stakeholder needs, and use senior-level briefings, stakeholder updates and social media to amplify engagement, without unnecessary expenditure. Communications can be designed to raise the profiles of directors and ensure audiences have multiple opportunities to engage with strategic content through dialogue – whether at conferences, on social media or in the trade press.
Collaboration and learning: building a culture of continuous improvement
Internal and external collaboration should be at the heart of your engagement strategy. Leaders can facilitate system-wide learning by hosting webinars, publishing insights and collaborating with related organisations.
Feedback requested from stakeholders can be used to shape future leadership actions, with regular reviews to identify gaps and improve ongoing engagement processes. By actively evaluating outcomes you can track whether stakeholders are more informed, supportive and committed to supporting your organisation’s strategic agenda.
Strategic narrative fluency: aligning leaders with corporate messaging
Leaders must understand and communicate both the “what” and the “why” of corporate strategy, clearly and effectively. Communications teams play a vital role in translating strategy into accessible language for diverse stakeholders, ensuring aligned messaging through a segmented approach for specific audiences. By embedding strategic messaging into the likes of briefing packs, media training and preparation sessions you can ensure consistency and robustness.
Equipping leaders: intelligence, messaging and training
To maximise the impact of senior leader engagement, communications professionals should equip leaders with detailed stakeholder intelligence, clear messaging frameworks and targeted training. Leaders need to be prepared for high pressure environments, and become skilled at handling the media, responding to crises and engaging stakeholders.
Trust and consistency: building authentic relationships
Consistent engagement creates authentic relationships that foster trust, unlike sporadic, transactional interactions. Leaders can maintain regular contact through the likes of newsletters, webinars, site visits and informal check-ins. Effective feedback loops will ensure stakeholder input shapes leadership actions, enhancing responsiveness and transparency.
In public service, trust is earned through transparency and responsiveness to community needs. A programmatic approach to engagement will ensure that trust is built and maintained over time.
Evaluation and improvement: measuring impact
Focus on outcomes rather than activity, assessing whether stakeholders are more informed, supportive and engaged. Tangible actions and commitments are the true measures of success. Sentiment analysis, surveys and post-event feedback can be used to track engagement over time, with accountability a key priority for both communications teams and the wider organisation.
The architects at the heart of strategy
Deploying senior leaders for stakeholder engagement is a multifaceted challenge that requires strategic alignment, robust governance and a culture of continuous improvement. Communications professionals are the architects of this process, designing strategies, developing tools and guiding execution to ensure that engagement efforts deliver real value.
By focusing on authentic relationships, consistent messaging and measurable outcomes, organisations can build trust, enhance reputation and achieve their strategic objectives.
Three key takeaways for communications professionals
- Strategic leadership engagement: Deploying senior leaders strategically ensures alignment, visibility and consistent stakeholder engagement.
- The role of communications professionals is to design strategy, develop tools and guide the execution of engagement efforts.
- Building relationships and reputation: Effective engagement builds relationships that protect reputation and drive meaningful organisational change, aligned to mutual strategy execution.
Ian Adams MBE is director of corporate affairs at NHS Resolution