How to deal with difficult stakeholders
Everybody’s dealt with a difficult person and you know that it’s no fun especially if you are the business analyst and you need this person to give you information so that you’re able to do your job well and they are just completely difficult. What do you do in that situation?
In this article we will give you x ways to deal with difficult stakeholders. This is also a popular question in business analyst interviews so read to the end to see how to answer.
Make sure you’re talking to the right stakeholder
Not because a person has been involved in the project or been around the project or somebody told you that they would be a good stakeholder means that they actually are. You have to look at your project and determine who are the right stakeholders to talk with. Find out more about eliciting requirements from the right stakeholders in this video
Stakeholders resistant to change
Some stakeholders are difficult because they are resistant to change. Sometimes the stakeholders are difficult because they were the ones who actually championed whatever the process currently is that needs to be changed. so it could have been their process. It could have been them that came up with it and now you’re coming to change it and they feel like that is an insult almost to them and so they are already committed to the process however it currently is because they created therefore they are difficult with you.
Stakeholders trying to avoid blame
If someone has been working in a process for a while and it’s going awry to the point where management sends business analysts to help figure out how to fix this process, then there might be this this feeling among the key stakeholders that maybe I’m going to be blamed for it being wrong so people can become difficult because they don’t want to be identified as the root cause and they don’t want their name to float up to management and to get the blamed for the process being inefficient.
Stakeholder feels senior to you
Another reason that cause stakeholders to be difficult with you is that they may have been at the company longer than you and either are senior to you or feel they have more experience than you. They can then feel resentful when you being a relative newcomer, wants to start changing everything. Because you are new they can resist and be difficult with you.
Stakeholder suffering personal problems
Although we like to think everyone is professional, some people can’t function well under personal pressures and sometimes it spills over at work. Sometimes people are going through hard times, sometimes people are going through divorces, breakups, issues with their children etc… and they just become difficult at work.
Stakeholders are disgruntled already
Sometimes stakeholders can be already disgruntled employees/customers and so they are more likely to be difficult to work with. Often they have real reasons to be disgruntled. It could be that they think they should have been promoted already or they received bad service prior etc… so that’s sometimes the underlying reason why your stakeholders are difficult.
Stakeholders protecting their job
Another reason stakeholder’s are difficult could just be job security. The stakeholder may have been there working in this process for many years and they know the process in detail and have become experts. These stakeholders hold their knowledge as the value they bring to the company and they know when things change the playing field is level and they feel that their unique value diminishes. They also know that when things change sometimes people get let go and so they are difficult in order to preserve their job.
Stakeholder is indecisive
This happens more frequently with client stakeholders who are not sure what the right decision is so they agree to something and then change their minds and this process continues repeatedly. They make things difficult for you because you have to re-work everything you were told initially.
Stakeholder gives information overload
There are stakeholders that, sometimes through no fault of their own, cannot give a simple answer to save their lives!
Every time you ask a question they give an overly complicated answer with so much extra unnecessary unrelated details that go in all different directions, that it’s difficult to sift through to find the answer to the original question.
It’s typically these stakeholders that are experts in the field and very knowledgeable and you respect their knowledge so much but they don’t know how to package that knowledge in a way that a person who’s not had their experience and not been in their world can easily consume.
Example of how stakeholders become difficult
Some stakeholders may be openly difficult, but often times the difficulty is subtle and passive aggressive. For example:
- They have an attitude.
- Pretending to help but never actually do
- Being vague
- Rescheduling meetings often on short notice
- Don’t participate in meetings
For an extended list of the different ways stakeholders are difficult read this article: 4 Strategies for Dealing With Difficult Stakeholders
How to handle difficult stakeholders
As a business analyst you have to solve the problem of difficult stakeholders.
How are you able to challenge information?
How are you able to get a stakeholder to give you the information that you need in a very fluid way?
You have to be skillful to know how to drill down and what kind of questions to ask how to probe deeper.
Here’s how to handle a difficult stakeholder:
- Make sure you are talking to the right stakeholder.
- See if there is anyone else who can give you the information
- Ask opening questions that the stakeholder already have the answer to in order to break the ice
- If the stakeholder is vague, try to drill down deeper and be more specific in your questions.
- Find some way to make a connect and build a relationship before you meet with the stakeholder to elicit requirements
- Present win-win solutions
- Explain how the change benefits them – so it’s not about blaming anyone for the current state but improving for everyone
- Attach a cost or time component every time a priority has shifted from client stakeholders so that they are more likely to make and stick with a decision
- Start asking more questions of internal stakeholders when they keep shifting priorities such as: how many clients are waiting on this? Is there a reason why we’ve changed priority for this? etc…
- When there is too much complex information given when talking to a stakeholder, stop and clarify before moving forward so that you can follow more easily
So hope that helps you get more ideas on how to handle difficult stakeholders. Please also read this free course on Business Requirements Elicitation – Free Course