‘Stakeholder communication is all about interaction’

The second session of the e4m PR and corp comm ‘Women Achievers Summit and Awards 2022’ witnessed some of the industry experts discuss the topic ‘Ways to make your communication skills more powerful and effective when dealing with stakeholders’.

The members of the panel were Prof (Dr) Surbhi Dahiya, professor - department of Journalism (IAMCR Ambassador), Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC); Ajey Maharaj, group head corporate communications and PR, Fortis Healthcare; Anshu Khanna, owner, Goodword Media Services and Seema Ahuja, SVP and global head of communications and corporate brand, Biocon Group and Biocon Biologics. The session chair of the discussion was Ruchika Jha from exchange4media.

Kickstarting the session was the discussion about the ways one can implement on their communication skills to make them more powerful and effective while dealing with the stakeholders. To this Dahiya said, “The meaning of the message is not necessarily contained in itself. It is actually the result and negotiation between the receiver and the message. When the sender (PR professional or an advertiser) is sending the message, he/she should be clear what they want to convey. Communication basically means reaching a common goal of understanding. So, effective communication will be in a situation when whatever the sender wants to communicate, the receiver receives it in the intended message. You have to do the whole ground work. If you understand all the nuances, then the communication will certainly be better. All the stakeholders, whether it is the internal or external or investor, effective communication with stakeholders will come with all the important Cs, that is, clarity, content, context, complete, correct, consistent, coherent, concise and courteous. The more you communicate to words reaching a common goal of understanding, the more the stakeholders will appreciate your communication skills.”

Khanna added, “We, after a while become like doctors. A stakeholder comes to you and he wants a prescription. So you have to understand the core of the brand. You have to understand what your stakeholder wants to communicate and then simply put it together in a very holistic, honest and extremely creative strategy because I am not saying that you don’t need creativity in managing but you have to think. You have to go beyond the brief, think and put your heart and soul into it. That is what communication is. We are all communicators. We have to communicate within first and you will find all the answers there. Create a strategy. Please do not cut and paste ever. Think from the heart and create a strategy which is totally custom created. That is how you communicate with a stakeholder.”

Ahuja shed light on how crucial it is to be aware of the stakeholders’ vision and goals before interacting with them. She elucidated, “It is extremely important that we have a shared purpose and vision because if you do not understand what is it that our stakeholders are expecting and what is it that they want to hear from us as a brand, it will be more like a broadcast, that is, you are just informing them but the message is not getting absorbed. Therefore it is essential that you understand your stakeholders. As we have diverse collaborators, the need of each of them is different. It is crucial to understand from where they are coming from and what do they want to hear from you. It is not just about customising the messaging but even the former that you choose needs to be aligned with the stakeholder group.”

Concluding the session, Maharaj conveyed, “It is important to identify what actual our messaging is. We used to have our in-house letters which we printed around 5000-6000 copies and it went across Fortis India in different locations. Later on, it switched to digital newsletter. Recently, we launched audio visual bulletin. That connect is very different because I think the span of people’s attention is getting less and they want to look at it in a very crisp and clear format and AV is something which they prefer. Since things are digital now, everybody can connect from any part of the world and Covid has taught us how we can connect from different platforms. Whatever clicks as a brand and how will you connect, that is going to matter a lot.”