Dealing with Strained Relationships Between Senior Leaders

As a project manager, you need healthy relationships with influential senior leaders. That can involve dealing with relationship issues between those leaders. Here are pointers for dealing with strained relationships between senior leaders that can impact your project.

Understand the issues and impacts to your project. Resolving issues between senior leaders isn’t your job as a project manager. Don’t go there. You’ll waste your time. Instead, figure out what the issues are and how they might impact your project. That way, you can share those impacts as risks and work with your sponsor and the leaders to choose your response to handle them. Share when the risks are coming to fruition and launch your risk response. This approach may lessen the issues between senior stakeholders -- at least as far as the project is concerned.

Leverage 1-1 meetings with senior stakeholders. Discuss the positive aspects and negative impacts of your project with influential stakeholders so you can understand the ?senior leaders’ perspectives. ?That way, you can avoid unexpected concerns. Use this understanding to develop an approach that helps your project deliver the best outcomes for everyone. This might also reduce the impact of conflicts between senior leaders.

Refine your scope. When tension between stakeholders involves business concerns, design the project to minimize those concerns. Well-developed scope statements can address tensions around business priorities, process handoffs between departments, and process inefficiencies. If your project doesn’t address those concerns, propose a phase 2 or follow-on project to address your influential stakeholders’ needs.

Be a neutral supporter. Stakeholders who feel listened to are more likely to cooperate with project team members. You can enhance that support by understanding their issues and concerns, and then communicating that in your project. Key point! When stakeholders are in conflict, support them equally. You don’t want to be perceived as biased or favoring one stakeholder’s concerns over another’s. Informally share things you may learn during the project in 1-1 conversations, for example, an idea for streamlining a business process. This is more timely and personal than waiting for that information to be conveyed in a status report.

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Do you have experience dealing with strained stakeholder relationships? If so, I’m sorry to hear that. If you have questions or solutions, share with us in the comments section.?

For more about stakeholder management, check out Natasha Kasimtseva’s Managing Project Stakeholders course.

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