Stakeholder Persona

What this does

Builds 1-3 evidence-grounded stakeholder personas from your discovery material: who this person is, what they're trying to achieve, what's pressing on them, where they stand on the change, and how to engage them. Every claim traces back to something someone actually said or did. Where the evidence runs out, the persona says so - it never fills the gap with a guess.

What you give it

• Discovery evidence - interview notes, org charts, email threads, meeting observations, pasted or attached
• Which stakeholders to profile, if you've already chosen (optional - otherwise the evidence will suggest who matters)
• The change or engagement these personas are for, in a sentence (optional - you'll be asked if it's unclear)
• Anything you've observed that isn't written down anywhere (optional - say it and it becomes evidence)

How it does the work

1. Read all the evidence before profiling anyone.
2. Ask up to 3 short questions if essentials are missing - which stakeholders matter most, what the change is, or whether a thin-looking source (one email, say) should carry weight. Then proceed.
3. Choose the personas. If the user named them, use those. Otherwise propose the 1-3 people the evidence says most influence the outcome - by authority, by resistance or by being the one everyone else mentions - and confirm before writing.
4. For each persona, gather only what the evidence supports: what they said in interviews, what their emails show, where they sit in the org chart, what others said about them. Second-hand claims are evidence too, but label them as such - "colleagues describe her as..." is different from "she said..."
5. Write their goals as they'd state them, not as the project would like them to be. If the evidence doesn't reveal what someone wants, that's a gap - mark it [to confirm], don't deduce it from their job title.
6. Identify their pressures - deadlines, targets, politics, workload, history with past changes. These explain behaviour better than personality ever does.
7. Assess their attitude to the change on the evidence: supportive, neutral, sceptical, resistant, or unknown. "Unknown" is a legitimate rating. Quote or cite the evidence for whichever you assign.
8. Write the engagement approach as practical guidance: how to communicate with them, what to lead with, what to avoid, who influences them. Ground each point in the evidence - "prefers detail in writing (asked for the report before both meetings)".
9. List each persona's evidence gaps explicitly - the things a good engagement plan needs that discovery didn't surface. These become questions for the next round.
10. Do a fairness and client-readiness pass: no armchair psychology, no labels like "difficult" or "blocker", nothing you'd be uncomfortable with the person themselves reading. Then show the personas.

Output layout

# Stakeholder Personas - [Engagement name]

**Based on:** [the evidence used - e.g. 6 interviews, org chart, project email threads]
**Date:** [date]

---

## [Name or role]

**Role:** [Title and where they sit]
**Relationship to the change:** [Sponsor / impacted / gatekeeper / influencer]

### Goals
- [What they're trying to achieve, in their terms - with evidence]
- [Goal] [to confirm]

### Pressures
- [What's pressing on them, with evidence]
- [Pressure]

### Attitude to the change
**[Supportive / Neutral / Sceptical / Resistant / Unknown]** - [the evidence: what they said or did that supports this rating]

### How to engage them
- [Practical guidance, grounded in evidence]
- [Guidance]

### What we don't know yet
- [Gap] [to confirm]
- [Gap] [to confirm]

---

[Repeat for each persona, 3 at most.]

Rules

• Australian English with contractions - organise, prioritise, we'll, they've.
• Never invent motivations, opinions or quotes. Every claim traces to evidence; every gap is marked [to confirm].
• Distinguish first-hand evidence (what they said or did) from second-hand (what others say about them) - and never let second-hand claims masquerade as fact.
• No personality typing, no diagnosis, no loaded labels. Describe behaviour and its likely drivers, not character.
• Write every persona as if that person will read it - because in some engagements, they will.
• Three personas maximum per run. More than that and the evidence per persona gets too thin to be useful.
• This skill profiles people. Engagement planning across the whole stakeholder map is a bigger job - offer to help with it separately if the user needs it.