How do you map stakeholders when you start a new leadership role?

The short answer

List the people and groups your results depend on, give each a rough rating for how much influence they have over your success and how much they care about it, and use the result to decide who to meet first and how often. Ten minutes on a page is enough to start.

Stakeholder mapping sounds like project-management jargon, but the idea is ordinary: you cannot talk to everyone, so you choose.

Step 1: List

Write down everyone who could help or hinder what the role must deliver. Think in four directions:

• Up: your manager, their manager, any sponsor or board member.
• Across: peers whose work yours depends on, or who depend on yours.
• Down: your team and the leaders just below you.
• Outside: key customers, suppliers, regulators or partners.

Include people who are not senior but matter, such as an experienced finance partner who knows how budget decisions really get made.

Step 2: Rate

A well-known tool for this is the power-interest grid, often called Mendelow’s matrix. For each person, ask two questions:

• Power: how much can they affect whether the role succeeds?
• Interest: how much do they care about what you are doing?

You do not need numbers. High or low is enough. Place each person in one of four boxes:

| | Low interest | High interest |

| --- | --- | --- |

| High power | Keep satisfied: short but complete briefings, and no surprises | Manage closely: regular two-way conversation |

| Low power | Monitor: light-touch, general updates | Keep informed: share news and ask for views |

Step 3: Decide who to see, and how

Use the boxes to plan your first four to six weeks:

• Manage closely: book time in the first fortnight. Ask what they need from you and what they worry about. Agree how you will stay in touch, such as a standing 30-minute catch-up.
• Keep satisfied: these are the people who can cause trouble if surprised. Meet once early, then update them before decisions that affect them.
• Keep informed: include them in team briefings or a short regular note. Ask for their views.
• Monitor: do not ignore them, but do not spend scarce time. Review the map in a month.

Step 4: Check your guesses

Your first map is a set of guesses. Test them in your first conversations: “Who else should I talk to?” is one of the most useful questions you can ask, and it often adds names you missed. Anyone mentioned by several people is worth meeting.

Check your assumptions about people you inherited reputations for. A colleague described as difficult may simply have been under-informed. Wait until you have your own evidence before deciding.

Common mistakes

• Only mapping senior people. The person who controls a key system or process can matter more than a director.
• Treating the map as fixed. Positions change. Review it every month or so, and when something significant happens in the business.
• Mapping only to manage, not to learn. The map is more useful if it also tells you what you need to learn from each person.
• Writing labels you cannot defend. Keep personal impressions private and record observable needs and dependencies.

A caution about "managing" people

The word “stakeholder” can sound like treating people as objects. Used well, mapping does the opposite: it makes sure you spend time with people you would otherwise overlook, and that the quiet people with a real stake get heard.

If you are finding the number of relationships overwhelming and it is affecting your sleep or health, talk to your GP; NHS Talking Therapies in England accepts self-referrals. Coaching can help you prioritise, but it is not therapy.

This article is general information, not professional advice.

Sources

• Aubrey Mendelow's power-interest grid (stakeholder mapping). Accessed 2026-10-02.

Read next

• What should a new director focus on in the first 90 days?First months · 4 min read
• How do you build a working relationship with a new boss?Relationships · 4 min read