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1. Introduction
This project provides guidance so you can effectively engage with your institution’s stakeholders to progress your programme’s objectives. It provides tips on how you can best position and present your programme to the wider sector and outlines tools and approaches to engage effectively with stakeholders. It encourages you to work in concert with your institution’s ecosystem to achieve programme goals.
You will learn:
- Key principles and approaches for nurturing stakeholder relationships
- How to develop a stakeholder engagement strategy
- How to sustain your stakeholder engagement for the future.
Why should you work with stakeholders?
Stakeholders can help you to:
- Add knowledge, resources and economic value to a project
- Identify, understand and resolve problems
- Diversify viewpoints and processes as part of your policy settings
- Support co-design and innovations
- Understand different participant contributions in projects and research
- Foster trust and relationships (whanaunga) that focus on international student experience
- Enhance your organisation’s opportunities to recruit potential partners
- Identify collective benefits (mahi tahi)
- Share responsibility for workloads, project reviews and outcomes
- Provide a broader national narrative, e.g. ENZ’s Think New campaign.
Stakeholder engagement can also strengthen your capacity to comply with the Education Code of Practice.
Reflection question
Think about the stakeholders with whom your institution currently works. What value do they provide to your international programme?
2. Who are your stakeholders?
Your stakeholders are those individuals or organisations who have an interest in your institution’s activities. They may invest in or share responsibility for your offerings. They may include homestay families, community service providers, education agents, as well as existing and potential partners.
The NZ Education Code of Practice 2021 describes stakeholders as “learners, staff, whānau, local communities, employers, iwi, and others who share a meaningful interest in the wellbeing and safety of learners enrolled with the provider.”(p.10) A key principle for forming stake-holder relationships is mahi tahi and kotahitanga: collective benefits and shared aspirations.
Stakeholders can contribute to marketing, student services, teaching and pastoral support whilst also providing ideas and guidance for your institution’s programmes. In turn, your institution can provide stakeholders with profile and marketing exposure, and rich relationships and productive activities.
Your stakeholders can comprise a diverse network across global, local, cultural and professional groups, each with specific priorities and resources.
It is good to be aware of your stakeholders’ key interests and kaupapa. For example, use guidelines that set out appropriate terms when engaging with Māori.
Under these guidelines, effective engagement should lead to:
- A greater understanding of one another’s expectations and aspirations
- Increased opportunities to co-design processes and systems
- Increased opportunities to establish shared projects and programmes, and
- Improved process based on understanding of one another’s priorities, expectations and available resources.
Who are typical international education stakeholders?
While your stakeholders will be unique to your institution, institutions engaged in international education will have a range of typical stakeholders. Check out these typical stakeholders and consider what relationships your institution has with each stakeholder group.
A Framework of Stakeholder Engagement
Exercise: Map your stakeholders
A jamboard is an excellent way for you to identify and map your stakeholders, and make individual connections between them. Use this jamboard to brainstorm your current and potential stakeholders, and identify links. Can current stakeholders help connect you to potential new stakeholders?
3. How do you engage with your stakeholders?
Now that you have identified your stakeholders, think about how you will develop relationships with them. Understand that you are likely to engage with each stakeholder group in different ways. You may also have different motivations and objectives for the relationship.
First considerations should include the following:
- Understand your ‘why’
- Take time to understand your stakeholders
- Assess the level of stakeholder interest in your programme
3.1 Understand your ‘why’
It’s important that you take time to understand why you want to engage and how opportunities and mutual benefits might emerge.
Across your stakeholders, you will likely find significant diversity in culture, age, gender and social perspectives. Ask yourself:
- What benefits can your stakeholders bring to your programme?
- What benefit might your programme have for your stakeholders?
- What kind of relationship do you want to nurture in the process of stakeholder engagement?
- How will your students benefit from this process?
3.2. Take time to understand your stakeholders
Understanding your stakeholders involves an ongoing process of learning and adapting. Groups and individuals are likely to change, and commit to your programme in different ways and at different times. This can be challenging, but the dynamic nature of these relationships can be positive for you and your team.
Read the scenario below. It describes the connection between an education institution and stakeholders in the initial stages of their relationship.
SCENARIO
A business school decides to establish a Work Integrated Learning (WIL) programme. They seek to enhance the benefits of their courses to students by offering them opportunities to gain professional experience and develop employability skills such as communication, teamwork, leadership, negotiation and problem-solving. A network of local organisations and community groups will be encouraged to employ international students or take them on as volunteers.
An initial informal meeting is called on campus with invited guests, refreshments and a speaker to introduce the idea. Following the meeting, stakeholders are asked to provide feedback to the faculty coordinator through a set of survey questions. The coordinator analyses the feedback and presents the summary table to guide the framing for their next meeting.
Look at the stakeholder comments in this summary of the meeting. Consider how you would respond to the comments and issues raised by each stakeholder. (You can click on the school’s suggested strategy for inspiration).
Note that the stakeholder comments are potential roadblocks to your programme. Your attention to stakeholder perceptions and your responses are important.
Exercise:
In this exercise, reflect on your own stakeholders. What do they want from the relationship with your institution? What can they offer your programme? What can you offer them? What is the mahi tahi - the collective benefits? Use this table to consider each of your stakeholders:
3.3 Assess stakeholder interest in your programme
Stakeholders can vary in their level of interest and engagement in your programme. It can therefore be useful to assess their potential commitment. This can be a simple process and completed using a rating scale such as the one in the exercise below.
Try assessing the support that your stakeholders might offer, or have the capacity to offer, and the support that you might expect from them, e.g. What are their current support ratings? What further support are they likely to offer? What is their level of power or influence?
4. Principles of stakeholder engagement
A strategy is an action plan with a number of components: a focus on customer/client/student experience, operational matters that include the people and processes involved in the plan, and your aspirations to transform your programme and your institution. In the case of stakeholder engagement, this means that your stakeholders are integral to the effectiveness of your strategy.
Consider the guiding principles below as a practical way to help build your engagement strategy.
- Think about where you are and where you want to be
Your stakeholders can help you build a strategic roadmap, and join you on the road. Your engagement strategy will be more successful as a co-design process, where your stakeholders are involved from the beginning of your goal setting. Here is a useful report describing the practical elements of establishing shared goals and working collaboratively.
- Reflect on your position as a practitioner
What do you understand about the cultural, social and ethical perspectives of your stakeholders? This understanding is critical to how you will manage your stakeholder relationships. In a schools context, Helen Timperley and Viviane Robinson (2002) have advised, “In order for partners to learn from each other, each partner must seek information about the other’s perspectives and adopt a critical stance towards their own views”
- Decide on the best ways to communicate with your stakeholders
When, how often and for what reason. See more about methods and techniques of stakeholder engagement in Section 4 below.
- Know the resources available to you and to your stakeholders, including:
- the limitations on what you can expect in your stakeholder engagement
- whether you need funding for your ideas
- if your stakeholders are able to provide in-kind or financial support
- who (in your team, and in your stakeholder group) has background knowledge or can gather evidence on which to base your activity plans
- Understand the knowledge and cultural experience your stakeholders bring as contributors and partners. This is essential to practising appropriate communication approaches, for example, in your:
- human interactions
- communication values
- sensitivity to the social impacts of what you are trying to achieve in your programme.
- Embed core values into your strategy and into your principles of engagement that are communicated and understood. In a New Zealand context, these might include the following values that embody partnership:
- manaaki - kindness or the reciprocity of goodwill
- whanaunga - our connectedness or shared sense of humanity
- mahi tahi and kotahitanga - collective benefits and shared aspiration
- kaitiaki – your responsibilities as protectors and stewards of our intergenerational wellbeing.
- Establish terms of engagement
Terms of engagement conditions of a contract or agreement. They included the rules that people agree to when working with each other. They can set down what is expected of the stakeholders during a project and what the institution will provide in relation to resources, communication and programme management.
For example, consider these principles for working with iwi Māori as partners, from the Office for Māori Crown Relations – Te Arawhiti:
- Build the relationship before focusing on the work
- Plan together from the start
- Value each parties’ contribution and knowledge
- Ensure outcomes are meaningful to all parties
- Be open, be flexible and accept risk
- Share decision-making.
- Be open to your stakeholders and their ways of engaging. Develop an open-mindedness to different modus operandi.
For example:
- Recognise that Māori knowledge systems, creation stories, proverbs, oral histories and stories provide culturally empowering ways to generate discussion and insights from Māori whānau and communities (Te Morenga et. al. 2018, p.97).
- Be prepared to hear the views raised – ‘some of which [may be] hard to hear – are shared within a spirit of concern and respect for the future…’ (Temmerman, 2018)
- Develop your cultural awareness when working with diverse groups of students and stakeholders, by being curious about the ways different people engage.
- Incorporate a review process
Your review process helps you to measure outcomes, monitor the process of stakeholder engagement and ensure your terms of engagement are being followed. This includes reporting on your engagements and stakeholder feedback, documentation and recommendations for further development.
For future discussion of review processes, see Review your programme
5. How do you develop a stakeholder engagement strategy?
Each institution is different in relation to their location, local communities, student cohorts and interactions. At the same time, there are common elements and approaches you can use to develop your stakeholder engagement strategy. These include:
- Developing models to represent your strategy
- Identifying good practice examples relevant to your activities
- Implementing innovative practice by
- understanding issues
- communicating effectively, and
- maintaining your focus on outcomes.
5.1. Modelling your strategy
Having a model to represent your strategy provides you and your stakeholders with a mutual understanding of the components of the relationship and your shared aspirations. It can also be used to explain your strategy to others, such as in presentations.
Consider the model below to construct your own stakeholder engagement plan.
Look at each of the three sectors of the model using content you have seen in this topic. For each sector, complete details below that are relevant to your own programme.
Sector 1 (light blue): analyse (understand and know) your stakeholders
Sector 2 (dark blue): create alignment (share your expectations and requirements with like-minded people)
Sector 3 (yellow): activate (and sustain) engagement
Develop your next steps by completing the practical activities in the checklist below.
5.2. Find good practice examples
Invite your stakeholder group to share their experience of what works for them and for their students.
Look at the example below of stakeholder engagement based on research that can be applied to international students and employment:
Mikayla Thompson and Tze Ming Mok (2021) reviewed literature, evaluations and practice-based evidence to help teams engage with employers on workforce development and career progression projects. They suggest employers should get on board with:
- Equity targets or goals in employment
- Involvement in planning, design and delivery of equity-driven pre-employment training
- Pathways for disadvantaged job seekers into well-paid jobs with holistic post-employment support
- Employee development and long-term career progression support.
5.3. Reflective exercise: identify good practice
The case study below demonstrates how stakeholder engagement works successfully in a student ambassador programme. Think of student ambassadors as ‘bridge builders, intercultural connectors or intermediaries’ .
Read the story and reflect on the accompanying questions.
The Study Northland Student Ambassador programme works with a group of engaged international and domestic students providing opportunities for them to strongly connect with Northland’s culture, environment and community. Ambassadors have been selected from nine Northland schools and the ITP NorthTec and there are currently students from 10 different countries including New Zealand.
Student ambassadors are helping to co-design the programme, encompassing Northland activities, workshops and collaborations with local businesses and charities, all aimed at empowering them to think and act globally. There is a strong emphasis on ambassadors sharing their experiences on Study Northland’s digital channels, creating a library of authentic student-generated content to promote Northland’s study offering to both international education and students from other regions in New Zealand.
Ambassadors will have opportunities to represent their country and their school at a range of Northland events. During Business Challenge Days, students will collaborate with educational and tourism activity providers in the region.
https://www.studynorthland.nz/article/student-ambassador-program/
Put yourself in the position of coordinator of the programme in the case study above and answer the questions below:
What benefits are there for:
a) international students as participants
b) the institution
c) external stakeholders?
What do you consider could be the key challenges involved in stakeholder management with this programme? How would you respond to those challenges?
What might be possible threats to longer term sustainability of the programme?
Think about how you, as a coordinator, can lead the programme described above to a stronger and innovative future.
5.4 Prioritise effective communication
Effective communication underpins stakeholder engagement. However passionately you believe in your new idea or improving a current project, getting your stakeholders on board requires clear and (often) persuasive communication.
Look at these five communication strategies adapted from the Centre for Creative Leadership, to increase participation in ideas and enhance motivation.
Be mindful of broader outcomes in your professional practice. For example:
- Providing a high quality and rounded education for both international and domestic students
- Developing policy and programmes that encourage students’ capacity, including as representatives, ambassadors and global citizens
- Focussing on trends and changes in the international education sector
How stakeholder engagement can transform ‘the human, social and economic condition of the society it is embedded in’ (Temmerman, 2018).
6. How do you sustain your stakeholder engagement strategy?
Developing a stakeholder engagement strategy is one thing; sustaining it is another. In this section, you will see some tips leaders can use to maintain longer-term relationships with stakeholders.
Because stakeholders may play a vital role in your programme, building sustainability strategies into the plan can ensure relationships are secured for the longer term. Your engagement should include:
- a commitment to mahi tahi and kotahitanga: collective benefits and shared aspirations
- regular and open consultation
- monitoring of progress and sharing with participants
- measuring of progress and identifying issues
- recording interactions and achievements
- problem-solving, including enabling participants with problem-solving skills.
Think about what steps you would put in place in your own workplace to mitigate or manage these elements.
Some more sustainability tips are described below.
Identify and respond to roadblocks
You saw the potential barriers to your initial stakeholder engagement in the scenario at Section 3B . This should help you to anticipate barriers and get the programme on the right track. There’s more work to do however, in managing roadblocks for sustainable engagement.
Have you experienced a programme that has run for a short term but has floundered due to:
- Limited resources
- Staff /personnel turnover
- Changes in your institutional management and/or commitments?
Some of these obstacles may be beyond your control. However, part of your challenge as an innovative leader is to manage possible roadblocks, resistance, and the consequential risks to stakeholder relationships.
Below are some suggestions for maintaining stakeholder engagement in the longer term.
Working on being agile and adaptable
During the COVID pandemic (and through other major disasters) all international education programmes were disrupted. Wrike offers work management approaches that are current, agile and adaptable in a disruptive work climate. They suggest that you: “listen to your stakeholders and strive to meet their needs — difficult or not. Ensuring they're feeling heard, valued, and appreciated grows trust and support.”
This means that you have a role to play in helping your stakeholders feel part of your programme so they can understand your challenges while also being supported to meet the terms of engagement you have set down together.
Maintain leadership trust
The Centre for Creative Leadership argues that “To inspire trust from others, leaders need to also show trust in them.” Keep stakeholders connected by maintaining leadership trust.
You can maintain trust in your leadership by inviting conversation about shared or mutually connected experiences. Facilitate regular meetings⎯however they might work⎯in person, online, or by hybrid means. If it is not possible to meet with your stakeholders individually and in person, online meetings and updates keep communications open.
Monitor and record stakeholder engagement
Signatories to the Education Code of Practice have obligations for managing and monitoring their education agents and other stakeholders. This is to ensure the wellbeing and safety of learners. More specifically:
Providers must work proactively with learners and stakeholders (and document this work) when developing their learner wellbeing and safety strategic goals and strategic plans.
Providers must gather and communicate relevant information across their organisation (including student accommodation) and from relevant stakeholders to accurately identify emerging concerns about learners’ wellbeing and safety or behaviour and take all reasonable steps to connect learners quickly to culturally appropriate social, medical, and mental health services. Education Code of Practice (pp.8-9).
Monitoring and recording is part of your programme review (See 4i), and is invaluable when improving your processes, handing over to new people and learning from experience as you begin new programmes.
Stay curious, be innovative
When you feel you already know the answer, there’s no curiosity
The Centre for Creative Leadership urges leaders to ask, What if? or How might we do something different? They shift their focus from, There’s no way we can do that! to I wonder how we could make that happen.
Here are some further approaches to organisational innovation:
International Association for Public Participation (IAP), showcases projects, awards and conference resources
The Centre for Creative Leadership
How to Foster an Innovative Mindset at Your Organization (2020) outlines attributes of leaders with innovative mindsets - those who:
- Have curiosity
- Are able to tolerate ambiguity
- Practice affirmative judgment and
- Show persistence.
Know how to manage difficult stakeholders
Stakeholder engagement is often complex. Different opinions about the progress and management of your programme can present roadblocks that are time-consuming and use energy to resolve.
This article from Wrike on how to manage conflict and criticism offers practical tips on how to manage difficult stakeholder relationships.
Maintain your / your team’s abilities: develop a Skills Bank
As you saw above, Identifying, engaging and managing stakeholder relationships is a key skill for you as an innovative leader. Prepare a skills bank; match skills you need for your programme and the people who can offer those skills.
There are several relevant skills you can develop to support your stakeholder engagement. Below, consider the broad skills that are relevant to stakeholder engagement. These are described in detail in Topic 4.6 Foster professional practice.
Do you have these skills? How might you develop them?
- Research and information gathering
- Nurturing an innovative mindset
- Monitoring and managing third parties such as education agents
- Communication skills across diverse groups. See Intercultural models for education contexts
- Negotiation, problem solving, consultation. These skills are best learnt through training; the links provide you with some options
In addition, check out the references for this topic.
7. Conclusion
In this project you explored principles and practical suggestions for your programme. Stakeholders are integral to success at every stage: talking about ideas, gathering expertise and diverse viewpoints, and establishing relationships that will support your international students and staff development in various ways. Developing mahi tahi (a sense of partnership) will help to consolidate your capacity to positively collaborate.
Using the material in each section as a basis for your stakeholder engagement strategy will assist in your Code compliance and your institution’s quality of services.
As with any other student voice tool, comparing interview and focus group data alongside other information about international student voices and experiences will show how those sets of information confirm or challenge each other. Bringing sets of information together creates fuller pictures of the international student experience.
8. References
Centre for Creative Leadership. (November 2020). How to Foster an Innovative Mindset at Your Organization. https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/how-do-you-respond-to-a-new-idea/
Centre for Creative Leadership. (November 2020). Why You Should Collaborate Across Boundaries. https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/boundary-spanning-the-leadership-advantage/
Centre for Creative Leadership. (July 2021). Why Leadership Trust Is Critical in Times of Change and Disruption. Retrieved at: https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/why-leadership-trust-is-critical-in-times-of-change-and-disruption/
Guidelines for engagement with Māori (n.d). https://www.tearawhiti.govt.nz/assets/Maori-Crown-Relations-Roopu/6b46d994f8/Engagement-Guidelines-1-Oct-18.pdf
International Association for Public Participation. (2019). Innovation in Community Development. Retrieved at: https://iap2.org.au/news/innovation-in-community-engagement/
Mark, S., and Hagen, P. (2020). Co-design in Aotearoa New Zealand: a snapshot of the literature, Auckland Co-design Lab, Auckland Council. https://www.aucklandco-lab.nz/reports-summary/co-design-in-aotearoa-new-zealand-a-snapshot-of-the-literature
McGrath, T., & Butcher, A. (2004). International Students in New Zealand: Needs and Responses. International Education Journal Vol 5, No 4.
Monash University. (2023). Alumni. https://www.monash.edu/alumni
NauMai NZ (2023). Housing. https://naumainz.studyinnewzealand.govt.nz/help-and-advice/housing
New Zealand Government. (4 February 2021). Inaugural Foreign Policy Speech to Diplomatic Corps. https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/inaugural-foreign-policy-speech-diplomatic-corps
New Zealand Ministry of Education (2021). Education (Pastoral Care of Tertiary and International Learners) Code of Practice 2021. https://www.education.govt.nz/further-education/information-for-tertiary-students/code-of-practice-pastoral-care-domestic-tertiary/
New Zealand National Commission. (June 2021). Global Citizenship Education Resources and Guides. https://unesco.org.nz/knowledge-hub/global-citizenship-education-resources-and-guides
New Zealand Education. (2022) Intellilab. Student Numbers.https://intellilab.enz.govt.nz/student-numbers/
NCUK. (2021). International Foundation Year. https://www.reddamhouse.com/education/ncuk
Pala, S. (2019). Improving student experience outcomes across New Zealand through research, partnership and digital delivery. Conference Proceedings of the 30th ISANA International Education Association, Melbourne.
Schollum-whaanga, d., Goodwin. D., Hagen. P., Albarrán gonzález, d., Joyce, m., & Kayla Burke (2020). Māori co-design ethics hui summary report. Ngā aho inc soc: Auckland. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f1e3bad68df2a40e2e0baaa/t/6126006fc969a878366d1e31/1629880501160/NgaAho-Tuakana-Teina_AuckCo-Lab_Summary-FINAL.pdf
Timperley, H., & Robinson, V. (2002). Partnerships: Accomplishing important work together. set: Research Information for Teachers, 3. 42.
The Office for Māori Crown Relations website. https://www.tearawhiti.govt.nz/assets/Tools-and-Resources/Building-closer-partnerships-with-Maori-Principles.pdf
University of Auckland. (n.d.). The Chancellor’s Circle. https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/giving/our-donors/the-chancellor-s-circle.html
Professional Development Training. (2023). Problem Solving and Decision Making Training Course. https://pdtraining.co.nz/courses/problem-solving-and-decision-making-training-course
New Zealand Institute of Management and Leadership. (n.d.). Negotiation Skills. https://www.nzimleadership.co.nz/programmes/66/464/negotiation-skills
Study Northland. (n.d.). Student ambassador program. https://www.studynorthland.nz/article/student-ambassador-program/
Temmerman, N. (13 April 2018). The importance of listening to university stakeholders. University World News. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20180410151237739
Te Morenga, L., Pekepo, C., Corrigan, C., Matoe, L., Mules, R., Goodwin, D., Dymus, J., Tunks, M., Grey, J., Humphrey, G., Jull, A., Whittaker, R., Verbiest, M., Firestone, R., Ni Mhurchu, C. 2018. Co-designing an mHealth tool in the Aotearoa New Zealand Māori community with a “Kaupapa Māori” approach. AlterNative 14 (1), 90-99.
Thompson, M., & Ming Mok, T. (2021). Evidence Brief: Employer Engagement Auckland Co-Design Lab. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f1e3bad68df2a40e2e0baaa/t/6232e081892cdf72acd68cb8/1647501445021/CSI+EVIDENCE+BRIEF_+EMPLOYER+ENGAGEMENT.pdf
Victoria University of Wellington.(2022). Wellington Global Exchange. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/student-exchange/partner-universities
Victoria University of Wellington.(n.d.). Get ready to study. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/international/get-ready-to-study/accommodation
Wrike. (2022). 4 Strategies for dealing with difficult stakeholders. https://www.wrike.com/blog/4-strategies-dealing-difficult-stakeholders/#Whose-role-is-it-to-manage-stakeholders-on-a-project
