People have different personalities, opinions and ways of working. This might be a challenge when you have a boss or a client or a counterpart who does not share the same opinion as you. You might find yourself in a position where you cannot come to common grounds. You may have lengthy discussions but it feels like every meeting is taking things two steps back. You might even dread meeting the person and may want to give up.
The formula to working with them is to understand their underlying reason for their disposition and work your way around it. I have listed 5 stakeholder behaviours and how to fruitfully work with them towards common goals.
1. The stubborn guy
People do not choose to be stubborn by default. It happens because they had such a bad experience in the past that they choose to not go down the same path twice. It is like the old adage Once bit twice Shy. The first thing that you need to understand about such people is that there is no easy fix. The more you try to push your point, the more they retaliate into their shell and the harder you find it to talk to them. The real fix here is to gain their trust.
You need to spend some time agreeing with them and supporting them. Gain their trust. Then start asking introspective questions on the lines of "I find it fascinating that you always gravitate towards this, is there any interesting back story to this". This will force them to introspect and share their deep thoughts and insecurities with you. A person who opens up their shell to you will start trusting you more. Handle this diligently and then you can get them to a common ground.
2. Mr. Always Angry
You need to understand that anger and argument is a natural part of fighting and comes from adrenaline hormone. Adrenaline is triggered by insecurity or feeling of threat. There could be a lot of reasons for insecurity - maybe there is a shortage of time, or there is a resource crunch, or they have a different direction and are impatient that you do not align with them. Or it could also have an even deeper implication that they have something to hide and get instinctively triggered when you reach the threat zone.
You have to dig deep. Listen more than you speak. Ask pertinent questions and try to assess the pain point. For instance, ask - What do you suggest?, what do you feel is incomplete in my idea? and so on. You can probably spot their frustration hidden somewhere in the answer. If you find illogical and flawed arguments, it could either mean that they have a misconception that needs to go. Or in some rare cases, they want to hide something securely in a vault. You need to let them keep ownership of the vault and put your ask in front of them. They will figure out a way to accommodate for it.
3. The Back stabber
You will sometimes see colleagues or your counterpart or your boss agreeing to every statement in front of you but when you are not watching, they go in opposite direction. Maybe they do not vote for the same idea as you or maybe they deny permissions that they openly promised to give you or they create unnecessary roadblocks for you.
This just becomes a game of politics for them and you are not in a winning position here. You can mitigate the losses with your due diligence. Keep your documentation correct, capture meeting notes and circulate them in broader audience, keep a weekly progress tracker email with risks highlighted adequately. In short, if you keep no walls, there will be no walls behind which they can hide. Transparency and documentation are your weapons in tackling their game.
4. The Yes Man
Wouldn't we all want such bosses who never ask questions? But there are risks associated with them as well. It is a boon to work with them especially when you are covering up your mistakes and when you lead the way. But there will be times where a risky choice has to be made and all parties should acknowledge and take informed decision. Having a blind guy on your team puts double pressure since the choice is now all yours. It also becomes irritating when there are multiple conflicting opinions on the table and the guy said yes to all of them.
There could be two reasons for such behaviour. One is that the guy does not understand or cannot be bothered to dig deep and understand it all. You need to bridge the gap by providing analogies and make him or her understand the topic. Try to explain in the lines of - "An engine is just like us - as soon as it wakes up, you don't want to make it run. And as we like to jog at smooth pace, an engine also wants to sit at the smooth rpm."
The second reason is that they simply do not care at which point, you should be safe and keep your documentation straight so that if shit hits the roof, you can safely prove your side of the story.
5. The finger pointer
You might see people who are good until things are good but as soon as something goes wrong, they point finger at you and throw you under the bus. If something goes wrong, their immediate reaction would be that it was all because of you and because you took xyz decision. These type of people are very toxic and hard to work with.
You need to understand that this is a childish behaviour and it indicates a lack of emotional maturity and integrity of the person. A person like this will most likely fail to maintain confidence and drive teams towards positive outcomes. Building a rapport with their higher ups will ensure that your position is communicated to them clearly and any reputational damage that they might have wanted to cause is negated. And since you are in touch with their boss, you can get a word in and persuade them to align with you.
Conclusion
People have different skillsets, different experiences and different knowledge levels. There will always be dissent. You have to listen more and talk less to understand where they are coming from. Then you can work towards fixing the gaps and working towards favourable outcomes.