Dealing with Angry Clients

July 7, 2011 — Bruce McGraw

Recently, while sharing a quiet dinner at a nice restaurant (in lovely Regina Canada), I could not help but overhear the conversation at the next table. The patron was angry and demanding that the cook re-do the meat because it was not to his liking. I paid attention to this because the customer had already returned his wine as, “inferior” and the atmosphere around that table was toxic.

Now, this person may have just been a jerk or perhaps he had a very, very bad day. However, not all anger is unjustified. People get angry for reasons. Sometimes those people are clients and sometimes they are right.

To be honest, whether the client’s anger is justified is not really the issue. The situation is the issue. You, the project manager or program manager have to deal with it. By “deal with it,” I mean you need to diffuse the situation and move forward. Angry clients or employees often do not keep their disappointment or anger to themselves. They tell friends, co-workers and even competitors.

Reasons Clients Become Angry

  • They can’t get scope changes for free. (Do not be surprised if this anger involves some posturing, since agreeing on cost and schedule is a negotiation.)
  • Your project did not deliver what was promised.
  • The project manager or key personnel changed without notice.
  • Your project missed a milestone or cost bogey (“target” for those non-military types).
  • Some “user requested changes” were over-ridden by the client’s senior staff or the project team.
  • What they want is not possible given project cost and schedule constraints. (the old project triangle theory)

Reasons Staff Become Angry

  • Scope creep: Workers agree to do a certain amount of work within a specific time. Then, customers, clients, senior management – someone – keeps adding tasks without changing the schedule or adding hours to do the work.
  • Organizational change: Events outside of the project alter the organization’s usual way of doing business, which eventually trickles down to the project staff as added training, forms and procedures. (See: “Don’t Take Organizational Change for Granted – Manage it”)
  • Perceived lack of appreciation or respect. (Don’t under-estimate this one!!)

Dealing with Anger

  • Accept that the person is angry. They may be angry with you, your company or your team. They could be showing displaced anger from situations in their lives outside of the project. Alternatively, they may display an angry pose as their way of intersecting with the world. Therefore, acknowledging the anger is a place to begin repairing the situation, if it can be repaired.
  • Clarify the situation. What is the client angry about. If there are several points of anger, write them down on paper or on a whiteboard and address each concern.
  • Be careful of your body language. Relax. A red face, clenched jaw or fist pounding does not help.
  • Some clients express anger or disappointment passively. If a client is consistently slow to return emails or voice messages, misses meetings, stops contributing to discussions, check with them about their state of comfort with the project and ask them if there is a problem. Do not assume they are angry; just give them an opening to discuss their perceptions or concerns.
  • Provide realistic feedback. If you or the project created the problem, acknowledge it and see if there is an acceptable resolution. If the problem itself is not solvable, acknowledge both the concern and the reality of the situation. “I realize you wanted the entire system to be compatible with your legacy software, John, unfortunately that cannot be done because the systems handle data differently. To write a translator would cause the performance to degrade below your minimum expectations …” etc.

Best Practices

  • Whenever possible meet face-to-face.
  • Deal with the situation quickly – do not let anger fester.
  • Stay calm, speak quietly and do not escalate the situation.
  • Invite a senior member of your organization to the meeting to demonstrate your organization’s concern and commitment to improving the situation.
  • Follow up a confrontational meeting with a call or email that describes the resolution and your commitment to meet the new schedule, do the task or just check into current perceptions of the project.
  • When dealing with an angry project staff, follow many of steps suggested above – listen, accept the anger, be realistic and if changes need to be made either make them or make it clear you are working with decision-makers to improve the situation.
  • Keep the end goal in mind, you want to leave the meeting with the anger reduced or hopefully replaced with positive feelings.
  • Monitor yourself – stop breathe and take a pause to think.

Resources:
Seth Godin: How to Deal with an Angry Customer
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/09/how_to_deal_wit.html

Steven Flannes, Ph.D.: Working Effectively with the Angry, Critical Client: Real World Solutions to Help You Get the Job Done

http://www2.sas.com/proceedings/sugi30/107-30.pdf

Bloomberg Business Week: Dealing with Angry Customers

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2007/sb20070620_974061.htm

Posted in General Project Management, Leadership, management, Professional Development. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

The Importance of Social Networking – How and Why

June 2, 2011 — Bruce McGraw

How many of you thought this post was going to be about Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, and BLOGS??  Wrong! My thoughts today are about the value of old-fashioned social networking, as opposed to tweeting and posting to online services like LinkedIn and Facebook. Building a network of professional contacts involves personal contact – putting a face, or at least a voice, with a name. Creating your personal network takes place over years and requires a lot of effort from you to maintain.

Why bother with networking?
Let’s say you are at a professional conference (I assume that many of us still go to those). The presentations have finished for the day, your backside is tired from sitting and your brain is in overload. Should you,
(a) Go to your room and take a nap?
(b) Swim or jog for an hour to clear your mind and relax your body?
(c) Attend the optional meet-and-greet in a downstairs conference room? Or
(d) Go and catch up on all the email and work that got assigned to you today?

Given the topic of this post, you can guess that I recommend C – attending the meet-and-greet.

The informal nature of these business/social meetings gives you a chance to know people from other organizations and companies, often geographically dispersed. These people share your professional interests and often possess skills or knowledge that you may need someday. Moreover, these folks want to know you too and for the same reasons. Having a direct contact in an organization or from a location may help you solve a future management challenge or get a trusted recommendation.

Networking inside your organization is valuable also. In larger companies, many people never meet others in the organization that can facilitate solving problems or getting resources. Networking within the organization, by participating in extracurricular activities or just keeping up with folks with whom you worked on previous projects, gives you a starting point when you need help or information. People often return phone calls or schedule meetings more readily with people they already know.

OK, another scenario is that you have been invited to the OnRamp High Tech Happy Hour down on Sixth Street this Thursday at 5:30.  So once again you have to decide if it is worth going.  Or how about the professional association meetings held in your town? We have PMI meetings, ACM chapters, American Management meetings, and many professional get togethers here in Austin.  You have to go and meet people in a social setting or in a mutual interest in order to get to know them.  You will be surprised how many people I meet who later I reach out to for help with a problem that I am having. 

And let’s not forget to socialize with the people in our own organization.  Some of you work for large companies or say the government.  When you have a chance to reachout to people you don’t work with on a day to day basis it helps you form what we call a network. 

Maintaining a social network made easy – well easier
You do not have to spend countless hours on the phone, golf course or at lunch to maintain your social network. You do need to spend some thoughtful time touching base and maintaining the contact. Like what?

  • Share interesting professional articles. Add a short personal note – “thought you might like this”
  • If you happen to hear about an achievement of a social contact – publishing an article, getting a promotion, winning a contract – send a short “Congratulations” note.
  • Try – really try – to remember the names of people in the organization that you interact with occasionally and use their name when greeting them in the hallway, cafeteria or if you happen to run into them outside of the office environment.
  • Create a presence on LinkedIn or other professional association sites and provide brief updates on your activities and interests. Invite those you meet into your list of connections.
  • If you are capable (time and resources) of helping a new contact accomplish an objective, do it. Perhaps you can answer a question or recommend a resource or even complete a task, your assistance will be remembered and valued.
  • Send a note that is not work related, such as a “Happy Holiday” email or share a good joke or cartoon with a member of your social network. Use this sparingly, since the relationship revolves around shared work interests.  If you do not know the person well enough to understand his or her sense of humor or culture, better not to follow this suggestion than offend someone.
  • If you are having a project wrap up celebration, invite some of your inside social network contacts who may have peripherally helped in the project’s success.
  • If one of your network contacts posts a professional blog, send a brief, “saw your blog post on XYZ; appreciated your insight.”

Some additional reading on this subject:

Getting connected is not such a scary thing!  
9 Steps toward effective networking
Professional Networking

If you have additional recommendations on maintaining a professional social network, I hope you will share.

Posted in Communication, management, Professional Development. Tags: , , , , . 3 Comments »

Managing Managers Requires Good Leadership Skills

May 12, 2011 — Bruce McGraw

I have a question for all my readers – How many of you have a manager or supervisor?  OK, so everyone has a boss.  Now, how many of you manage people who manage people? Moving up the management career ladder often includes progressing from team leader, to project manager to portfolio or department manager or higher.

I think that you will find that with each upward step, you become more removed from daily individual contributor supervision and more involved in managing managers. Although this progression does not require an entirely new set of skills, it does require modification and enhancement of the leadership and management skills honed earlier in your career.

How is managing managers different from managing projects?

  • Trust becomes even more critical when managing managers than it was in managing a project. You will have to rely on the observations and reports of others, rather than directly experiencing situations.
  • You will lose some of your technical edge, as your time is devoted more to business development and money matters.
  • You will find that you know less about “how” and more about “why”. (This one bothers many people as they move up).
  • You will be evaluated primarily on financial success, rather than products or schedules.
  • You will spend time with non-technical people, many with whom you must communicate successfully. Communicating upward in the organization will consume more of your time.
  • Your opinion carries extra weight and concomitant responsibility.  You can no longer make rash or “off the cuff” opinions.
  • You may find that management techniques that worked well to motivate young, inexperienced team members are less effective in managing managers.  Just look at the sports coaches who move from college to pro teams and find that their techniques don’t work with professionals.
  • Character matters even more, since employees may copy your behavior and solicit your support more aggressively than when you were a technical lead or project manager.

Important leadership skills for senior managers

  • Set the vision. It is essential that you communicate the long-term goals of your department or organization to your managers clearly and often. A shared vision provides the touchstone to help your managers make decisions and solve problems.
  • Networking with other managers and technical resources to get things done across your organization.
  • Set straightforward, measureable objectives for each manager and project under your authority. Have short-term and long-term goals for each person who reports to you and reinforce those goals in monthly or quarterly meetings.
  • Talent management-hiring (see previous post on Staffing for Success ), giving effective feedback, and developing talent for the project work.
  • Demonstrating accountability and holding team members and project managers accountable.
  • Influencing others- both up (your leaders), across (your peers), and down (your project managers and team).
  • Facilitate problem solving. It may be tempting to jump in and solve a problem yourself. You have been there and solved that problem successfully before. However, your managers need to learn and they need to put their own stamp on projects. Do not micromanage. Let me say that again – Do not micro manage.  Rather, offer advice and ask leading questions to help clarify a situation and your subordinate manager’s options. You are also in a better position than before to break down barriers to solving problems by using your position and influence.
  • Be a role model. Social learning theory, also called social cognitive theory, supports the idea that people learn new behaviors and change existing ones based not just on their experience, but also on their observations of significant others, such as senior managers. Your values, priorities and even your mode of dress may be copied.  One of my favorite phrases in leading is watch the “Shadow of the Leader.”

I have worked with and managed many managers throughout my career and there are no easy answers or techniques that will make you successful.  Follow these tips and use your best judgment and you should be successful as a manager and more importantly as a Leader!

I hope you will share your insights into the challenges and opportunities of managing managers.

Resources:
IncMagazine: How to Manage Managers

Purdue University: Social Cognitive Theory

Posted in Leadership, management, Professional Development, Project Management. Tags: , , , . 5 Comments »
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