'Help! A Stakeholder is Undermining Me!'

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Stakeholder Management  

I recently spoke with a new project manager who was having some problems with one of their stakeholders. It was the resource owner for someone who had been underperforming on the team. The PM spoke individually with the team member and pointed out that their performance needed to improve, asking whether they needed any help.

That team member immediately went to their line manager (the resource owner) and complained. Of course, the line manager took their staff member’s side, undermining the PM. The project manager wanted my advice on what to do.

Did they handle it the right way?
Before considering what to do now, let’s look back at what has already happened and consider whether the PM could have done anything differently. They didn’t call out the team member in front of any colleagues, so that’s a positive, and they didn’t ignore a performance issue, another positive. They also offered to provide some help. Depending on how that was done, it could well have been the right step. So, the PM did things right, right?

Well, maybe. If it were a more experienced project manager, I would be more comfortable—though I would still have some questions around how the offer to help was handled. There’s a difference between “Do you think there’s anything we can do to give you some assistance?” and “You clearly need …

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