Your Stakeholders Aren't Resistant. They Just Don't Trust You Yet. | Mallika Madakasira

"Spending time building those relationships is really important — because that's where you start to establish trust, and you're then able to reach that person. Their personality. Everything else. Good and bad." — Mallika MadakasiraMost transformation initiatives fail before the first stakeholder meeting. Not because the strategy is wrong. Because the humans running it haven't done the work that makes strategy possible.Mallika Madakasira has spent her career driving healthcare innovation at the intersection of people, process, and technology — and her approach to leading change looks nothing like the playbook most executives are using. She maps the humans before she maps the project. She meets stakeholders where they are before she asks anything of them. And she's learned that the relationships you build before a project starts determine whether it lands — or dies quietly in a room full of politely disengaged people.In this episode, Karl and Mallika dig into what it actually takes to move complex systems in healthcare and beyond — and why the answer is almost never a better process.What you'll take away from this conversation:Why relationship-mapping before project kickoff is the non-negotiable first move for any change initiativeHow to neutralize the quiet saboteurs — the stakeholders who won't surface objections until it's too lateThe disarming one-question approach that makes even resistant stakeholders open up immediatelyWhy shared success credit (even when the split is 50/5) is a strategic play, not a generosity oneHow the relationships you build during a project outlast the project itself — and why that's where the real ROI livesIf you're leading a transformation at scale and wondering why buy-in feels harder than the actual work — this conversation is the answer.#H2H #RelationshipDrivenGrowth #B2BRelationships #StartupLeadership #ClientRetention===You can connect with Mallika Madakasira here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallika-madakasira-877b76You can connect with Karl Pontau here:www.vouchedconnections.comwww.thehumanconnectionpodcast.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontauhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!