STEP EIGHT

Embrace the Natural Chaos of People

OVERVIEW

Conflict Management

Negative Feedback—Giving It and Receiving It

Processes for Negotiating Agreement

Benefits of Deep Listening

 

You've had it. The sponsor has delegated some key decisions to an important project stakeholder. You've left several voicemail messages and sent a slew of emails. These decisions are holding up your side of the project. You've even tried to catch her in the hall—to no avail. Today you're copied on an email she has sent to your executive sponsor, which says that the project is slipping because you're behind on your deliverable. What do you do? Quickly imagine the first three actions you'd take. Did any of these options come to mind?

  Call her immediately and leave a strong, angry message making it clear that you've been waiting for her and that she is the reason the project is late.

  Send an urgent email asking her to tell the sponsor the truth—you don't have what you need to proceed.

  Resend to her every email she hasn't responded to, and copy (that is, CC:) the executive sponsor just like she did.

  Go immediately to your boss and ask for help diffusing the situation.

  Go to lunch with your friends and bemoan the fact that you have such an insane stakeholder.

  Look for a new job.

Before we talk about the best solution to such a problem, let's look at a couple facts about the situation:

  You're under pressure and your stakeholder is under pressure. In a stressed state, people often don't think clearly, understand each other, or say what they mean.

  Your piece of the project can't succeed without your stakeholder. She can't succeed without your help. The company can't succeed if the project falls apart.

Now let's look at the same situation from some different directions:

  It's possible that she thinks your requests for decisions are diabolical tactics to distract her from your inability to deliver project output. Maybe that happened to her before.

  Perhaps there was another way you could have gone on with the project when it became clear that you weren't getting what you needed. Maybe interim milestones could have been set up, or other people could have helped with the decision. Perhaps she wasn't as indispensable, and therefore as much of a roadblock, as you believed.

  Most important of all, there probably is something you could have done (or could do now) to make your nonresponsive stakeholder look good and meet your project goals successfully.

Communication is always the best bet and, as you learned in Step 5, collaboration is the most sensible strategy. Tool 8.1 offers some tips for reacting to negative feedback—and those tips will be helpful when you're communicating with a stakeholder with whom you're frustrated (and, apparently, a stakeholder who is frustrated with you).

In this step, you'll learn the project manager's most useful technique strategy—aligning the people involved with the success of the project, no matter what happens along the way. You'll learn how to negotiate with different stakeholders so that the project is successful. You'll continue to push the return-on-investment decisions back to the sponsors when appropriate.

TOOL 8. 1

Ways to React When You Receive Negative Feedback

1.	Sort it out: Ask a question starting with what or how to learn more about the situation in as calm a voice as possible. For example, ask, “What are the things I'm doing that you feel aren't working?” or “How do you feel I'm mismanaging the project?”
2.	Repeat: Sometimes the best you can do when you're in total shock is say the same words back again. It's a little like the sort-it-out response, but you don't have to think of a how or why question. For example, simply saying, “I'm mismanaging the project?” gets the other person to continue talking while you recover your balance.
3.	Fog: Get yourself a little space to calm down and think before anything else is said. If you're more comfortable face-to-face than on the phone, ask for a meeting. For example, make a suggestion like “Let's meet for coffee this afternoon and talk about this.” If you prefer the telephone but need a few minutes to prepare to talk more easily, or if you and the caller aren't in the same office or country, say, “I want to give our conversation my full attention, so I must clear something off my desk before we talk. What's a good time for me to call you this afternoon?”
4.	Take a break: If the conversation degrades to the point where it's going nowhere, take a break. For example, you might say, “I'm pretty emotional about this right now and need a little time to calm down. Let's set a time tomorrow to talk again and work toward a solution that meets both our needs.”

Time to Complete This Step

The time you'll dedicate to working this step of your project will be proportional to the number of stakeholders on the project and to the corporate culture and politics. The more stakeholders are involved, the more differences of opinion you'll negotiate during project decision making. The amount of time a project manager has to spend defusing rivalries, negotiating conflicts, and the like is time that can't be spent in other management tasks. A project schedule can be affected.

Stakeholders

All the stakeholders may be involved in this step at some point in the project, but rarely at the same time. Each stakeholder will, of course, be very loyal to the area of the business for which she or he works. Although all want the project to be successful, each stakeholder will see the path to success from her or his unique business perspective. This creates conflict when tough scope or requirements decisions need to be made. Later in this step you'll learn how to

  Manage the conflict between stakeholders by identifying what is most important to each of them.

  Build a shared vision of success among stakeholders by mapping what each needs to the collaborative direction you'd like to take the project. Seek first to build consensus.

Questions to Ask

You can learn valuable information about the historical relationships of your stakeholders if you ask questions informally in the course of other conversations. For example:

  How long has each stakeholder been with the company?

  Where did each stakeholder work before?

  Gow long has each stakeholder been in his or her current position?

  What jobs has each held before?

And there are some vital questions that can't be asked outright because of their personal nature. Are there any important relationships about which you need to be aware—like strong ties to upper management. Are there current or prior marriages or partnerships that might affect the ways in which people work together. What history does everyone know, except you? I'm not encouraging you to be a gossip. As you display trustworthy behavior and convince people you're focused on the success of the project, other people will feel comfortable helping you understand the people dynamics. Any people who are personally competitive or don't get along before the project will use your project for their political chess game. If one loses that game, everyone loses. You're the only one who can bring about a winning outcome for all involved.

Project Manager's Toolkit: Dealing with Conflict and Negative Feedback, and Negotiating Agreement

Let's tackle some techniques for managing conflict and negotiating agreement among warring factions. Effective communication will eliminate some conflict and need for negotiations, but not all of it. Even though your efforts in Steps 1–7 will help you establish a collaborative atmosphere on the project, you'll have plenty of opportunities to use the people-managing techniques described below. All projects come with stressful times that can light short fuses.

Start with How You Say It

The first place to improve effective communication is with your choice of words. When you're talking with someone else in a situation that may provoke discontent, choose your words wisely. Here are some important guidelines:

1.  Speak from the perspective of I instead of you. For example, say “I feel that the project is struggling” instead of “You don't know, but the project is struggling.”

2.  Avoid could, would, should (often coupled with you). For example, avoid “You could have spent more time on it” or “I would have done that differently” or “You should have seen that coming.”

3.  Stick to the facts rather than your interpretations of the facts. For example, don't say “You meant to ruin my day.” Try something like “Hearing today that the project is going to be five weeks late was difficult for me.”

4.  Avoid but; go with and. For example, saying “I heard what you said, but…” implies you don't care what the other person said—it's not as important as what you believe. Replacing that with “I heard what you said, and…” implies you're listening and want to work together.

Consider this dialog:

Project Manager: Sorry I'm late. I'm so busy right now, I can barely get through the day. I really need your help.

Stakeholder: What can I help with?

Project Manager: Well, I really haven't had time to think of all the things. Really, you should know better than I do what are the critical steps to bring your department into alignment with the rest of the team. Your people seem to feel like they're too important to help us with this project. I just don't understand that.

Stakeholder: I'm not sure what you're talking about. We weren't supposed to begin our part of the project until next month, according to the original schedule.

Project Manager: You were the ones that made me put that in the schedule but no one wanted to confront you. I never wanted you to start that late. Your team should have been in place last month.

Contrast that with the following dialog:

Project Manager: I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me today. I need some help, and I'm hoping I can get some help from your department.

Stakeholder: What can I help with?

Project Manager: Although the project schedule originally said your team would get involved next month, I've found that the project team needs your expertise as soon as we can get it. I believe your people have a perspective that will help us now, and avoid rework later in the year on this project.

Stakeholder: I'm not sure I can get all those people free. We weren't expecting to allocate headcount until next month.

Project Manager: I'm sure it's a surprise and that's why I wanted to talk with you directly. I'd appreciate any help you could get us—even a couple of people would be great.

The first dialog comes from a project manager who is only concerned with his or her own perspective. The second dialog comes from a project manager who knows that the project can only be successful if everyone is onboard. Simple word changes can make the difference between a successful project and a conflict-ridden overdue project.

Bad News Early Is Good News

Healthy conflict is good and serves an important purpose on a project. Here are a couple of its advantages:

  it clarifies confused or ill-defined objectives, scope, or roles

  it triggers innovative problem solving and agility.

In fact, if there's no conflict evident, you can be almost sure that there are people who are afraid to voice their opinions. It also means that your team is taking the easy way out. Projects with teams holding information back are always late and exceed their budgets. When people don't bring conflict to the surface, problems don't come out until it's very late in the game—and that means help isn't available until it's too late.

In the best situations, bad news revealed by conflict early on really is good news. It's your task to create a climate that doesn't discourage debate and disagreement. Model for your team the behaviors that show you are able and willing to turn conflict into a tool that will be used with everyone's safety in mind. In this way, from the outset everyone involved in your project will feel OK about bringing up their issues because they know you'll work to resolve them effectively. Clarify whatever misunderstandings exist and encourage innovative collaboration and communication to solve disagreements. Resolve small conflicts as soon as they arise, before they morph into wars.

Ways to React to Negative Feedback

Bad news won't always create conflict. It can be something that just happens and is no one's fault. Another type of interruption is negative feedback. This is when someone on your project team or one of your stakeholders criticizes something you're doing on the project.

POINTER

Consider how you react when someone gives you criticism about your project management choices. Do you get angry? Do you punish the messenger in some way? As in the scenario I sketched for you at the start of this step, do you throw your energy into fighting the criticism rather than working through it?

Each piece of criticism contains a nugget of truth that the project manager must address. Either the criticism is accurate and the project has to be adjusted, or it's inaccurate and the person delivering the critique must be influenced in a positive way that gets him or her back onboard. Still, it's hard to be objective about criticism in the moment, and it's hard to get your initial physical reaction under control before you respond.

Imagine that one of your stakeholders has called and said to you, “You're mismanaging the project.” Tool 8.1 showed four types of responses you can make during the initial shock of hearing bad project feedback. No matter which tack you take, follow these pointers for success:

  Don't be defensive; avoid taking the feedback personally.

  Acknowledge the feelings of the person giving you the negative feedback; people sometimes just want to be heard.

  Do not apologize unless you have done something that has caused the problem. There's a difference between empathizing (“I can see this is really bothering you”) and apologizing (“I'm sorry I did that”).

  Express regret about the situation, saying something like “I'm sorry you feel I haven't managed the project well.” (See how that statement differs from an apology?)

  Find an area of agreement. Point out that both of you want the same thing for the project, which is usually true. Any small thing that you can agree on is a great start.

  Suggest alternatives and solutions. Continue to try different approaches tied to the needs that have been expressed by the negative feedback.

Ways to Deliver Negative Feedback

Sometimes the tables are turned and you have to deliver criticism to a key stakeholder or subject-matter expert—for example, the quality of his work may be inadequate or her deliverables may be late repeatedly. Doing so requires some planning to be successful. Tool 8.2 gives you some tips for successfully delivering unpopular, but necessary and constructive feedback.

Using concise, clear language will help ensure that a difficult conversation doesn't escalate or have to be repeated, and that the outcome is productive. It's very tempting during conflict to hurry through the conversation in a rush to be done with it, gloss over the message, or leave out critical elements. Use the four Fs in tool 8.3 to keep your words clear and your feedback effective. Planning what you want to say and how you want to say it before you engage in a difficult conversation can keep you from losing lots of time to entrenched conflict later.

TOOL 8.2

Tips for Delivering Negative Feedback

1.	Determine exactly what you want the outcome of your communication with the stakeholder to be. How will you measure that the communication has been successful?
2.	Think about the person you'll communicate with—what's important to that person? How can your message build on that? How will she or he measure that your meeting has been successful?
3.	Determine what points you must make to get the outcome you want.
4.	Determine what you will do if you don't get your desired outcome. What will you accept? What will you not accept?

TOOL 8.3

The Four Fs of Successful Feedback

The following four terms should describe any message you communicate to your stakeholders and team members:

1.	Factual (versus hearsay or interpretation): Data are accurate, specific, clear, and observable.
2.	Free of emotion (versus angry): Your tone is calm, neutral, free of rancor.
3.	Fresh (versus outdated): The event you're talking about happened recently.
4.	Forward action focused (versus fault focused): The next action to be taken is discussed or explained; it's clearly defined, achievable, and measurable.

Five Steps to Negotiating

When there's a difference of opinion, whether it involves you or only other parties to the project, you may have to play the role of negotiator to bring the sparring partners back together. Figure 8.1 shows a process for negotiation that leads toward a win/win solution. Call a meeting and follow these steps:

1. Go to the balcony: As conflict unfolds, remember that you are not the project—you are the steward of the project. In your mind, go above the conflict and watch it from the balcony. Pretend it's only a movie. Who are the people in conflict? What do they really want? Watch the characters and learn from the clues what each is asking for.
2. Stay on topic: As often as needed, bring the discussion back to the main issue(s). Clarify what the conflict concerns and what the point of the meeting is. Keep people from expanding the scope of the disagreement. Stick to the topic at hand so a solution can be created. Be the owner of the meeting agenda and stay on task.

   FIGURE 8.1

   Five Steps to Successful Negotiating

   

    

   Source: Adapted from Roger Fisher and William Ury, and Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In (New York: Penguin Books, 1981).

3. Acknowledge the elephant in the room: If there is something that people are not saying and you know that it's relevant to the conflict, call it out. Speak the words that everyone else can't say. There is a magic to speaking aloud something that others are saying to themselves in their heads. When it's visible, people can deal with it.
4. Move parties in conflict from where they are to where they can be (small steps): Each person has unique values and strengths, and each person views the project from a different context. Conflict can come from this uniqueness because perspectives can be so different. This is the kind of conflict that can create great innovation. For you as a negotiator, however, this means that the same approach won't work for everyone. You'll need to listen deeply to each of the players and try to understand his or her unique viewpoint. Only then can you determine how far each person is willing and able to move. Negotiating is not easy to do in a team setting, so you may need a break to collect your thoughts and strategize before the final negotiation.
5. Give them a bridge over which to retreat: What do you do with the person who refuses to budge even when all the evidence indicates the position she or he holds is not productive? When a person refuses to collaborate, no matter what anyone says or does, it generally doesn't mean that he or she is ignorant of the logic; it means he or she is resisting it. It's critical that you give this person a way to retreat safely. In other words, you'll have to come up with a way to make it seem like the solution was his or her idea. Find a way for the resistor to agree and save face.

Be warned: For some power-trippers, there are times when it's more important to argue than to build consensus. You may not be able to negotiate consensus with everyone. This is another reason strong sponsorship is so important—let the sponsor break the tie if there's no other way to get it done.

Conflict and Different Reactive Behaviors

Different types of people react to conflict in different ways. It's important to understand why they're reacting in that manner so you can adapt to their perspective and build collaboration. Let's consider four types of people you'll find in almost any organization—the executive, the people-oriented worker, the team-oriented worker, and the highly technical person—and see how they behave in conflict.

The Executive in Conflict

Executives are concerned about movement. They measure success by what gets done. Tasks and speed are critical to them. If a project seems to slow down their chance of getting tasks done quickly, they'll be very angry, and the anger most likely will be directed at the project manager.

Leveraging that accomplishment-oriented focus, project managers can negotiate ways to get more project help. An executive wants to be told what the project manager intends to do (tasks) and by when (quickly) to get the project back on track. Don't bore her with details of how the project got where it is, and don't ask her to solve the problems for you. Follow the executive's gaze forward. After sharing your solution factually and briefly, let her know what you need from her to make that solution viable.

Executives react very positively to discussions that involve return-on-investment. They're comfortable speaking in those terms. Make sure your solution creates a strong return for the project investment, and that you clearly articulate that return for the executive.

The People-oriented Person in Conflict

There are cheerleaders in your company who have lots of alliances, make a lot of noise, and move quickly to gain more support. Because they're so strongly networked, they are stakeholders that you can't discount. With their powerful influencing skills, these people can produce a coup on your project team if their conflict issues aren't dealt with early.

Under stress and in times of change, the people-oriented person can feel hurt and may withdraw. Such behavior disturbs her or his network and people along that network adopt the same behavior in support of the upset party. It's lucky for you that bringing the people-person and her or his network back in sync with the project is a simple task.

Have a face-to-face discussion with your people-person and reiterate how important this project is to the company. Explain to him (and believe) that you can't hit the project goals without his help. Ask his advice about how to adapt to other people who are involved in the conflict (his sympathetic network). The people-focused person can be a tremendous asset to you if you're not as naturally gifted with influencing skills.

The Team-oriented Person in Conflict

Research has shown that nearly 40 percent of the people in your company like to be part of a team. They care about finishing projects. These are the individuals who seek to keep everyone involved and focused, following the processes, and doing the work. Because their focus is on teamwork, change of any kind can create conflict in their world—and conflict is the principal thing they want to avoid at all costs.

When team-centered people are stressed, it's very difficult to tell that anything is wrong. They still try to keep the team together, and sometimes agree to do things when they're really just being supportive. In times of stress, other people on the team may see the team-oriented person as someone who doesn't deliver what she promises. At the same time, that person doesn't think she promised anything because she was just voicing support.

When you see this dynamic occurring on your team, spend some time with your team-centered person. Reinforce the critical role she plays on the project. Ask questions that give her the opportunity to let you know what's causing her stress and fear. Talk through the reality of the situation and help her see the best way to move forward. Usually it helps to work out the first couple of things to do together and then let her figure out the rest on her own.

The Highly Technical Specialist in Conflict

These people are important to a project because sometimes they can't be replaced easily. A computer programmer or an engineer, for example, will have expertise in the project work that few others can help them with or even understand. Many of these people tend toward perfectionism. Their work is tightly tied to their sense of self, and they almost always need more time to make things perfect. Unfortunately, few projects have unlimited extra time. Many technical specialists will always report being “90 percent done,” even when they're not under the kind of unusual project stress that conflict produces.

POINTER

The tech guy will test your deadlines from the start. To get more time, he will redirect your attention away from his work toward something else that will keep you busy while he pursues his definition of perfection. That's a behavior I describe as “setting a fire on the other side of the room.”

As the project manager, you can't avoid addressing time issues with the technical person. Meet face-to-face and explain—specifically and in terms of measures—what behavior you need from him, what output he must deliver by what time, and the consequences if those goals aren't met. Stay the course and don't fall for any attempted redirection. When you put these concrete boundaries in place, your relationship with the technical specialist will be easier.

To take a macro viewpoint of those four types of people, their behavioral styles in stressful situations are, respectively,

  urgent, task-oriented

  urgent, people-oriented

  diligent, team-oriented

  diligent, quality-oriented

If you have trouble deciding which preferences you're dealing with, you're safest if you assume the preference is for diligence. Take plenty of time to explain your project, the schedule, and your strategy (this will appeal to the quality- and task-oriented worker). Then explain how the conflict affects the team (this will be important to the team- and people-oriented worker).

The Importance of Listening Deeply

An important project management skill is hearing what actually is being said. With all the chaos around projects, it's hard to focus on one person at a time, but listening deeply is the only way you can be sure you hear. Tool 8.4 offers tips to use when listening to make sure you have the focus you need.

Communication

Handling conflict requires communication. Your original communication plan is probably not going to be adequate for the people-issue surprises that occur when change strikes. As a project manager, you'll be required to practice “communications improv”—being able to provide feedback through good listening skills and effective word choices. If scope, budget, or timelines change, return to the documents and update them so everyone knows about the change. Specifically, balance the need to move quickly with the need to move well by keeping your eye on

  the Define deliverables, including objectives, scope, risks, and constraints

  the Plan deliverables, including the schedule with associated resource allocations

  the key roles, including project sponsor, stakeholders, project team, and subject-matter experts.

Pay attention to the way you communicate with your sponsors. There will be some you like more than others—that's natural. But treating people differently will only increase the conflict. For example, there is a symbolism to meeting with one sponsor face-to-face in his or her office and another in a group setting. Meeting one-on-one may give the impression that this sponsor is more important than the other. Be aware of how power is measured in the corporate culture in which you're operating. Something as simple as having lunch rather than having coffee with a person prompts different interpretations of respect.

TOOL 8.4

Listening Tips

 

What If I Skip This Step?

If you avoid conflict or let it run its course, the project will fail to meet its original goals. The conflict will escalate into a major explosion, usually at some point near the end of the project. Relationships will be broken beyond repair, which will have an impact on future projects. In fact, there's no way to skip this step. Conflict will hunt you down—you may run, but you can't hide.

Lurking Landmines

  There's a conflict between two members of the team that has been carried forward to your project. Get the details and make sure you have your facts straight. Talk to each of the parties one-on-one. If possible, negotiate a discussion about how they can best work together on this project. If it requires them staying apart, that's fine as long as they both agree. Don't get into the previous conflict, and don't try to figure out whose fault it was. That never works.

  You've overheard project team members speaking in sarcastic terms about subject-matter experts or sponsors. This is an important leadership challenge. As the leader, you must make clear that this is inappropriate and unhelpful behavior. Make sure you aren't modeling some of this language yourself when you get stressed with a difficult stakeholder. There's no need to create more conflict by being angry or dictatorial, so sell to the team the reasons for keeping communication open.

  You're starting to feel like it's you against your team. They stop talking when you enter the room. Create a strategic enemy for your team to unite around so they won't turn on you, or on one another. For example, during the rollout of the original Macintosh at Apple, the team focused on Microsoft as its enemy. What enemy could your team compete against that would not hurt the company direction or your project goals? How can you redirect the competitive energies from an inappropriate enemy to an engaging one? Nothing unites a team like competition against an “outsider.”

Step 8 Checklist

  Manage conflict well to improve project success. Bad news early is good news.

  Use negative feedback to improve the project. When receiving negative feedback, remember that there's always a nugget of truth in it. When delivering, make sure you're clear about what outcome you want and use appropriate language.

  Be prepared to negotiate conflict between the people important to your project.

  Adapt your behaviors to the different needs of different people on your project team. Help them continue to support the progress of the project.

  Listen, really listen. Make the time for people to communicate with you. Move away from the keyboard!

The Next Step

Your next step is to finish the project. It's amazing, but one of the most difficult parts of a project can be ending it.