Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
He is arrogant, rude and stubborn. He complains most of the time without actually contributing anything useful to the project. Whenever he appears in a meeting, the whole atmosphere of the meeting gets tensed up. Most members suffer from his presense and a simple discussion can become unnecessarily long and politically complex with his participation. People have been urging you to remove him from the team, yet he is a key stakeholder in the project and it is not easy to get him out. Most likely you have to live with him throughout the whole project. How would you tame such a Jackass so as to reduce the damage he could have on the team? Saving Changes...
Josh NankivelEngineering Project Manager| AppleSioux Falls, Sd, United States
Immediate feedback to him in private using the following model, adapted from manager tools:
1. Ask if you can give him some feedback
2. State what you observed
3. State how it impacts the team
Since he's not a direct report, I'd leave out #4 - which is usually to ask him how he'll do better in the future.
By the way, 1-3 work just as well for positive feedback. Saving Changes...
Mark DyslinHR Project Leader| Xerox Business Services LLCDallas, Tx, United States
In addition to what Josh suggests, I would also put more responsibility on his back, especially things that he complains about most often. If someone feels strongly about certain things on the project, put them in charge of a small team aimed at resolving an issue(s).
Give the jackass less room for constant complaining but giving him more accountability...but that accountability is at the team's direction and discretion. In other words, turn the tables and let the mule experience himself. Saving Changes...
Mark KennyHippo Solutions Founder, Catalyst for Change in Project Management Teams| Hippo SolutionsFranklin, Tn, United States
This piqued my interest. I found a couple of interesting resources on this - both of which relate to what was said by Josh and Mark:
Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
Josh,
Thanks for your suggestion. However, I feel that the person needs to be brave, humble and open-minded towards criticism in order for point 1-3 that you have suggested to works. Unfortunately, that person is rather arrogant and took all the positive comments in a negative direction. I guess it is not easy for people that are arrogant and stubborn to admit their own mistakes. If this is not handled cautiously, it may turn out to be something political. Saving Changes...
Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
Mark Dyslin,
What you have proposed is quite interesting. Let the antagonist shoulders the responsibilities of the hero. Something worth trying. Who knows? Perhaps the Jackass is just trying the get attention? Saving Changes...
Patrick ShediackProgram Manager| Air Force Lifecycle Management CenterDayton, Oh, United States
I've been a PM since 1983 and have run across these kinds of characters more than once. For the most part, they are just continuing their normal behavior. You are not going to change that situation by yourself.
Having said that, let me suggest you turn the heat up on the situation. Give your manager a five minute briefing on the problems this character is causing and how they threaten the completion of the project. Be sure to include dates and times of concrete examples. Ask your manager to just casually show up at the next project meeting. If this character continues his antics, your manager will catch on quickly and either intervene on the spot or discuss it later with the character's manager. After all, if this project fails, you fail and your manager fails.
If that doesn't solve the problem and the antics continue, then you need to ask your manager to go with you to see the project sponsor. Lay out the whole problem to the project sponsor, including dates, times, issues and how they are adding up to a potential failure of the sponsor's project. If you have documented all these issues, the project sponsor will most likely remove this character from the project.
In the meantime, when he complains, ask the character to clearly state the problem, his proposed solution and how fast he can implement that solution. Be clear you will put his problem's resolution on the project schedule and assign it to him. If he doesn't want to accept this responsibility, then quietly and firmly state, "then I presume we can agree there is no problem here" and go on to the next issue.
I had a character like this interfering with one of my projects 11 years ago. I knew he was very fond of reporting his project as "green", "yellow" or "red" every time he provided a verbal or written status report. He rolled out one of his interfering issues too many for me one day. I didn't care if he was on the customer's team or not; I had to deliver a make-or-break project for my company. I simply stated I had never had a failed project and I wasn't going to start now. My plan now was to just code my project "red" and hand it back to my company to up-channel to the executive level with the customer due to non-cooperation from the customer's team. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. I closed my notebook loudly, stuffed it in my laptop bag and stood up to leave. One of his peers on the customer's team told him to sit down and cooperate until the project was done. That ended the problem for me. (The customer's team knew they could not take the heat from their executives if our COO or VP for professional services called their CIO about non-cooperation.) (I later learned the customer team member who told this character to sit down and cooperate was their CIO's "eyes and ears" (he was also my direct counterpart.)
Saving Changes...
Ahmad YahyaCEO| ADAM - Agile Digital Assistant for ManagersPutrajaya, Malaysia
While all the above may provide you mean to intervene but at end of the day, is that the person in question need to change his attitudes and respect others. If he is not a team player, then, you would probably need to make a hard decision so as to minimize the risk the team and project. Saving Changes...
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Great post. As a former arrogant jackass of the most high order, with tendencies to revert back to that behavior, I have found that the most effective way of dealing with an arrogant jackass is to confront the person in the act and publicly and dispassionately say, "Stop being an arrogant jackass!" There is no need to explain, to have a private discussion, to give feedback, to state how it impacts the team, to coach & counsel, to worry about hurt feelings, etc. All that falls into the category of teaching a pig to sing. Besides, it's just business. Simply tell the arrogant jackass to stop. If the jackass wants to have a private chat and all the rest, let that be up to him, but he won't. Once you confront him, publicly, and continually as needed, others will do so too and in rather short order the arrogant jackass gets the point and stops being one. Saving Changes...
Audumbar DhuriSenior Project Manager| Bentley Systems Dombivali, Maharashtra, India
You mentioned that he is a key player and not easy to have him out. In this case I would have looked for options to search and manage or train if possible an equivalent substitute and then confront him.If he sticks to his ways then bring in your replacement. But till that time try to mitigate the situation by whatever appropriate team handling methods available as eventually the delivery of project objectives is important to client. Saving Changes...
Lily LiuProject Lead| Outlook CommercialSydney, Nsw, Australia
Absolutely right about the focus should be on the project delivery.
I have this project that went Live today. I had a Project Owner during Initiation & Conceptual phase. Then immediately after the Business Case was approved by the Board, he decideid to become the Project Sponsor and make one of his managers the PO. Immediately the new PO started to intimitate the entire project team. He would say to each of the Project Champions appointed by the various stakeholders, 'I'm the Project Owner and I decide whether your stuff is in scope or not'. I asked him to put in writing what he would de-scope and each time he would say 'let's leave it for now'. He was also disruptive and rude during the meetings making the team uncomfortable. As I had only 6 weeks from design to implementation, I informed Head of Project Delivery of the situation and that I would be reporting his intimidating behavior to HR. Suffice to say they both took actions that stopped the overt bullying.
Yesterday we DEMO the new solution to the senior management and the team was rewarded by the positive responses from the CEO, GM, etc. Saving Changes...
