Speaker 1: It's a dream when your project doesn't have any challenges or difficult stakeholders. In this video, I'm going to share with you ways how to manage your difficult stakeholders so that your project and business objectives are met. Set expectations early on. If you're going to manage any stakeholder in a project, then you need to ensure that they are clear with what their roles and responsibilities are. Now, let's just get clear on what a stakeholder is. A stakeholder is anyone involved in the project. This could be your team members. This could be senior executives because they're on steering committees. It could be your sponsor. Really, anyone who's involved in the project at any point would be considered a stakeholder. Now, how do you set clear expectations? There's a couple ways you can do this. You can do it at every single meeting by having an expectation list, kind of your rules for the meeting of how you expect people to behave, and you can set that up. Another way to do it, which I really highly recommend, and this is through your project documentation, which is your charter. That's your core fundamental document that everyone who's a stakeholder is going to be reading, and so put your set of expectations in that particular document. Why? Because if you know me and you know my programs like project management, I always talk about you need to go to the next step of having them sign that charter because that's a document that's going to be signed, which lays everything out, including the expectations. Now, why? Why is this so important? You set the expectations. Expectations, rules, responsibilities mean nothing if you don't follow up on it. So part two to this is the following up when you set those expectations, and the nice thing about having a meeting, if it's on a PowerPoint and you say, here are the expectations for this meeting, or better yet in the charter because they signed it, is when something comes up that someone is challenging, what you do is you bring up your charter that has your signature, and you sit down with them one-on-one and discuss what's going on that is definitely not the behavior or expectation that you have written down here, and you can say to them, hey, you know what? We all agree this is our behavior. I'm noticing this. What's the roadblock that's causing you to go against something that we all agree to and you signed off on? It is a great tool and technique. It takes away emotional charge, and it's not you pointing the finger. It's the document that everyone signed off on that you're just bringing to their attention. It brings about accountability, something that all projects need. Before we move on to the next strategy on how to deal with difficult stakeholders, I want you to stay tuned because very soon I'm going to share with you on how you can get your hands on a document that is going to teach you on how to ensure your projects don't fail. Identify the cause of difficulty. It is really important if you're going to manage challenging stakeholders that you have to understand what's causing this difficulty, what's causing the challenge. Is it miscommunication, misunderstanding? Do they have a hidden agenda? You don't know. Do not jump to conclusions. One thing that I highly recommend, and it's a technique that I use myself, is I usually have a one-on-one with that difficult stakeholder, and we sit down and we talk about what's going on. If I find that they're really not opening up to me, I use a technique called the five whys, where I'll ask them, okay, you don't like what's going on here. Can I ask why? Then they continue, and I go, okay, well, why and why and why? The whole premise of this very easy drilling down to root cause technique is the more whys you ask, the more information they're going to give, because you're just not stopping at the one sentence or issue that they said. You're saying, now, why is that an issue? They continue, and why is that? At some point, you do stop. It's natural. Yeah, that's it. That's the root cause. Really understanding and going to root cause is going to help. Stay calm and listen. It is never fun listening to someone who's challenging and upset or argumentative, but there's a lot of value to listening and not jumping and trying to defend yourself. Now, I want to be really, really clear, because there's a fine line with listening to someone who's upset and challenging and argumentative and someone who's being abusive. You do not listen to someone who's being abusive. That is a definite no. You end that conversation immediately and say, until you can speak properly to me, professionally and respectfully, we're going to have this conversation at a later time. Just so that you know, there is a fine line, and I want you to really be aware of that. Now, if someone is upset and they are a little bit argumentative and they're challenging, then be patient. Be calm. They sometimes perhaps just need to have that ear. You can listen. The key is for you not to be charged by it. This is not about you. They may be saying it's about you because that's easy for them to do, but it's not about you. If you listen and don't try to formulate what you're going to retort back to them, but to actually really see where they're coming from. Again, the technique that I like to use is to repeat what it is that they've said. Once they've stopped and they were able to lay it all out, you can say, Jane, if I heard you correctly, then what you're saying to me is A, B, C, D. I've said this tip before, and it's one that I use all the time, and it's awesome. It brings clarity. People, when you reply back to them exactly what they're thinking, all of a sudden their anger dissipates because they felt listened to. That's all we want out of life actually, is to be listened to. So that technique is going to help out tremendously if you stay calm, recognize it's not about you, and listen. But again, as my little disclaimer, do not accept abuse. Find common ground. Not all challenging or difficult stakeholders are going to be argumentative or abusive or anything like that, or they're going to be emotional. Some challenging stakeholders are very logical, straightforward. They just don't agree with what you're doing. That's happened. And it can be frustrating because there's no emotional charge to it, and they're just don't believe for whatever reason a direction that is occurring. So it becomes really important to find common ground. That's why that charter earlier on is really critical, because it lays out the scope, what's in, what's out, and that's the common ground you're going to go to. You're going to, again, one-on-one. You don't want to do this in front of a group of people. You want to do it one-on-one and talk to them, okay, you're not agreeing with this, or they keep on bringing up roadblocks. You need to find out what it is. Use your five whys to really understand it, but then go back to the charter and say, okay, ultimately we know we have to deliver on this. Are we in agreement? Yes. All right. If I heard you correctly, it's this specific in scope item that you're not in agreement with. Yes. All right. What can we do to get you into agreement with this? And that's the conversation. You're going to find the common ground. There are times, because again, you listened, you will come to an agreement, but there may be times that they just won't budge and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. You have to, as a project manager, ensure that you're focused on your scope. And if that's a case where they can't, then you are going to have to escalate it to your steering committee. So you can say, well, there's this one particular item in scope. This particular subject matter expert has a hard time with it. I know this is what you approved senior executives. We need to chat about it. And so that's what you'll do. But what you've done as well, while you're doing all that is you're finding that common ground, which is just going to really bridge and make a stronger team. Address issues in a timely fashion. When someone is challenging, like a stakeholder is challenging, if you ignore it or you don't address, I call the elephant in the room, it will come to haunt you. I promise you this. If you're in a team meeting and there's someone who's very challenging in that team meeting, your other team members see it. They know it. They may be even in their head because if this person is someone who's just always challenging me, go, Oh, not that person again. I can't believe they're doing this. You as a project manager, as a leader, the leader of this project, you need to nip this in the bud. You need to address it in a timely fashion as it's happening. That's why I remember the first tip, your address the expectations, have your roles and responsibility. You need to call it out. And a simple technique I do when things are happening is I go, Hey, T T. And I usually get, by the way, permission at the beginning of a meeting, or I set up the expectation. Hey guys, I'm also going to be your timekeeper. I'm also going to be the referee. I'm going to give a little time out here when I need to bring us back on track. So we're staying true to our agenda and the time that we have for this meeting. So with that technique, you can then give a T if someone is like constantly challenging and say, look, what's going on here. Let's address this issue. Let's understand what's happening here. And if so, let's then talk about this offline so we can continue on the meeting. That's really, really helpful because you're not letting someone who is running away with the meeting, but you're also telling the rest of your team, you're following through on those expectations. It's you got to walk the talk and it's just talk the talk, be open to compromise. I had someone a long time ago. Tell me I don't compromise because it's a win or lose. That stuck with me because I was like, I really felt that compromising. When I think of my own relationships, personally, professionally, I don't feel that it's a win or lose. That to me is a mentality that is really only going to be detrimental and not allow for you to grow a as an individual or really get teams connected. If you don't compromise, because then what happens if you don't compromise, it's your way or the highway. And really, is that the purpose of what you're trying to do? Always get your way, or are you trying to do what's best for the project and the people around you? You're leading. So compromising is important and you can compromise as a win-win. And I've had scenarios and situations where, yes, I've had someone, a difficult stakeholder challenging something. They had some really good points and what we did so that they can get past it and gain consensus collective as a group to agree to support what we were trying to do to move forward. We did a compromise, a compromise that didn't have a huge impact on what I was trying to ultimately achieve for the project, but enough of a compromise for them that they could accept it. And that to me was, and is, a win-win. And then they became more inclusive and felt more connected to the project because they were heard and what was really important to them got addressed. But it was done in a way that it was not a win or lose or a sacrifice. So being able to compromise in those situations, definitely do it. It's only going to help you. It's going to bring empathy to the situation and people are only going to feel heard, which is going to take that difficult stakeholder and challenging stakeholder and they're not going to be difficult or challenging anymore. Now that you know how to manage difficult and challenging stakeholders, I told you, stay tuned because I have for you this free. This is an excellent guide on how to ensure your projects don't fail. I highly recommend you check it out. And how do you do that? You go to the link below under this video. Make sure you watch this video next. It's how to manage your stakeholders. On that note, if you could subscribe, like this video, share it. Oh my goodness, I'd be so appreciative. Until the next one. See you later.