Good PM 3 – Convey bad news
Posted: January 8th, 2009 | Tags: Conflict Management, Difficult Conversation, Negotiation, Project Management | 1 Comment »
Continuing on the series regarding what skills make a “good” project manager:
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot. ”
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As a project manager you will definitely in your career come up with the challenge of conveying bad news. In most cases for me it was news that had to be given to a customer. A picture that I will never forget comes from one of my favorite books on this topic – “Difficult Conversations” by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. This book is a follow up from the bestseller titled “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher and William Ury. I can strongly recommend these for any PM that wants to touch up on negotiations and conflict management. These books were some of the results from the Harvard Negotiation Project. Paul – you can start with these!
In Difficult Conversations the message is summed up as follows: Bad news is like a hand grenade. Sugar coating will not cause less damage and holding on to it for too long will cause the most damage to yourself. From this I have drawn the lesson that the sooner you have this conversation the better, provided that all the facts are on the table. I think this is one of the most important steps to a difficult conversation – make sure you have all the facts. Do not make it a personal or emotional discussion. The moment the conversation starts turning emotional or personal you somehow need to call a time-out. It always goes south from there. According to the authors of Difficult Conversations you cannot ignore the feelings or personalities. They break a difficult conversation into three key conversations:
- The “What Happened” conversation
- The feelings conversation
- The identity conversation
You will need to understand each of these to be able to keep control of such a discussion and get a fruitful outcome. I strongly suggest you read the book. An audio version is also available from Audible.com.
The second most important thing I have learned is that “it is not about me“! It is seldom that the client is unhappy with you as a person. In most cases they are unhappy about the product, the company’s attitude towards something, the quality of a work product or a change in scope. Make sure that you do not make it personal for yourself. This allows you to walk out of a serious session with your personal dignity intact and the ability to face the next difficult conversation. I promise you – you will have more than one of these if you stick around the project management space.
The last point for today – You do not need to have all the answers. In most cases during these converatin the client simply wants confirmation that his/her viewpoint is being heard, understood and respected. “I will need to get back to you on this” is a perfectly good answer when you do not know. Trying to give an answer simply to get out will lead to more problems later. Good project managers are team players and will know that I need a team to support me. Buy yourself the time to go and consult with your team. In most cases there is a good logical answer for most difficult questions.
I think this is a very interesting topic with relation to project management. I’ve brought up some very similar points on my Agile Lab blog. One of the comments that I got on my blog regarding the “Difficult Conversations” book is that I should also read “Beyond Reason” by Roger Fisher (another one of the Getting to Yes people) and Daniel Shapiro. I think that’s also a good book – with much better pointers to other reading in the field.