Stakeholder engagement can be tricky. We have developed some great tools.

Getting stakeholders fully engaged has many benefits for environmental problem solving. If done well, it ensures that projects include the most important things, it provides a way for every one in the community to be heard, and it enables you to use the very best information. But stakeholder engagement can be tricky. At IAN, we have developed a suite of engagement tools through our extensive experience of engaging with diverse stakeholders globally.

In developing science communication products or environmental report cards, we typically work with dozens to hundreds of people from a variety of organizations to obtain consensus on what matters most. Achieving this consensus is a process that we have developed using tools like icebreaker activities, conceptionary drawing, title pursuit, conceptual mapping, SNAP!, word clouds, surveys, polls and quizzes. We can help you map out key stakeholders, perform social network analyses, and develop targeted stakeholder engagement practices.

We can help you employ these tools and we can train you to do it yourself. You can develop the skills to get people talking, listening to each other, sharing diverse perspectives, and working together to solve environmental problems. The combination of engagement tools and interpersonal skills will improve your capacity to engage productively with a diversity of people to achieve your goals.