Good open communications is one of the skillsets required of a business analyst. With good open communications, it is possible to bring stakeholders to a common understanding of the business goals and what is needed of the project.
This article provides guidance on how to maintain open communications with stakeholders to help with the success of your business analysis work and project. The article also provides tips for communication and guidance on how to communicate with stakeholders effectively and ways to communicate with stakeholders.
Table of Contents
Why Communication Skills Are Important To a Business Analyst
The core competencies of the business analyst are skills, knowledge, and personal characteristics that support effective performance. Among the areas of fundamental competencies relevant to business analysis includes communication skill. This supports the business analyst in eliciting and communicating requirements between interested parties.
Among the communication skills defined by the BABOK guide
, three skills deserve special mention for the business analyst on how to: communicate with stakeholders effectively:
- Verbal communication skills: It allows the business analyst to express ideas effectively and appropriately for the target audience.
- Ability to teach: it makes it possible for business analysts to communicate requirements and issues to be resolved effectively. Also, it ensures that the information communicated will be understood and retained.
- Written communication skills: necessary for business analysts to document elicitation results and other information when medium to long-term registration or storage is required.
Who Are The Stakeholders?
As a business analyst, you need to ensure that stakeholders are kept informed and engaged during the business analysis process. One way to do this, is by having open communications with them so that you get their views. Inadequate communication often causes problems in the company. This is because some stakeholders often withdraw and develop a fear of asking questions or being unwilling to stick their necks out when they identify problems in the company. It is, therefore, very important for business analysts to encourage open communications with stakeholders by setting a good example.
After All, What Is Open Communications?
Open communications means: giving your (business) opinion without fear of negative consequences. Information should be exchanged regularly with all stakeholders. The message is to expand the circle of influence as soon as possible. Once certain decisions have been made, they must be communicated understandably and legibly.
In this way, trust between the business analyst and all stakeholders grows, and an equal level of knowledge is sought. As a result, all stakeholders can have a say based on the same project information. The choice for a transparent approach is essential. This means that all choices made are sufficiently motivated and argued. Everyone can consult choices, arguments, and analyses. To have successful open communications, you first need to do identify and research your stakeholders.
Identifying And Researching About Your Stakeholders
To give you every chance of succeeding in your work as a business analyst, you must identify all of the stakeholders as well as their expectations, concerns, and requirements. Think of those who have power or influence, and those who are interested in the conclusion of success or failure. The challenge is to keep your focus on stakeholders who are truly appropriate and have a level of importance to the organisation. Ensure that you identify the right individual stakeholders in the organisation.
After identifying your stakeholders, look at their strengths/interests and classify them according to their roles and contributions to the organisation. Here, you are directed to understand more deeply the key stakeholders involved in your work. In addition, you also need to understand the best ways to involve them in your project and establish effective communication with them. Key questions to help you understand your stakeholders are:
- What motivates them the most important?
- What interests do they have from what you do? Is it negative or positive?
- Who influences their opinions in general, and who influences their opinions about you?
- What information do they want from you?
- What is the best way to communicate your message to them?
- How do they want to receive information from you?
An effective way to answer the questions above is by conducting intensive communication to talk directly with stakeholders. Usually, when you speak directly, people tend to be open. Therefore, informal communication is often the best option for building a strong relationship with stakeholders.
Make important notes in the form of a summary of the understanding you gained when doing stakeholder mapping. This will help you to easily see where the stakeholders will act as blockers or critics, and who are likely to be supporters. Also, you will learn how you can approach and communicate with each stakeholder.
How To Open And Maintain Communication With Stakeholders
As you have seen, in open communications, each type of stakeholder has an influence on their decision making. It is important to know how to deal with them so that you can get the best out of each relationship. The ideal is to be able to differentiate each one so that the action plans are adapted, thus meeting the expectations of those involved.
Therefore, you can invest in closer contact with your stakeholders to create stronger bonds. Always look for more beneficial agreements through communication. Below we give you some tips that will help you open and maintain communication with them.
Involve The Stakeholders On A Personal Level
Understanding stakeholders is one of the important jobs to do as a business analyst. You will influence many stakeholders who will have the power to build or ruin your position. Therefore, the ability to communicate and establish personal relationships is important for you to master.
Brainstorm with your stakeholders to dig up information and determine their priorities for capacity and interests. Gain an understanding of what motivates you’re stakeholders and how you should win them around.
Establish Communication Objectives
It is very important to understand the purpose of your communication. You should have clear goals when communicating with the stakeholders. When you understand the objective and goal of your communication, you prepare your message better and find the ideal mode of communication.
Speak Their Language
Try to make it a habit to speak the language that the stakeholders understand. Avoid using industry jargon or technical terms that the stakeholders don’t understand. Also, take cultural differences difference into account. Some cultures are more soft-spoken, while others are more direct to their conversation.
Don’t Disappear From The Map
Once you are busy doing your analysis, don’t go mute. As a business analyst, you need to be visible and connect with the stakeholders. Present to them your progress and let them convey their doubt. Don’t let them wonder if you are still working or not. Ideally, it’s recommended that you send them reports from time to time.
Learn To Listen
Fluid communication requires that both sides speak and be heard. If you want stakeholders to be engaged, invest in listening to them. Opinions must be received, recognised, and considered. Remember that as much as giving your opinion is important, asking stakeholders to give their opinion is important.
Be Transparent
Any stakeholder in a project has a real interest in everything that is happening. Thus, adopting transparency policies is a point that needs to be highlighted from beginning to end. It is extremely important that stakeholders do not learn about important company moments from outside sources. Hiding bad and good news from stakeholders can cause the company to lose confidence in you. This is a way to develop a more stable ethical field, making relationships more reliable, and bringing stakeholders closer.
Tenets of Effective Communications
Effective communication skills are fundamental to success. By mastering the art of communication, you increase each level of performance in your life. If you communicate, you can manage. But if you communicate skilfully, you can do miracles in your profession. Communication is not just about exchanging information. You need to understand the emotion and intentions behind it. Here are tenets of effective communication.
Choose The Right Medium
There are different ways to get an idea across. One of the decisions you must make when transmitting important information is the channel chosen for this purpose, taking into account the strengths of each medium. For example, writing an email allows you to plan your message and correct parts of the text by proofreading. This form of communication is especially indicated in those situations in which you see this information as a strength-based on the nature of the message.
Be Clear
Don’t let your message be wrapped in ambiguity. If you are tempted to use words that sound or will be read awkwardly, don’t use them. Use familiar words that come easily to you. Don’t try to speak “at a higher level” as if it made you more important. You may appear pompous, and your message will be lost. Make sure that the person understands everything you say. Communicating clearly is a habit, so it needs to be exercised whenever possible. Be efficient in your sentence and paragraph construction.
Ensure The Information Is Complete
Effective communicators adhere to the “who, what, when, where, and why” when formulating they’re communications. If your speech of informational communications answers these questions, you are on your way to completing the communication. Both you and the stakeholders benefit from this completeness, strengthening your reputation in the company.
Provide The Right Detail
While you want to be grammatically correct, don’t allow the correction to appear distant. You can write and speak correctly, maintaining a pleasant conversation style. Verify the information to make sure they are factual information in your communication. Information that is not right may ruin your reputation and trust in the organisation.
Keep It Simple
Brief is better. You don’t want your message to be lost in flowery words that crowd your message. You can emphasise important points, but don’t repeat or say the same thing over and over in different words. Word selection is important to achieve conciseness.
Always Do A Follow-Up
Although meetings are essential, you can’t help but document them and expect a good result on your projects. Therefore, make notes along with them and, whenever one ends, organise them in a document to be shared with those involved. In addition to this, always do a follow up on emails to ensure the recipient received the emails. This will help you to strengthen and establish your relationship.
Concrete
Use very specific words. You should also refer to the relevant data and studies. Paint a picture for the stakeholders so they can use visualisation to help retain information. Use action words instead of the passive language that is often associated with business communication.
It goes without saying that you need to communicate with courtesy and respect. Be careful with humour. If there is any question at all about your relevance, please remove it. Convey sincerity. If you have researched your stakeholders, you can relate experiences that are meaningful to them, invoking good and positive feelings. This helps demonstrate your seriousness.
Conclusion
This article has provided guidance on how to communicate with stakeholders effectively, how to maintain open communication and how to keep stakeholders informed.
From this article, it is evident that open communications is fundamental for business analysis. As the stakeholders represent people from different backgrounds and professional areas, communication is critical for the success of any initiative and to learn how to talk to stakeholders and communication with stakeholders effectively, especially with stakeholders who are difficult and tricky to deal with.
The better you communicate, the more credibility you will have with stakeholders. So try to develop effective communication skills yourself. As a business analyst, appreciate your strengths and choose an area to improve and get to work. To be the best you can be, you need to express yourself effectively. Communicate with assertiveness. This will make you and others around you feel more alive.