The Career Clinic Podcast
Host: Ronnie Dickerson Stewart
Welcome to Week Four — the final week — of The Career Clinic Podcast January Intensive Series.
This week is focused on designing your career on purpose, with practical tactics you can apply immediately. In Episode 92, Ronnie tackles a topic that consistently trips up capable, thoughtful professionals: managing your stakeholders — without burning out, people-pleasing, or losing yourself in the process.
This conversation reframes stakeholder management away from "corporate politics" and toward self-advocacy, stewardship, and clarity. The goal isn't to perform or overextend. It's to ensure the people who influence your progress and provision actually understand your value, priorities, and boundaries.
✔️ What "stakeholders" really means — beyond your direct manager
✔️ Why stakeholder complexity increases as you become more senior
✔️ How mismanaged relationships lead to burnout, resentment, and missed opportunity
✔️ The shift from passive to participatory career management
✔️ A practical framework for managing stakeholder relationships intentionally
✔️ How to advocate for yourself without shrinking or over-explaining
✔️ When it's time to adjust — or exit — a stakeholder relationship
In this episode, Ronnie defines stakeholders as anyone who influences your progress or your provision.
That can include:
Your manager and leadership team
Skip-level leaders
Clients and vendors
Cross-functional partners
Board members
Collaborators on key initiatives
As careers advance, stakeholder webs become more complex — not simpler. Managing up, down, and across requires intention, not assumption.
A common mistake many people make is waiting to be understood.
They assume:
Stakeholders know what they're working on
Stakeholders understand what they need
Past performance will speak for itself
But assumption is not a strategy.
Ronnie emphasizes that stakeholder management means actively participating in shaping how your work, value, and priorities are understood — rather than leaving it to chance.
Ronnie introduces a practical framework built on four elements:
Anticipation
Understanding what your stakeholders care about before they have to say it.
Communication
Sharing information in ways that are useful to them, not just you.
Translation
Framing your work in language that resonates with their priorities.
Consistency
Showing up in predictable, reliable ways over time.
These four elements create clarity, trust, and momentum.
A key insight from the episode: stakeholders optimize for different outcomes.
For example:
A manager may care about execution and morale
A skip-level leader may care about risk and alignment
One client may prioritize speed, another results
One partner may value collaboration, another optics
Treating every stakeholder the same often creates friction. Managing relationships well requires understanding what each person is measured on and worried about.
Ronnie offers seven diagnostic questions to help you gain clarity:
What pressure are they under?
What are they being measured on?
What keeps them up at night?
What do they need to feel successful?
What does success look like from their perspective?
How does your work help solve their problem?
How does your contribution make their job easier or their goals more achievable?
When you can answer these, you can manage relationships strategically — not transactionally.
Stakeholders don't experience your intentions — they experience patterns.
This episode revisits the idea of closing the gap between:
What you say you are
What stakeholders actually experience from you
Visibility here isn't about noise. It's about intentional surfacing of:
Wins
Progress
Challenges
Context that needs translation
What gets shown consistently is what gets trusted.
Ronnie addresses a reality many listeners face:
Conflicting priorities between stakeholders
Unclear or inconsistent leadership
Relationships that create ongoing friction
The guidance:
Name what's true without dramatizing it
Focus on what you can influence (communication, framing, boundaries)
Adjust strategy without abandoning yourself
Recognize when a relationship may no longer be worth the energy it requires
Not every stakeholder relationship is meant to be preserved at all costs.
Ronnie closes the episode with a clear, actionable exercise:
1. Identify Your Stakeholders
List anyone who influences your progress or provision.
2. Clarify What They Care About
Note their priorities, pressures, and success metrics.
3. Identify Gaps
Where are you unclear, inconsistent, or silent?
4. Choose One Small Shift
One conversation, one update, one boundary — not an overhaul.
Small adjustments compound.
Stakeholder management is about protection, not performance
Clarity reduces friction
Advocacy builds provision
Relationships compound over time
You don't need to manage everyone — just the relationships that matter most
Tomorrow's episode tackles one of the hardest career decisions many people face: when to stay — and when to go.
📩 Join the OhHeyMonday Newsletter
Weekly reflections, tools, and leadership guidance
👉🏾 www.ohheyjoin.com
📝 Ask OhHeyCoach
Submit a question for a future episode
👉🏾 https://form.typeform.com/to/ja89DHpT
🤝 Work With OhHeyCoach
Executive coaching, leadership development, and career design
👉🏾 www.ohheycoach.com
📬 Contact
info@ohheycoach.com
This is grown-folks career stewardship.
I'll see you tomorrow.
