How to take on your adversaries (and win!)

 

Dealing with really (bloody) difficult people requires a strategic approach. Marion Thomas and Sarah Walton explain the rules.

There are some individuals whose behaviour is so unhelpful that they will cause real harm to your project and other members of your team. These adversaries are so difficult to deal with that it might seem easier to try to avoid them, but ignoring their behaviour is likely to give you greater problems. It is always better to take positive action, not least because you are unlikely to be able to remove an adversary from your project. It’s in your interest to find a way to work with them.

Before you do so, it’s important to remember that no one goes to work to do a bad job. When people are being difficult there is usually an underlying reason. Your job as a project manager is to understand your adversary’s motivation so that you can help them to help you deliver your project. When preparing to take action, remember the following points:

• Do not take their behaviour personally. It is safe to assume that they have a valid reason for acting as they do.
• Make sure that you engage with the whole person. Get to know something about them that allows you to build a personal connection alongside the professional one.
• Use other people within your project tribe to influence them. Nobody gets on with everybody, so if someone else in your team has a better connection with a difficult individual, use that relationship to get your messages across.
• Assess the impact that their behaviour could have on your project. Some interactions can be uncomfortable, but the actual impact on the project might be minimal. Other obstructions might have a much greater impact.
• Match your action to their impact. For example, a critical team member who will not work to the plan and does not turn up to project meetings or deliver progress reports is an issue that needs to be addressed. A stakeholder who throws grenades into the process during private conversations, but is quiet in meetings, can be managed by adjusting your responses.
• Try to find the value your adversary is adding. Sometimes they are an excellent source of risk identification.
• If they constantly try to derail your project meetings, do not compromise a project culture that is accepting of all ideas and acknowledges all inputs. Instead use a ‘parking lot’ (a flip chart to record off-agenda items) to keep the meeting on track.

Ideally most situations with an adversary can be dealt with in meetings by behaving in line with the project culture that you have chosen. Sometimes, specific action is required. In these cases, you need to develop a plan.

Before the interaction

1          Make a conscious decision to take action.

2          Set a positive intention for the outcome.

3          Assess the risk of the interaction making the situation worse.

4          Assess the adversary’s personal style and meet or mirror it. If they are very directive, they are less likely to respond well to a democratic style or a plea for help.

5          Where possible, choose an appropriate time and location. Once you have decided to take action, an opportunity will often present itself, and an over-engineered conversation will often not go as well as a more spontaneous one.

During the interaction

1          Do not allow the conversation to become confrontational.

2          Ask for their help (having considered their preferred style).

3          Listen. They will have value to add, even if it is only a conversation that allows you to see the whole person.

After the interaction

1          Review why they are acting as an adversary. Try to stand in their shoes.

2          With the insight gained from the conversation, review their impact on you personally and the project.

3          Look for ways to work with them and value their input.

4          Find opportunities to engage with them away from the project. This is always difficult to do in an adversarial relationship, as we have a natural instinct to avoid uncomfortable interactions.

5          Consider if another member of your team would be better at managing the relationship. This might not always be possible if they are a key stakeholder, but there are always options to use other people to help influence them.

If all else fails and the adversary is derailing the project, be brave. Trust your instincts about whether you can help them change their interactions with the project. Have the conversation but also have a back-up plan to minimise their disruptive behaviour in case the conversation makes the situation worse. Remember that you won’t necessarily be able to change other people’s behaviour, but you can change your response to it.

Tactics to turn conflict to your advantage

The alarm bells should ring if you find yourself surrounded by yes-people. Disagreement can breed creativity. Don’t be afraid to rise to the challenge

Projects should be about taking a group of people within an organisation through a change. To make that happen, you need to build consensus around the solution, the plan and the decisions made along the way. Any conflict is likely to derail or delay the plan and is assumed to be a bad thing. Yet a project where everything goes smoothly and where everybody is agreeing with you should make you feel nervous. What are you missing? What are you not being told? Is there an elephant in the room that you can’t see?

A robust debate could be defined as a conflict, but it is more likely that we would only think of it as such if we couldn’t reach a consensus. Conflict tends to imply a level of discomfort between the parties and an emotional attachment to the outcome. The best projects create a project culture where ideas flow and decisions are challenged so that they get to the best possible solution. As project managers, we sometimes need to use conflict to surface an issue. For example, if you are struggling to get engagement, you could offer up a contentious ‘straw man’, because it provokes greater debate.

Conflict can range from a controversial suggestion or a robust discussion to an outright confrontation. The first two of these are healthy project behaviours, although even confrontation can be a valid way to unblock an issue on a project. The very word ‘confrontation’ is emotive. Using the word ‘challenge’ instead moves the discussion to an exploration of ideas, rather than a debate between two immovable objects with a winner and a loser at the end.

Conflict is a healthy part of creating the best solution for a project, but it needs to be used intentionally and underpinned by relationships that revel in the intellectual exploration of ideas. You also need to be aware that different people are comfortable with differing levels of debate. It is OK to express conflicting views, but always be aware of the impact the conflict has on the entire team. As the project manager, you need to create a safe space to contain the conflict and ensure that it is not seen as personal.

Remember, conflict on a project is sometimes necessary to be able to move forward, but it should always be used knowingly, not as an emotional response.

Marion Thomas and Sarah Walton are directors at Extraordinary Project Management