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How do you deal with Cowboy attitude?

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Murtaza Sheikh New York, Ny, United States
At some point in our careers, all PMs must have dealt with a colleague, specially in Functional or Weak Matrix orgs that can be best described as the Cowboy of the old Wild West.

Typical behavior includes complete disregard of the processes (law of the land), doing things their own way (which of course they are great at), by-passing all channels to get what they need, choose to show up for meetings when they want to (or not at all) and the list goes on.

Well... You already have the picture of that person in your mind.. don't you?

Question is, as the new Sheriff in town, how do you effectively deal with such personalities so that they are held accountable and get on-board like the rest of the team? (HINT: escalating to his/her manager or HR is not an option).
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Adrian Carlogea Australia
Sep 17, 2018 4:53 PM
Replying to Curt McClam
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As program manager who has responsibility for meeting the project objectives including building and managing the team, managing finances and managing project scope, I am the manager. As the manager, I do NOT have to deal with disruptive individuals and will have them removed from my team. I am not sure what kind of PM you are with no authority but it sounds like you're acting more in the role of a project assistant. And to those who don't think escalations can work due to relationships I will say this, effective escalations are part of your job and you need to enlist your manager and your manager's manager if that is what it takes to get rid of a disrupter.
When you are escalating this kind of issue to the functional manager to which the project team member reports to you have no guarantee that the manager would see the things your way.

Maybe you and the functional manager have different expectations from the team member and obviously he would obey the instructions of his line manager and not yours. The line manager can even feel offended by your so called escalation. You can only escalate in this way when you have an extraordinary good relationship with the team members's boss. But even so the results are not guaranteed.

If the "cowboy" happens to have some very important skills for the project your organization would most likely have you removed from the team rather then him.
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Ashleigh Kennett-Smith ICT Project Manager| Australian Red Cross Lifeblood Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Very interesting and tricky issue.

As PM our responsibility includes the bigger picture and keeping the project on track. What is the organisation expecting from the project. If the focus is on "this person knows how to do xyz and you (PM) don't" then how does that help the project achieve its goals? What about broader scope, time and budget considerations? What about the organisational benefits not being delivered (if it fails or deviates)?

If a cowboy SME is genuinely saying I don't think the project can meet its goals because of "abc" then that's something we need to listen to. However, if they're only looking at their field of expertise and interest, and effectively saying the rest of the project deliverables are unimportant, there's a problem. So I tend to agree with many of the posters that engagement with the cowboy is critical, and I'd add their line managers as well ie build relationships. This includes understanding their focus and ensuring they understand the bigger picture, and ensuring we understand as much as we can about any actual "technical" issues. Then see if we can work out a way forward. But it may come to escalation.

Ultimately there has to be a point at which the sponsor and line managers are informed when a project is at risk (escalation) and this is the PMs responsibility. If it is due to the actions of one person then the organisation needs to make a decision (cowboy or current PM change, or some other project change).
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Cesar Fiestas Technical Project Leader| Intuitive Projects Newport Beach, Ca, United States
I think this comes down to who you are?

Are you a leader or a boss?

There is an awesome book by HBR, titled "On Leadership". Give it a shot, and I am certain you will find your answer.

-Cesar F
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Cheikh FAYE Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Expert, CEO and owner| Eurêka Technologies Dakar, Senegal
A project team member is neither a brother nor a friend but just someone with whom you work during the project life cycle. A proverb from my country says that wrong habits are a second nature that is to say that a cow boy should die as a cow boy. Talk to him sincerely in private but change him if he continues to persist with his bad behavior.
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James Lovell Project Manager| Mercy Technology Services Ballwin, Mo, United States
This is an interesting question Murtaza. I agree, most of us have had cowboys on our projects and they can definitely be disruptive.

I would recommend meeting individually with anyone that is causing these types of disruptions. At the meeting, bring up one or two issues that you are particularly concerned about. Focus on what you need from that person for your specific project and why you need it rather than the person's behavior to avoid appearing judgmental (which would lead to defensiveness).

Prior to the meeting, have a good understanding of what other responsibilities this person has. Is he/she allocated to multiple projects? Sometimes when people are over allocated they bypass channels or skip meetings in an effort to keep up with their workloads.
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