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Session 2. Stakeholders, a Guiding Team and a Communication Plan
Objective. Map the people affected by a change, hold listening conversations, form a guiding team with clear decision rights and write a four-week communication plan with one core message.
A change is judged long before you finish explaining it. People decide what it means for them from the first rumour, from who tells them and from whether anyone asked their view. This session helps you plan those first weeks: who needs to know what, who should say it, and how to hear back. You will also see why the parents' committee, the clerk and the pupils belong on your map, and how to tell bad or uncertain news without spin.
Key ideas
Map the people affected
- A stakeholder is anyone who gains, loses, must change what they do, or can help or block the change. List by name or role, not by group only. Include the people leaders forget: the caretaker or clerk who prints forms, the bus driver, the parents' committee, the district methodist, new teachers, teachers near retirement and the pupils themselves.
- The power-interest grid (often called Mendelow's matrix) plots each person by power over the outcome and interest in it: high power and high interest means manage closely; high power, low interest keep satisfied; low power, high interest keep informed; low and low, monitor. Add a third question: how much does their daily work change? A person with little power but big impact still needs your time.
- Interest and power move over time, and small groups gain power when they unite. Revisit the map each month. Keep it private: it is a thinking tool, not a list of friends and enemies. Never write labels such as 'blocker' about a named colleague on paper that others may see.
Listen before you announce
- Hold short one-to-one conversations (10 to 15 minutes) with six to eight people from different groups, including sceptics and people who will be most affected. Ask three questions: What works well now that we must not lose? What worries you about this? What would make it easier for you?
- Your job is to listen, not to defend. Take notes by theme, not by name, and promise confidentiality for what is said. Do not argue or promise what you cannot deliver. A sentence such as 'Thank you, that helps me see something I missed' keeps the door open.
- Report back: 'You told us X; we changed Y; we could not change Z, and here is why.' This turns listening into trust. Listening also finds pitfalls early: if a plan has a part that most people object to, fix or delay that part before launch, not after.
A guiding team, not a one-person show
- Form a team of five to seven who together have formal authority, credibility with colleagues, subject or technical knowledge, and a fair sceptical voice. Include at least two class teachers who are not deputies. A team made only of the head's closest allies cannot see what the staff room sees.
- Give each person a role: sponsor (the head, who shows support and clears barriers), lead (runs the work week to week), teacher voices, critical friend (asks 'what are we missing?') and communicator. Agree the time: about 30 minutes a week for six weeks, taken from something else.
- Write decision rights in three lines: what the team decides, what the head decides after hearing the team, and what staff are only informed about. Unclear decision rights are a quiet cause of frustration: people feel consulted and then ignored.
One message, many routes: the communication plan
- Write a core message in three sentences: what is changing and why, what stays the same, and what happens next with dates. Every channel and every messenger uses the same core. Then plan by audience: what they need to know and feel, the channel, the messenger, the timing, and how they can answer back.
- Match channel to weight. Big or emotional news is told face to face first (staff meeting, small group), then confirmed in writing on one page. Telegram groups are good for dates and reminders, not for announcing a worrying change or for arguing. Choose messengers people trust: a respected teacher often carries a message better than a deputy.
- Repeat. People do not take in a change from one announcement; plan the same core message several times in different forms over weeks. Say what is decided, what is still open and when it will be decided. Keep a one-page question-and-answer sheet and answer every question within an agreed time (for example three working days). Silence breeds rumour.
Which channel for which message
Face to face
Big or worrying news
- Staff meeting
- Small groups
- Time for questions
One page
Details to keep
- Case for change
- Questions and answers
- Dates and owners
Telegram group
Reminders and logistics
- Dates
- Room changes
- Not for arguments
Beyond the staff room: pupils, parents and the neighbourhood
Many school changes reach families first as a change in a child's day: a later finish, a new kind of homework, a different mark. Parents react to the surprise more than to the content. A short note home, a place to ask questions and a chance to hear from the parents' committee before the start remove most surprise at small cost.
Pupils are the most affected stakeholders and the most overlooked. A five-minute class discussion in two or three classes ('what would help you with a comment on your work?') gives you real information and shows older pupils that the change is being done with them. Keep it simple, ask for ideas not complaints, and tell them what you did with what they said.
Telling bad or uncertain news
When you do not yet know the answer, say three things: what is decided, what is not yet decided, and when you will know. 'The start date is fixed; the format of the comment is not; I will tell you by 20 October after the pilot teachers meet.' People handle uncertainty better than silence, and they remember if the promised date passes without news.
Avoid spin. Words such as 'exciting opportunity' for a change that costs people evenings are heard as disrespect. Say the cost plainly ('this will add about 20 minutes a week for two terms') and the reason you think it is worth it. If a decision was taken above you, say so, and do not pretend it was yours or that it is open to debate.
Examples from the classroom
A listening round in Tashkent
Scene. Before launching a new timetable, Dilnoza, a deputy head in Tashkent, spends one week on eight 12-minute conversations: two class teachers, a methodist, the clerk, the librarian, a teacher near retirement, the parents' committee chair and the bus driver. She asks only three questions. The driver says the buses leave at fixed times that she had not known. She changes one lesson end time by ten minutes and writes the change in the next notice, saying whose idea it was.
Insight. A short listening round finds the fact that no plan could have guessed.
A team without teacher voices in Bukhara
Scene. The head of a Bukhara school forms a guiding team for a new assessment policy with himself, two deputies and the two methodists. At the first staff meeting a Grade 6 teacher asks, 'Who from the classroom is on this team?' Nobody. The head adds two class teachers, one of them a known sceptic, and shares the team's decision rights on one page. Within three weeks the team has changed the comment format twice on teachers' advice.
Insight. A guiding team gains authority when it includes the people who will do the work.
A question sheet in Andijan
Scene. In Andijan, a methodist prints a one-page question sheet each Friday during the first month of a new policy. The week's five real questions from teachers are listed with plain answers, for example 'Do I write comments for every pupil?' 'No: for one task per class per week.' Teachers can drop a card in a box. Two questions the methodist cannot answer are marked 'answer by Wednesday', and on Wednesday they are answered.
Insight. Answering every question by a stated day turns silence and rumour into trust.
Common pitfalls
- Putting only supporters on the map and in the guiding team, so the real objections arrive after the launch.
- Announcing in a Telegram group on a Friday evening and calling it communication.
- Asking for views and then showing no sign that anything was heard.
- Leaving a stakeholder map where others can read it, or labelling a named person as a blocker.
Map, Listen, Build the Team and Plan the Message
- Pairs (15 min): open the Activity Kit. Table A lists twelve sample stakeholders of a new assessment policy in Grades 5-9. Rate power, interest and impact 1 to 3, then place each in the grid of Table B. Choose the three whose position surprises you most.
- Trios, three rounds of 5 min (15 min): listening role play with Table C. One leads, one is the colleague (read the role card), one observes. Observers count how often the leader asks, summarises or defends. Rotate the roles each round.
- Trios (10 min): Table D lists ten candidates for a guiding team. Choose six, name each role and write the three-line decision rights. Be ready to say who you left out and why.
- Part B, alone (25 min): for a real change in your school choose the audiences in Table E and write the three-sentence core message. Fill the plan for the first four weeks: audience, what they need, channel, messenger, week, how they answer back. Include one face-to-face step and one thing you will stop saying.
- Pairs (15 min): give a two-minute spoken briefing from your core message as if at a staff meeting. Your partner is a tired sceptical teacher and notes: Did I hear what is changing, why, what stays, what happens next? What word sounded like pressure? Swap roles.
- Alone (5 min): write your leadership task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which stakeholder did you place differently from your partner, and what did you not know about them?
- In the listening role play, what did the observer see that the leader did not notice?
- Which part of your plan relies on Telegram, and is that the right channel for it?
Reflect
- Who is affected by your change but has never been asked?
- When did you last change your plan because of what you heard in a listening conversation?
- Would your guiding team tell you if the plan was going wrong?
Try it tomorrow
- Hold three 10-minute listening conversations with people from three different groups this week, using only the three questions.
- Write your three-sentence core message and read it to someone who is not on your team; ask them to say it back.
- Start a Friday one-page question sheet for your next change and promise an answer day.
Further reading and links
Know who is affected, listen first, share the work with a real team and say one core message many times.