(This article was first published in the Critical Path, the monthly newsletter of PMI Sydney Chapter publish in February 2023)

Stakeholder Management is one of the key pillars of effective project management.  Managing their expectations and keeping them in the know of project progress and status are good practices that work well with committed and already engaged stakeholders.  However, to surpass good project management towards making a real difference by delivering long-impacting projects, you need to go beyond merely managing your stakeholders: you need to deliberately build a purposeful, collaborative, and positive relationship with your stakeholders – particularly the difficult ones.

Melanie McBride in her PMI Global Conference 2012 Paper “A PM, a bully, a ghost, and a micromanager walk into a bar – difficult stakeholders and how to manage them” provided an innovative description of effective stakeholder management: “the purposeful crafting of a collaborative and positive relationship that truly separates the very good project managers from the superb project managers.”  Let me explain the impactful words in this interesting definition:

• Purposeful: deliberate and planned stakeholder management and relationship building.  Doing it ‘on purpose’, not by chance or as a by-product of other Project Management activities.  Devise a clear plan for relationship building.
• Crafting: An excellent use of the word ‘crafting’ rather than ‘building’.  It is important to ‘craft’ the relationship with art and innovation.
• Collaborative: A good relationship is always a two-way relationship built on collaboration – give and take.
• Positive: Always look for the positive side of things: search for the ‘silver lining’ and promptly address any potential setbacks.

To build such an effective relationship, you should be aware of the characteristics of your stakeholders.  The more ‘difficult’ your stakeholders are, the more effort you need to put in crafting the relationship.  Here are some examples of difficult stakeholders and few suggestions on how to deal with them.

The Bully, that stakeholder who dominates you and others through aggressive force of will.  There aren’t many around, but they derail your project while they are thinking they are doing the right thing.  For bullies, you need to establish a strong ‘first impression’.  Don’t hesitate to confront, explain with confidence, and persuade.  The important thing is to keep the discussion professional and avoid being dragged into “winners vs losers” game.  Look them in the eye (or in the camera if virtual meeting) and be ready to call ‘timeout’ and regain your position if needed.  One way you can deal with a bully is to give them an assignment to produce data to support their argument.  If they are unable to produce supporting data, they are likely to notice the flaw in their argument.

The Ghost, the stakeholder who doesn’t return your calls, emails, or messages and are ambivalent to your project status.  You should aim to limit your project’s dependence on their input and direction.  Agree with them on how far you will run without their direct input, knowledge, or approval.  Ensure that they remain happy and be extremely concise and direct in your communication with them.  One thing you can do is consider whether they can delegate their authority to another, more engaged, stakeholder.

The Visionary, the stakeholder who has the ‘big picture’ of what they want, but they can’t explain it.  You have to be patient with their long talks and twisted tales.  They are usually happy with the project, and they acknowledge how it is important to their future.  Ensure that you drive the discussion into deliverables that will achieve their vision.  It would be good if you can develop early prototypes to review them and discuss them with the visionary stakeholder.  Make sure you are conclusive and explicit about the deliverable and what can and can’t be done – or what is in or out of scope, otherwise you will be dragged into an endless list of amendments and new features.

The Micromanager, the stakeholder who looks for the tiny details and undermines the Project Manager authority.  To satisfy the ‘micromanagement’ desire of your stakeholder, provide consistent, regular, and concise status updates.  Show them “here is how you can help up” in your updates and provide them with actionable items they can work on.  With the current move into ‘virtual’ ways of working where the stakeholder is not physically close to ‘stop by and see how things are going’, a consistent and regular update with actionable items is more important than ever.

The Prisoner, one of the more toxic stakeholders: they don’t want to be on your project, but they are “nominated” (forced) by their managers.  Your main strategy is to see how you can get them off your project – peacefully.  Have a candid discussion with their direct manager and see if they can be assigned somewhere else.  If you are lucky and the prisoner is not disrupting the team dynamics, let them be there.  However, if they are ‘sucking the joy out of the room’ then you need to think seriously about removing them – make them aware that you are going to escalate about them. In conclusion, do your homework: don’t manage your stakeholders in an adhoc manner – have a structured and deliberate plan to deal with them.  A well-crafted email is not enough, you should own and drive the conversation.