Stakeholder map template

This free stakeholder map template is a worksheet for a change: list each person or group the change touches, rate their influence over the change and how much it changes their work, then note their current view and who they will hear about the change from. Fill it in online or print it.

Fill in the template

STAKEHOLDER MAP

Person or group
Influence over the change (Not sure / Low / Medium / High)
How much it changes their work (Not sure / Low / Medium / High)
Their current view (Not known / Supportive / Undecided / Opposed)
Who they will hear it from

1.
   Person or group: ______________________
   Influence over the change: ______________________
   How much it changes their work: ______________________
   Their current view: ______________________
   Who they will hear it from: ______________________

2.
   Person or group: ______________________
   Influence over the change: ______________________
   How much it changes their work: ______________________
   Their current view: ______________________
   Who they will hear it from: ______________________

3.
   Person or group: ______________________
   Influence over the change: ______________________
   How much it changes their work: ______________________
   Their current view: ______________________
   Who they will hear it from: ______________________

4.
   Person or group: ______________________
   Influence over the change: ______________________
   How much it changes their work: ______________________
   Their current view: ______________________
   Who they will hear it from: ______________________

Get the editable version: this template as an Excel file with a worked example, in the Change Toolkit. Or learn to use it on your own change in the course Leading Change with Evidence.

How to use it well

These steps are practice suggestions, not tested findings.

Fill it in with two or three people who know different parts of the organization. One person's map can end up as a map of who that person talks to.

Be honest in the view column. "Not known" is a real answer and the most useful one on the page. A map that rates every group as supportive or opposed, when nobody has asked them, is a guess dressed up as a plan.

Rate impact by work, not by title. A small team whose daily routine changes completely can matter more to the change than a senior group that hears about it once a quarter.

Name the messenger. For each group, write who they will actually hear about the change from. Often that is their direct manager, which makes the managers in the middle a stakeholder group of their own. List them on a line of their own.

Use it, then revise it. Bring the map to each review and update the view column with what people have said, not what you hoped. The communication plan template turns the finished map into who hears what, when and from whom.

What the research says

No study in the Evidence Library behind this site tests stakeholder mapping itself, so treat this template as a practical planning tool, not a validated one. The definition is the ordinary one: a stakeholder is one who is involved in or affected by a course of action (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). The influence and impact columns are my own layout, used here to start a conversation.

The research that does bear on it is about whose voice carries during a change.

Who leads matters, not only what is said. In a field experiment across three matched bank branches, service effectiveness was rated higher in the branch that used opinion leaders as service-quality leaders than in a branch that used randomly selected frontline leaders, and the branch with randomly selected leaders in turn improved more than one with no frontline leaders (Lam & Schaubroeck, 2000, rated Medium in the Evidence Library from its abstract). It compared three matched branches, so treat it as one small study. It is a reason to ask, for each group on your map, whose opinion that group already trusts.

Whose ideas get implemented. A meta-analysis of 105 studies (33,186 people) of bottom-up change, meaning upward, self-initiated efforts to improve a unit or organization, found that both the change agent's human capital and social capital predicted endorsement of the change, and that social capital was the dominant predictor of whether it was actually implemented (Lam et al., 2026, rated Medium in the Evidence Library from its abstract). The abstract describes predictors, not tested interventions, so this shows what travels together, not what causes what.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

1. Week 0
   Before you start

   The map is a Week 0 record. Write down what you believe each group thinks before the change starts, then check it against what you hear at every review.

2. 1
   Surface both ways

   The column for current view is only as good as what travels up to you. Where it says "Not known", that is a gap in Surface both ways, not a neutral stakeholder.

3. 2
   Make sense together, top included

   The column for who talks to them names the managers who will explain the change in their own words. The Loop's first move for this part is to ask each manager to do exactly that.

4. 3
   Start it close to the work
5. 4
   Review on a rhythm, then hold the pace
6. 5
   The middle’s own weather
7. Ring
   Safe to speak, and speaking changes something

Highlighted parts are the ones this idea speaks to. The mapping is my reading, not a tested finding. See the whole Loop and the evidence for each part.