It always amazes me how these emails naturally follow a theme. The last two weeks I have written about techniques for influencing difficult stakeholders.
Today I had a coaching session with a consultant from a management consulting firm and he shared a terrific technique that fits this theme.
‘Fred' often uses questions to thaw difficult stakeholders before moving the conversation onto his recommendations. Let me unpack his strategy here for you.
Fred took four steps to engage a particularly prickly mine maintenance manager. He
- Understand their concerns fully
- Meet one-on-one when stakeholders are hostile to your or your recommendation
- Start with questions to demonstrate you are focused on their needs
- Use neutral language to segue to your own agenda
Understand their concerns fully. Fred understood well that the maintenance manager at the mine was ‘not a fan' of him or his colleagues.The project had begun too aggressively before Fred joined, and he now has to repair the relationships.
Fred used our storyline planner to flesh these issues out. Download the latest version here.
Meet one-on-one when stakeholders are hostile to you or your recommendation. This reduces the risk that either one of you might be ambushed. It also allows for easier course correction if the conversation does go off track.
Start with questions to demonstrate that you are focused on their needs. Fred's gem of an opening question won the maintenance manager over and also unearthed extra ways Fred and his team could help.
He asked: What is keeping you up at night? and then gently probed to get the mine manager talking.
He deliberately did not offer solutions but held back, making sure he allowed the mine manager to unload fully.
Use neutral to segue to your own agenda. He then suggested that perhaps ‘looking at' maintenance processes might help address the issues that the mine manager had raised. Fred deliberately avoided using value-laden terms like ‘addressing', ‘fixing' or ‘improving' and remained very factual in his recommendations.
The mine manager was then ready to hear what Fred had to say, and allowed Fred to work through the introduction and lead to the ‘so what' for his story.
I will hear how it all went when I work with Fred again in a couple of weeks.
I hope that helps. More next week.
Kind regards,
Davina