Your Stakeholders Aren't Ignoring You - You're Just Speaking Different Languages

Authored By Bernard Agrest

Let me know if this sounds familiar...

You’re leading a critical initiative that spans multiple functions and dozens of stakeholders. Despite everyone’s best intentions, the project is stuck in a loop of “urgent” and “critical” requests, responding to emails and Slack, and attending half a dozen meetings that could have been handled via email.

When you try to connect with stakeholders to understand what needs to be done to move the project forward, you discover that everything is a priority, preventing you from identifying what truly matters to project success.

A root issue? Using the same language, “urgent”, “important", “critical”, to mean different things. As project leaders, it’s our responsibility to understand our stakeholders' perspectives, not just our project priorities. Often, our stakeholders find themselves in challenging situations. They’re still being measured on their team’s performance while being asked to loan out their capacity to your project. Of course, every request feels urgent! By working to establish a common vocabulary, you develop shared ground and create the conditions for long-term success for both your project and their function.

So, how do we do this?

Introducing the Eisenhower Matrix

After a decade of leading complex projects and exploring many frameworks, I’ve found that the Eisenhower Matrix stands out for its effectiveness, simplicity, and practicality. At its core, the Matrix helps teams distinguish and define two critical factors a task might fall under:

• Urgent: Tasks that demand immediate attention due to deadlines or external pressure. These often spark a frenzy of reactive activity as quick responses are needed to avoid long-term negative consequences.
• Important: Tasks that drive core project outcomes and strategic objectives. These might not demand attention today, but are crucial for long-term success.

Below is a clear visual breakdown of the Matrix that you can reference in your day-to-day. It references real examples that I’ve seen across projects and includes specific actions you can take for each type of work.

A Project Manager's Eisenhower Matrix

The power of this Matrix isn’t just in categorizing tasks; it’s in helping transform the decision-making process. By creating shared definitions of ‘urgent’ and ‘important,’ you gain the leverage needed to protect project health when competing priorities inevitably arise. And when you consistently make the time to understand your stakeholders' perspective and build this together, four powerful benefits emerge:

1. Time Protection: Recognizing and managing different types of demands will help you safeguard yourself and your team's time for what truly matters
2. Team Alignment: Clear prioritization reduces frustration, helps teams feel more in control, and drives outcomes.
3. Risk Management: Spotting issues early, recognizing risk patterns, and developing clear escalation frameworks ahead of time
4. Decision Boundaries: Understanding and agreeing with stakeholders on what you can decide independently versus when input is required

4 Tactics to Implement with Your Teams

However, let’s be realistic for a moment: understanding this framework and getting your team to implement it are two distinctly different things. Before taking any action, it is essential to establish trust with your stakeholders and ensure that you’re aligned on the need for a shared language. And, once you get their attention, you’ll need to make sure that they immediately see the value in it. If you can’t provide some initial value immediately, your stakeholders might lose interest.

Here are four scaffolded tactics I’ve successfully used across roles:

1. Link to Business Outcomes

Establish the real financial cost of poor prioritization to your leaders. Use them sparingly, but meeting-cost calculators can deliver a powerful wake-up call about how much time and money are being wasted when priorities aren’t clear. When you can demonstrate to leadership that misaligned priorities have a significant opportunity cost, they’ll be more interested in finding a better approach.

2. Run a Priority Mapping Workshop

Now that your leaders are engaged, facilitate a session when stakeholders map their requests on the Eisenhower Matrix. Use this time to build a shared understanding of how language is currently being used and present an opportunity for stakeholders to determine for themselves if definitions should be changed. Ending the session with a heat map will help your teams physically see patterns in work prioritization. Ask your team to reflect on the distance between where they are using the language and where they want them to be.

3. Cultivate Allies

Identify and build relationships with stakeholders and team members who naturally think systematically about organizational priorities and who have demonstrated the ability to balance short and long-term thinking. They’ll intuitively understand why doing this will matter and can help translate benefits to others in ways that resonate with each team’s specific challenges. These allies become change champions when you’re not in the room and will help influence others, challenge assumptions, and help maintain a project-wide perspective when priorities compete.

4. Continuously Reinforce the Language & Bring Attention to the Wins

As a leader, you own the change-management process for getting any new framework to work and make sense in the context of your organization. Consistently incorporate the language in regular updates with leaders, and even if they don’t mirror the language back to you, reinforce the matrix in presentations, decision documents, and team communications. Most importantly, highlight the value of adoption as things start progressing. Look out for specific examples of how decision-making has improved and elevate those so that people feel more comfortable adopting the language.

Final Thoughts

Leading complex projects is a continuous balancing act. Between competing priorities, diverse stakeholder expectations, and complex team dynamics, it’s easy to forget that you’re moving toward an outcome. Succeeding isn’t about eliminating those challenges; it’s about navigating them strategically while shifting from reactive management to proactive leadership. The Eisenhower Matrix is a practical tool that helps leaders balance their priorities and deliver meaningful outcomes.

Contributor Bio

Bernard helps organizations make better decisions, manage change, and scale sustainability—without losing sight of their people. Currently, he leads the Workday Implementation for the UW-Madison Health System, impacting over 10,000 employees across seven service lines. His background spans building a PMO, leading data and learning initiatives at Teach For America, and consulting with startups and nonprofits on governance and organizational change. He is certified in both change management and project management. 

Connect on LinkedIn: Bernard Agrest