Who to Meet First — and Why — When You Start in a New Executive Role

As a new executive, identifying who to engage with first is key in your journey to make an immediate impact. The right stakeholders can:

• Provide further insight into the inner workings of the organization

• Clarify your team’s strengths and opportunities

• Help you refine your priorities and share your successes

But you won’t have time to talk to every potential stakeholder during your first few months in a new role. To decrease your time to impact, it’s critical to target and build relationships with those who will have a direct impact on your future success.

• To identify the individuals with whom to potentially build relationships, map the stakeholder universe. Include leaders who provide information, services and technology, or other resources to your function and those who are customers of your products, services, programs and policies. Also tap into direct reports, your CEO and board and informal contacts (think: mentors, coaches and allies).

• When creating the map, be careful to avoid:

  • Missing stakeholders: Refine the list by using early conversations with key stakeholders to ask, “Who else should I be talking to?”

  • Too many stakeholders: Group stakeholders into types (e.g., key customers, suppliers of financial or people resources) and prioritize based on your current understanding of each group and their impact on your future success.

  • The wrong stakeholders: Continually test whether you are speaking to the right people; listen to what they say and observe what they do to determine if they’re decision makers, influencers or both.

• Focus on the most important people — those you will rely on to get work done or who are best positioned to help you fill skills gaps. Use an action prioritization framework to prioritize your time. Ask yourself:

  • Do they own or influence any significant strategy or objective?

  • Do they own or influence any significant risk or issue?

  • Will you interact with them frequently?

  • Do they have the potential to be a key ally?

• Prioritizing your time goes beyond deciding who to set up initial conversations with. You will also need to determine how to spend time with each stakeholder. Answer a series of questions to identify short-term action steps with each stakeholder, as well as medium-term and nonurgent items (see image below).

• Once you’ve identified and prioritized, keep your new stakeholder network engaged. Develop and nurture your relationships by regularly sharing updates, asking tailored questions and seeking feedback. This will increase trust, making it easier and more effective to work together. 

• Quickly recognize which key stakeholders may be challenging to engage with and which serve as allies and mobilizers. The latter:

  • Ask thought-provoking questions about you and your function.

  • Openly share guidance about the company priorities and culture to help you avoid landmines.

  • Seek win-wins in your partnership by talking in terms of we/us rather than I/me or they/them.

  • Provide valuable insights.