Six key steps for stakeholder engagement

By Khara Grieger, Kimberly Bourne, Alison Deviney and Nourou Barry.

How can you systematically plan stakeholder engagement? What are the key issues that need to be considered? What guiding questions can help? 

STEP 1: Identify and clarify engagement goals

Spend time at the beginning of the engagement process to clearly identify why you are engaging with stakeholders. Common goals include sharing knowledge or information; collecting insights, perspectives, or information from stakeholders; and co-creating or co-designing solutions. Other potential goals may include building trust and improving transparency, enhancing collaborations and partnerships, and improving the implementation of decisions.

Your ability to engage will depend on the time and resources available. The broader context (eg., participants’ socioeconomic status, ability to participate, cultural norms) can heavily influence the setting of engagement goals.

Useful guiding questions include:

• What are you trying to achieve by engaging stakeholders? How can stakeholders also benefit from participating?
• How much time and resources are available?
• Are there certain social, cultural, or economic contexts that could influence the success of the engagement process?

STEP 2: Identify, characterise and recruit stakeholders

In identifying the type and total number of stakeholders to involve, it is useful to take into account contextual factors such as the goals of the engagement activity, the broader environment in which the engagement occurs, and time and resource constraints.

Stakeholders (both individuals and groups) can be characterized according to their ability to affect or be affected by a given project, decision, activity, or event, differing needs or perspectives, sectors (eg., industry, government), geographies, areas of expertise or interests, and so on.

You can use various approaches to recruit stakeholders such as:

• self-selection where stakeholders can volunteer via announcements or advertisements
• referrals from consultants or other stakeholders or experts
• snowballing, a form of chain sampling in which an initial group of “seed” stakeholders leverages their networks to recommend additional participants.

Useful guiding questions include:

• Which stakeholders are important to engage to achieve the identified goals?
• How can targeted stakeholders be reached and recruited?

STEP 3: Develop stakeholder engagement process and activities

Many options are available, depending on the goals of the engagement. For example, you can:

• share information through outreach activities, such as posters at public events, science museum exhibits, and agricultural extension events
• collect stakeholder insights through surveys, interviews, and focus groups
• co-create knowledge or solutions with stakeholders through collaborative working groups or advisory boards.

For some processes and activities, a trained facilitator may be helpful. Compensation for participation can also be important for individual stakeholders and for stakeholder organizations, including financial honoraria, recognition, access to new or different information, and opportunities for networking.

Useful guiding questions include:

• Which activities engage stakeholders in a way that meets the goals, within the time and resources available?
• Do you need a trained facilitator to accomplish the goals?
• Do you need to recompense stakeholders for their participation in the engagement activities? And if so, what kind of recompense is appropriate and valued by stakeholders?

STEP 4: Conduct the stakeholder engagement process

In addition to including all relevant stakeholders and encouraging active participation, implementing a system or approach for monitoring and adapting is important to assess how well the engagement is proceeding in real time. This can help you check that engagement activities are on track, desired outcomes are being achieved, and all participants are fully included.

Useful guiding questions include:

• Can real-time monitoring be implemented during activities to stay on track?
• Are adjustments needed to maintain or encourage participation?

STEP 5: Compile and synthesize results generated by the engagement

This step is particularly relevant if you collect stakeholder insights through surveys, interviews, or focus groups and involves organizing, analyzing, and synthesizing qualitative and/or quantitative results.

You may wish to share results with stakeholder participants or, in some cases, allow participants to review quotes or transcripts from their own interviews. This checking practice can enhance the validity and credibility of research findings and outcomes. Acknowledging the stakeholders engaged in the activity may also be important. Confidentiality and privacy need to be considered for all of these processes.

Useful guiding questions include:

• What results or information should be compiled and synthesized afterward?
• Should these be shared with participants? If so, do aspects of confidentiality and privacy need to be considered?

STEP 6: Reflect and revise, improve future engagement processes

This determines whether the engagement activities conducted achieved the goals. Other important considerations to reflect upon include whether the ‘right’ stakeholder participants were involved, and to identify possible biases and areas for improvement.

Useful guiding questions include:

• Did the engagement activities achieve the goals?
• Were the “right” stakeholders engaged?
• Did the outcome fit expectations? How should the engagement activities be improved in the future?

Conclusions

Our work was based on research about phosphorus sustainability and we are interested in whether the six steps we have identified also resonate with those working on other kinds of problems. Are there other issues you include in planning stakeholder engagement? Are there specific tools that you have found helpful?

To find out more:

Grieger, K., Barry, N., Bourne, K., Deviney, A., Elser, J. J., Scholz, M. and Jones, J. L. (2025). Engaging stakeholders in phosphorus sustainability: Challenges, lessons learned, and implications for addressing other wicked problems. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 13, 1: 00060. (Online – open access): https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/13/1/00060/213265

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)

Biography: Khara Grieger PhD is an assistant professor in Environmental Health and Risk Assessment at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. She also serves as co-Director of Knowledge Transfer for the Science and Technologies for Phosphorus Sustainability (STEPS) Center, as well as Associate Director of Outreach and Engagement for the Bezos Center on Sustainable Protein, and Deputy Director of the Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center. Her work focuses on risk governance of emerging technologies, as well as stakeholder engagement to inform decisions and support practices of responsible innovation.

Biography: Kimberly Bourne PhD is a project coordinator with the GRAD-AID for Ag (Graduate Training in Translational Convergent Research – Harnessing AI and Data Science for Sustainable Agriculture) program at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. She focuses on developing tools, methods, and workshops to increase convergence capacity in cross-disciplinary teams. She is also interested in using team science, novel modelling, and stakeholder engagement methods to improve environmental decision-making.

Biography: Alison Deviney PhD is a postdoctoral scholar with the Science and Technologies for Phosphorus Sustainability (STEPS) Center at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. She works with various teams on convergence research, education and knowledge transfer. Her broader interests include applying systems thinking, team science, and stakeholder engagement to support a resilient future.

Biography: Nourou Barry PhD is a postdoctoral research scholar at the Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. As an anthropologist, he studies the societal, ethical, and policy implications of emerging technologies across sectors including agriculture, the environment, and public health. His work involves engaging stakeholders and empirically studying these interactions to generate social insights that directly inform both technological projects and policy development.