Bhavna, the Director of products, is having a tough time with Kishore, her engineering counterpart. Whenever a project or a feature is lined up, the first thing you hear Kishore say is ‘No, we can’t take up this feature’.
Kishore is a veteran engineering manager with Enterprise products background. He often tries to use the technology and management principles that he followed in his earlier avatar in this startup setup as well. He expects long term roadmap with all details frozen at the beginning of the year itself. Once, he asked the product team to come up with a 5-year road map. This shocked all the product managers who have not heard of such a thing during any of their past stints working with multiple startups. It takes lot of Bhavna’s energy to convince Kishore even about small things. Bhavna tried to reason this with Kishore but he didn’t seem to care. He once mentioned to one of his peers – ‘These PMs would suggest hacks and quietly leave the company. Our developers then need to clean up all the mess at a later date.’
It takes a village to convince Kishore and Bhavna is super frustrated with him.
Bhavna tried to escalate but that didn’t seem to work since Kishore has a strong backing of the CTO. The CTO respected Kishore for his expertise in building long-term architecture.
Bhavna consulted with her mentor to figure out how to deal with this situation. The mentor asked a few questions – “Do you think Kishore adds value to the company & products?”, “Have you tried objective methods e.g. showcasing data and metrics to him?” etc for which Bhavna’s answers were affirmative. In fact, she had always used objective arguments/data as the primary tool to convince Kishore.
The mentor explained “For the sake of simplicity, let us consider that there are two types of tough stakeholders. There are ones (type-1) who are either not skilled or do not have the right intentions. They would easily get noticed. Management processes and culture would deal with them appropriately and you don’t need to worry much. It is just a matter of time that things get sorted.
The second type of stakeholders (Type 2) – the skilled and well-intentioned but tough on others taking away all your energy. They might be poor at communicating what they think and may sometimes do things out of context – like Kishore trying to play enterprise hat in a startup. These ones can hardly be dealt with escalations or force. It is better to deal with such stakeholders with empathy and patience for maximum effectiveness. Kishore is the type-2 stakeholder. “
The mentor asked – “Tell me some of the good qualities/skills of Kishore” to which Bhavna started producing a list in no time.
The mentor continued – “Try mentioning these qualities once in a while to Kishore’s stakeholders and make him look good in front of them. You should make him feel that you are in general very supportive of him and want him to succeed. Once this level of trust is built, he will start listening to your perspectives. Right now, he is very likely wary of you and your asks. “
This seemed to make sense to Bhavna but being a very “objective” person, she took time to digest this and transform her communication and actions.
She started putting this to practise. Instead of discussing only deliverables and roadmap during their 1:1s, she spent equal time understanding Kishore’s background & interests to the level he was comfortable talking about. She also praised Kishore wherever it was due but at the same time kept him accountable. It was a tough walk to balance both accountability and appreciation.
Once she started doing these, things started changing. Kishore started trusting Bhavna’s intentions. He still says no to few things but thought twice or thrice before making up his mind. He conveyed his reasoning to the product team clearly which formed the basis for further clarification/negotiation. The stress in dealing with Kishore is gone.
Takeaways
- At the beginning of one’s PM career, there is a lot of emphasis on being objective and data driven. Paradoxically, by the time you become very objective (after spending years becoming good at it), you realize that you need to bring in subjectivity to few situations . You start seeing the need to apply both objectivity and subjectivity in tandem while making decisions and also handling people.
- Humans are not fully rational as much as we imagine or they portray themselves. There are psychological needs like recognition, feeling connected etc that humans yearn for. In the process of fulfilling these needs, trust also gets built. Using these for the right causes would help build great relationships with stakeholders and bring positive results.
