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Jen Brown: Hello to our listeners and viewers. I'm Jen Brown, a leadership capacity
Hugo Rodriguez: Okay.
Jen Brown: builder coach who works with business owners, founders, and their teams to build capacity within their organizations. I'm a former US diplomat with over 23 years experience where I had the pleasure of serving with my good friend and colleague, Hugo Rodriguez. Hugo, over to you.
Hugo Rodriguez: Jen, thank you very much. like Jen, I am a former diplomat and following 25 years in the Foreign Service, where we Jen and I both focused on developing leadership talent among foreign service officers. I'm currently a lecturer and professor of practice in leadership and a leadership coach as well. And together with Jen, we'd love to build capacity in leadership. So Jen, what are we going to talk about today?
Jen Brown: We are actually talking about stakeholder engagement because that's a key piece of building capacity. We're never in leadership alone, right, Hugo?
Hugo Rodriguez: That's exactly right. You know, we we we aspire to leadership positions because we think, I can't wait till I'm the boss and I get to decide, you know, what direction we head in and what our strategy is and all of those good things. But the truth is, even as leaders, we have constituents and we have stakeholders who are to whom we are beholden, right? Like at the end of the day, we always have bosses. And even if you are a solo entrepreneur and a business owner, you're responsible to your customers, to your shareholders. so there's always someone to whom we we need to build relationship and understand their desires and end state goals and and we need to incorporate all of that as we develop our strategies leaders.
Jen Brown: Absolutely true. Absolutely true. And let me just start and address the dog in the room, literally. I am coming to you from a hotel room in Raleigh. So talking about stakeholder engagement, who we connect with, who matters in what we do is so critical. And that first step is really identifying those people. And something that s has stood out to me over my own career and and now in the private sector, just because you have an org chart and maybe a person at the top doesn't mean that's the stakeholder where you need to start. It's really understanding
Hugo Rodriguez: That's right.
Jen Brown: in that stakeholder chain who has the influence and who can be that ally or person you need to understand why there are differences. So really starting with identifying who are those key people. What have you seen in your experience,
Hugo Rodriguez: Absolutely.
Jen Brown: Hugo? Yeah.
Hugo Rodriguez: So, you know, it's interesting. when we worked in government, right? We have bosses. And within the State Department, you've got the assistant secretaries and the undersecretaries and the deputy secretary and the secretary of state, and they respond to the White House. So there's a there's a hierarchy and there's a chain, and that is the wire diagram, right? That's
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your organizational chart. But working in consular affairs as we did, you know, our Principal stakeholders, our principal constituents are members of the American public, especially the traveling public that gets overseas and and may find themselves in difficulty. And so we need to serve that constituency with you know great care. when I was working in Washington, my in my last capacity as principal deputy assistant secretary for consular affairs, we struggled coming out of COVID to level up and satisfy demand for passports from the American traveling public. post everybody was kind of restricted from travel during COVID. And then when those restrictions were lifted, everybody wanted to travel. The passport directorate that delivers passport services to the American public was really struggling to get back to being able to respond to that increased demand. And we could hear it loud and clear in the social media, in from the hill, as as legislators were reaching out to us on behalf of their of their constituents. And really, we had to focus our efforts on serving that key demographic, that key constituency. And that became an all-hands-on-deck effort that really led to some amazing transformative ways of approaching the business. But It was the demands of our stakeholders and the demands of our constituency that really pushed us in that direction. They weren't hard to identify. They made themselves known and it wasn't a wasn't a mystery. Sometimes, sometimes you encounter constituencies and stakeholders that are not obvious, right? That may have been sort of shadowed or hidden. And and you need as a leader to be really thoughtful about. Who do you serve? And who who has a stake in the success of the organization that you lead?
Jen Brown: Yeah, and I I would also say maybe even thinking a bit more creatively about stakeholders, maybe it's associations that can influence. Maybe you're not directly serving them, but maybe there's that relationship where they can help serve the agenda. And how do you
Hugo Rodriguez: Right.
Jen Brown: build those connections, you know, thinking more creatively, who's outside of my sphere even? who does what I do, who promotes what I do, and how do I build those relationships? And I think, you know, when we start to think about identifying those stakeholders, sometimes we don't do that until there's an issue that comes up.
Hugo Rodriguez: Mm-hmm.
Jen Brown: you know, this thing happened and now we're reacting to social media. And I'm not saying this was the case for you because I know consular affairs has a long standing history of building relationships, but how many times is it an issue comes up and then we're blindsided because the stakeholder now is questioning or we we miss the mark that there was a change in people. And so staying current on knowing who is in that network is so so key. But that also
Hugo Rodriguez: Yeah.
Jen Brown: takes time to build those relationships. And and I don't know about you, but that was a piece that
Hugo Rodriguez: So true. And can I just expand? Yeah.
Jen Brown: was always kind of like, where am I squeezing that in? Yeah.
Hugo Rodriguez: And you have to. You have to find the time, right? Like to to expand what you were saying. Those constituencies and those relationships are so it can be such a huge value add, right? without that support and without understanding what the needs are of those constituencies, you are not going to succeed in in your endeavor. So taking the time out of an already busy schedule, To inquire, to be a good listener, to be connected, right? Like as leaders, sometimes we want to put the blinders on, lower the level of noise so we can really focus on the, you know, our own vision for what the future should be. And I think the the key thing that I want to leave on the podcast today is you can't do that, right? You need to actively engage with. With all of your stakeholders. This may seem obvious, but it, you know, a lot of times leaders will figure this out in hindsight. Once they've left the stakeholders behind and they realize that a big gap has built between what the needs of their constituencies are and where they're heading. And building those relationships, staying in touch with those folks and actively asking them, what is it you need? To succeed on your end so that we can help provide that and succeed on our end, I think is the really critical thing. And you're right, it's one more thing on your to-do list, but it should be a high priority. Building those relationships and staying in close contact should be very high on your agenda. they can be helpful.
Jen Brown: Which I love. I love that because it also ties into the piece of what else can I intentionally transfer over to my team members so that I'm doing the piece that I need to do. And that's one of those pieces that as the leader you need to do. Yeah, your team might need to do it too at a different level. And so making that part of their ownership, but and you also owning at the le at the right level the relationships you need to have. And I love your your point about asking what is it that you need to to succeed? This gets down to negotiations, right? Like we can come in and be so far apart. And where is that common ground that we share in interest? Is it the the desired outcome, desired end state? You know, how do we focus on those common pieces and know where are those red lines that, hey, look, I'm not going to be able to give you. That and you're not going to be able to give me this. So getting to that point
Hugo Rodriguez: Right.
Jen Brown: though requires investment in the relationship. And I equate this to the same way as building that connection with your team. It doesn't start with the, hey, we have this problem, let's solve it. It starts with, hey, how are you? Tell me about you. Getting to know them
Hugo Rodriguez: Yeah.
Jen Brown: on a personal level. And I know sometimes in the heat of CEO world and senior level government,
maybe that's a little crunched. And yet there's still a basic person underneath all of that.
Hugo Rodriguez: Yeah.
Jen Brown: So understanding what drives them helps you then in that harder negotiation context, if you will.
Hugo Rodriguez: Absolutely true. And I think what you're getting at is a great point. The stakeholders and the various constituents around your organization should be treated the same way you treat your team as a leader. Investing the time to build trust, investing the time to ask about you know, how are things going? And And what are you seeing? And how can we serve and all of those same questions that you as a leader need to deploy to support your team, you need to deploy to support your say stakeholders. And if you have that trust, like you have to come in with an open heart, right? You have to understand your success, your constituents' success, your stakeholder success, those are all so deeply intertwined that you need to be Really open and committed to finding a way to help your stakeholders succeed, even as you're working to help your team succeed, right? That is
Jen Brown: Yeah.
Hugo Rodriguez: so so critical and cannot be done slapdash. Can't just be something you shoot, I I need to go you know build build some trust. You you need to do it from day one because there are gonna come times for those hard conversations, like you were saying, hey, you know what? You know, we're all gonna have to tighten our belts together. Or you we're the you know, we're in order for us to get these wins as a as a team, we're also gonna have to equally share in the cost of that. You know what I mean? So that is something that day one you need to be thinking about who are my who are my stakeholders, how can I connect with them and how can I build that trust? Because you're gonna need that trust in order to to get through the hard times as well as the good times.
Jen Brown: So I will share an example of when I didn't do that so so well. it was it was challenging in the middle of of some things that high level things that we had going on. And I didn't know exactly where my role was in reaching out to some of the stakeholders and trying to build trust in the middle of negotiating something difficult when you are on, when you have differing
Hugo Rodriguez: Mm.
Jen Brown: opinions is really hard. In hindsight, I wish I had invested. That time up front to figure out my role, who I needed to reach out to, and have those conversations before the event happened. And And and learn their communication style. One one thing that I even heard from someone at an event last night was, you know, I don't know how to communicate it cross-culturally. I I don't know how to connect with some US, you know, top level officials. And yeah, our communication style is very different, perhaps, than in other countries. And so figuring that stuff out up front before you're trying to negotiate, super. important so that you're not coming in frustrated that you can't connect.
Hugo Rodriguez: You just raised up for me a memory I had long so suppressed. And I'll see if I can capture this a little bit. So I don't even remember all of the the granular details, but one of my overseas postings, I was in a I guess a fairly high leadership position because I was brought in to a town hall. Somewhere outside Capitol. So I we we traveled out and I can't even picture how far or what what the what the reason was. But you know, they bring me into this room. Our our local sort of closer to the ground representatives are there, as well as some of the local government officials. And it's a mixed audience of some, you know, non-resident Americans who are living in the district, as well as some some folks from the local community as well. And it was meant to be a an air a chance to air, you know, concerns and and challenges that they were facing in the community. Man was in a hot reception, let me tell you. It very quickly devolved into members of the audience standing and shouting and pointing at the dais and pointing at all of us sitting up there. And I'm the outsider, like I've been pro sort of. brought into this scenario, I didn't have a chance beforehand to build trust with this community and
Jen Brown: Mm-hmm. Right.
Hugo Rodriguez: kind of put in the in the position of representing things that had happened before my time and outside of my you know control. But what you do in a situation like that is start right away to build common ground, right?
Jen Brown: Yes.
Hugo Rodriguez: I think you know what ended up happening in in this scenario was we basically made sure everybody knew we were there to listen, to take their concerns seriously, to do what we could to resolve the situation, if not immediately, then you know, moving forward. And you have to start by by you know investing in those folks and and really giving them the attention, right? Attention is is the heart of sort of love and care. And you just have to sit there. And we made sure, you know, we heard every single person who had a comment to make. We stayed until the very end. the the kinds of statements that I was making were basically like, this concerns me too. Let's talk about it. Tell me what's going on, help me understand so that people could feel seen and feel heard. And we did take it seriously. And we went back and and tried to correct some of the mistakes that had been made and tried to do it right. you know, it is it is hard as the leader when you're brought into that situation to not just like grab your stuff and run out of the room, like, wow, this wasn't my problem. Why do I have to face it? But
Jen Brown: Right.
Hugo Rodriguez: the the role is to to try to make it better and to be present to the extent you can make it better, to commit to doing that. Sometimes that's not going to be possible. But I think as as leaders, that is what we owe our constituents is to be attentive to their needs and even if it even if it got off on the wrong foot, find a
way to get back on the right foot.
Jen Brown: So much that you said I want to comment on here. So first what I'm really hearing are a couple of differences in how we engage with different types of stakeholders. One, the first one being that ongoing nature of collaborative work. So building a longer-term relationship. The second being more of that you're brought into a shorter-term engagement. And maybe that is a town hall, a speaking engagement, a training opportunity where you have that very condensed experience to build trust and doing it right away. And so from there, something that you said is being clear that I'm here to listen. I'm here, I understand this is going on. Help me understand more, right? Building that type of engagement. And I can tell you, like I where I live, there's a lot of a lot of development going on. And it's not unique to my neck of the woods in this country. People don't want more development. They don't want data centers. I'm not here
Hugo Rodriguez: Yeah.
Jen Brown: to get political. They don't want data centers in their backyard. So you don't want development, you don't want data centers, and it gets heated. And how in those types of situations, how do you build that trust and here to listen type of capacity is so important.
Hugo Rodriguez: data centers in their backyard. So the company's not can educate it. And how in those types of situations, how do we build that trust and limited type of capacity is so important.
Jen Brown: They, you know, when topics are emotional, it's easy for leaders to become defensive. It's easy
Hugo Rodriguez: They're really times our emotional easy for people to become a testament.
Jen Brown: for the people on the other side of the conversation to become defensive. It is the leader's job to diffuse that tension and be try as best as you can to create that open environment for people to talk and share as humans.
Hugo Rodriguez: Yeah, it that's that's right. And in in the example I gave, I was kind of brought in at the back end and I could easily say to myself, Well, this wasn't my problem, I didn't create it. But sometimes you do create it, right? Like sometimes a bad decision it
Jen Brown: Sometimes you do. Yeah.
Hugo Rodriguez: adversely impacts your stakeholders, and you've got to go in there and say, hey, my bad, right? Like I I I made a decision based on the information I had. Here was my my my thinking on this. But how can we make it better? Right. That humility, that ability to not put up defenses, but to be vulnerable and say, okay, you know, let's figure this out. One of the things that you kind of alluded to that I think is so important is your constituencies and your stakeholders are valuable in terms of their perspectives and their ideas, right? And again, when you go in with blinders and say, no, no, no, this is how we need to do this. You don't have all the information. You benefit by
Jen Brown: Right.
Hugo Rodriguez: by you know making sure you are connected so that you can
learn from your constituents and stakeholders. Because, like you may be thinking, This is this is what we're trying to accomplish. When you blow open your understanding and you're pulling in information from parties kind of outside of your bubble, you're gonna end up making a better decision. And it's gonna be
Jen Brown: Completely.
Hugo Rodriguez: it is gonna be easier and and clearer to share and to be transparent. And look, there's sometimes it's a catch 22. Sometimes there are no good answers, and you've got to make the best of a bad situation. Being transparent about that, I think, nine times out of ten at least helps people understand: okay, I may not have gotten what I wanted out of this, but I understand. The the the thinking that it went into it, it wasn't just some, you know, bureaucrat with a knee-jerk response, right? These are serious people trying to make good decisions. They took my pr my point of view into account. And you know, I have to I have to trust that this is going to work out. And if it doesn't, that they're gonna, you know, adjust and make make something work, right? That's the that's the key. Because when you're backed into a corner and you've gotta make chicken salad out of chicken shit. Being humble and transparent about the challenges of that, I think is the only way to go as a leader.
Jen Brown: So something that you said there brings me to that next thought of what does that follow-up conversation look like, right? You go in with the stakeholders, you have that conversation. That's not the end of it. That you know, the follow-up
Hugo Rodriguez: Mm.
Jen Brown: is where that trust continues to build because what were you able to come up with? You know, why maybe couldn't you go a certain way? Communication afterwards is also so important. And sometimes I think that gets dropped because we were there, we heard you, okay, we did this. You know, but ex explaining further shows that level of respect for here's where I got to. and I'm curious. What have you seen work, Hugo, in that follow-up piece?
Hugo Rodriguez: I would say the first thing you have to do is be willing to go back in and and and face it, right? Like again, as humans, we we tend to avoid painful scenarios and situations. And so you can always find something else to do with your time. And you know,
Jen Brown: yeah.
Hugo Rodriguez: if you're thinking, I'm gonna have to go back and deal with my stakeholders again and they're not gonna be happy about this, maybe I'll just go back.
Jen Brown: That's another hard conversation.
Hugo Rodriguez: Yeah, maybe I'll just do something else on my to-do list today, right?
Jen Brown: Right.
Hugo Rodriguez: That's not the role of leadership, right? The the like it's not all gonna be dessert. It's not all like lemon meringue pie for you. You're going to, as a leader, face those folks who who feel left behind and you have to un put yourself in their shoes. So make the time to go and sit with them. And explain, right? And again, I think that most people are willing to come along with you if you are willing to be transparent with them, even when you are not always doing exactly what they want you to do. If you can exp explain the why, and you better be able to explain the why, right? Like it.
Jen Brown: Right. Yeah.
Hugo Rodriguez: This is like leadership is really about being able to understand with some clarity the choices you are making and the reasons you're making them. And so why why keep that a secret? And
Jen Brown: Exactly.
Hugo Rodriguez: you and I lived in a world where there were a lot of things we could not talk about. And you know, that that is complicated. But to the extent that you are able to verbalize the decision that was made and the reasons for that decision, I think you need to be out there doing that, even if it's hard for you as a leader. Because like you said, this is this is trust. This is building that relationship for the long term, not for the short term. And I feel that is our responsibility as ethical leaders. I think we're we're definitely in the realm of being you know, ethical and taking hard moral decisions. And being responsible to the stakeholders, not just our team, not just our bosses, but as you look out across, whose lives are you affecting with these decisions? And you need
Jen Brown: Exactly.
Hugo Rodriguez: to be listening to them and understanding the impact as you make your decisions and then be willing to circle back and explain those decisions to the people for whom those decisions have an impact.
Jen Brown: So something that one of my one of my favorite mentors, bosses in the State Department always really honed in on the no surprises rule. And if you think about you don't want to be blindsided, right, by something going on that somebody else is doing in a world adjacent to yours and so forth. And Then when you take that time to be intentional and think about who are these stakeholders who in my world who would not want to be surprised and cultivate that relationship, have intentional conversations, do that follow-up, always with that thought in mind of I don't want to surprise anybody. I think that to me is how I view stakeholder engagement. It is a very intentional relationship, I'll say relationship in general to cultivate, just as important as cultivating that with your team and you know, up the ladder, down the ladder, however you look at it, but such an important component of where a leader's time needs to go.
Hugo Rodriguez: I totally agree. I totally agree. And the piece I would add is that your stakeholders are a really good source of of wisdom for you. Right. And if you are building that relationship, you're going to get better ideas, you're going to get better implementation when you are taking into consideration all of those other other people's issues, right? and so The humility it takes to be a good listener and to incorporate other people's points of view, I think is just a critical skill for leaders. And like I said before, sometimes you're you're gonna make unpopular decisions. Sometimes you're gonna make wrong decisions and you're gonna recognize that there was a better alternative that you didn't didn't perceive and a path you didn't take. Being able to back up and admit, you know what? That we could have done this better. We're gonna, we're gonna pivot now, you know. that's very, very hard, but it's such a critical leadership skill, I think, and gets under undervalued, you know, when we talk about leadership presence and and decisiveness and all of those things. You know, life is life is full of better alternatives and being open to that and being willing to embrace those on behalf of your stakeholders, I think is really important.
Jen Brown: Totally agree. They give you that outside perspective that sometimes our teams and people internally can't quite see. So such an important component to that. I I recently did a podcast, a post, a social media post on the power of exploring, right? Exploring new ideas. And that's exactly it. It helps you to get creative and and see things differently.
Hugo Rodriguez: Yeah.
Jen Brown: Hugo, thank you for this conversation today. I love the power of stakeholder engagement. It does help us to be stronger leaders. I loved it when you brought this idea forward. So thank you for this episode.
Hugo Rodriguez: Thank you. Thanks for letting us explore this. And I want to say to our to all of our leaders out there, embrace this, right? Like this is this is a way to make yourself a more effective leader and to serve a greater number of people, greater than just your, you know, the those in your wire diagram, right? there are there are so many great things to learn from your constituents, your stakeholders, your customers, right? Be present, make the time, be a good listener. be curious and it will make you a better leader and make your decisions serve a greater number of people. Thank you, Jen.
Jen Brown: Thank you.