Stakeholder management for CX leaders: Stop playing the ad hoc game.

Last week’s CX Leadership Masterminds alumni meetup left me with a lot. Great conversations, concrete actions, new energy and honestly, a little discomfort too.

Irene van Hoorn CCXP shared her leadership journey: from building Customer Experience inside Eneco to winning the International CX Award for CX Leader and Team of the Year. A story about visibility, strategic leadership, and learning how to create influence inside a large organization.

But what fascinated me most was the conversation that followed.

Because one thing became painfully clear: many CX leaders are still operating far too operationally. Not because they lack expertise. Not because they don’t understand customers. But because they still approach Customer Experience as a tactical discipline, not a strategic leadership one.

And that changes everything.

The elephant in the CX room

Once you move into more senior CX roles, your success no longer depends on customer insights, journey maps, or CX tooling. It increasingly depends on how well you understand organizational movement.

Who influences decisions. Who creates momentum. Who quietly slows things down. And where political attention actually goes.

In other words: stakeholder management. The thing nobody puts on their CX roadmap, but every strategic CX leader quietly masters.

Too many CX leaders are still part of what I call the CX Ad Hoc Crew: reacting instead of leading, moving from request to request, trying to update everyone, align with everyone, help everyone. While the CX leaders creating real movement are intentionally building a CX Strategic Alliance.

So let’s talk about how you get there.

The strategic foundation: four steps that build on each other

Strategic stakeholder management isn’t complicated, but it does require intention. There are four steps that form the foundation.

Step 1 is stakeholder identification. This is already where many CX leaders think too small. You focus on the obvious players: your manager, your CX team, customer service, marketing. But transformation rarely happens through hierarchy alone. Sometimes the operational manager everyone trusts has more influence than a senior director. Sometimes finance determines whether your roadmap survives. Start broad. Identify all relevant actors, not just the obvious ones.

Step 2 is stakeholder mapping. Not every stakeholder has the same influence, priorities, or relationship to your CX strategy. Strategic CX leaders understand these dynamics before they start pushing initiatives. Map the landscape first.

Step 3 is where things get genuinely strategic: stakeholder salience. The Salience Stakeholder Model looks at three lenses – power, legitimacy, and urgency – and that immediately changes the conversation.

Power: who can influence outcomes or make things happen?

Urgency: whose claims call for immediate attention?

Legitimacy: whose relationship to the initiative is actually valid and relevant?

The magic is in the overlap. Not every loud stakeholder deserves your priority attention. Not every urgent request should shape your roadmap. And not every senior stakeholder automatically has the legitimacy to drive customer decisions.

Want to work through all four steps with a practical framework? Download the free Strategic Stakeholder Management Playbook for CX Leaders – it walks you through every step, including the Salience Model and the Mendelow Matrix.

Where most CX leaders get it wrong

This model forces you to think more intentionally about where your political energy and strategic focus actually go.

Take definitive stakeholders – the people where power, legitimacy, and urgency come together. These are often the stakeholders who determine whether Customer Experience becomes a strategic business priority, or remains another initiative fighting for organizational oxygen.

But equally important are the dangerous stakeholders: people with power and urgency, but without true legitimacy in the initiative itself. These stakeholders can create enormous pressure, competing priorities, or political resistance when they feel excluded or threatened by change. And honestly? Most CX leaders completely underestimate their impact.

The real leadership question is: which stakeholders deserve your political energy, your strategic visibility, and your active relationship building?

From ad hoc to strategic

My biggest insight from the alumni meetup was this: the CX leaders creating the most impact today are no longer only strong in CX management. They are becoming strategically visible leaders who understand how to build influence, strategic relationships, and organizational authority.

That is the shift. From CX Ad Hoc Crew to CX Strategic Alliance.

And it starts with understanding the playing field before you start pushing your agenda around the organization.

So when you are totally honest with yourself, which one are you right now?

Until next time, keep spicing up your Customer Experience leadership.