Stakeholder Whispering: Uncover What People Need Before Doing What They Ask
Are you tired of half-baked stakeholder requests, vague project goals, and endless revisions? Do your leaders demand specific deliverables, assuming they will magically solve their problems? Do your bosses throw around buzzwords like "data-driven decision-making" but rarely get to the right decisions?
This is because people don't know what they actually need, they just know what they think they want. You need to cut through the noise, ask the right questions, and uncover underlying needs to stop being an order-taker and start driving real impact.
You don't need more tools or another leadership framework. You need to learn how to ask better questions, challenge assumptions, and guide stakeholders toward real solutions before misalignment costs you time, money, and missed opportunities. You need a new way of thinking about stakeholder conversations: Stakeholder Whispering.
In this entertaining talk, Bill Shander enlightens people on the art of stakeholder conversations that uncover real needs, challenge assumptions to reduce bad decisions, and deliver results that improve organizational performance and your career.
Attendees will leave the session with a changed view of the nature of their relationship with stakeholders. Instead of being order-takers, they need to be strategic partners. They will also have specific techniques they can implement to begin to hold the more strategic conversations required to have this type of relationship.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Recognize that the default, intuitive response is driving every decision we make.
- Conduct a conversation with stakeholders to investigate the default response to uncover the real needs driving requests.
- Recognize when a real underlying need has been discovered.
Bill Shander: Author, Educator, and Information Designer
Bill Shander is an author, educator, and information designer, helping clients turn their data into compelling visual and often interactive experiences. He teaches data storytelling, information design, and data visualization on LinkedIn Learning (2M+ learners reached!), and in workshops around the world. Clients include the World Bank, Starbucks, multiple U.S. Government agencies, Big Four firms, and many more household names across a spectrum of industries. He is a keynote speaker and has lectured for graduate and undergraduate students at Harvard, Northeastern, UVM, and other universities across the United States. His first book, Stakeholder Whispering, was published by Wiley in 2025.
