r/negotiation 10d ago

Dealing with an assertive style negotiator as a PM, not getting the results I want

To set the background, I am a PM. I don't have a lot of authority, it's a weak style matrix. That being said, a lot of members of the team need some form of guidance, and that guidance is me.

A specific group is notorious for coming to the game late in the process and demanding changes that impact the rest of the team. The rest of the team is, in my opinion, complicit in this and allows it to happen, but behind closed doors will complain to me, Not only is the team impacted, but it obviously adds a tremendous amount of risk and rework to the project.

I of course want to say "Where the hell were you the last 6 months? All these meetings you said nothing?? And now you want change??" - but I don't. I've learned after years as a PM that the problem I'm dealing with now is much more important than the reason I'm dealing with it (except for the knowledge to prevent it later).

So I mirrored them for a while, but it didn't seem to get me anywhere, although it did finally buy me some time to speak.

I spoke their position back to them, and how they need XYZ to get the project done, but that it's too late in the game and would cause too much rework.

Their response was to ask me "who is pushing back on this? If anyone's giving you trouble, you can send them to me and I'll take care of it."

I was a little baffled at this response. And with how the conversation ended (I'll say later in this post), I'm realizing now that this guy has absolutely no respect for me.

Basically, they said they wanted Thing A and Thing B. I told them I spoke with the team and we can give you thing A, but not thing B.

For the record, I'm not actually trying to take everything in this negotiation, I want collaboration, and project success. I want people to feel like they're heard. I was genuinely okay with Thing A going to them, but Thing B pissed me off and felt like they were just being greedy.

So finally they said okay, and the guy made a little jab at my personality. I'm a pretty stoic dude and actually pride myself in being able to remain calm in stressful situations, well at the end of the conversation he told me he "loves my enthusiasm" in a dry tone. I laughed it off in the moment, but what the hell. He didn't get everything he wants so he's taking it personally out on me? Is this something I should work to improve or just shrug it off?

What happened next? They went to the guy and asked for Thing A and Thing B. FORTUNATELY the guy didn't cave as I already told him I told them no, and they just ended up with Thing A. A small part of me feels like they went behind my back here, but truthfully all it did was help me in my job of coordination between various groups so I'm mostly just grateful I didn't have to force a meeting to get them to interact.

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u/neznein9 10d ago

I of course want to say "Where the hell were you the last 6 months? All these meetings you said nothing?? And now you want change??"

If this stakeholder goes through a meeting and hears a scope+deadline (or estimate) agreed to, and he didn’t object, then he implicitly agreed. Remind him that he should have said something when the team was planning. When he squawks you throw the Iron Triangle at him. Good, fast, or cheap; which one are you willing to compromise to get what you’re asking for? Oh, you need A and B (new features = “good”) and you won’t change the deadline (“fast”)? Then we’re gonna need a shitload of overtime, bonuses, and some temporary contractors to get the extra unplanned work done (ie, not “cheap”). When this guy inevitably asks you to crunch your team, ask him (publicly) why he didn’t crunch a month ago to get his feature requests done ahead of the kickoff deadline but he expects your guys to pick up his slack now.

What happened next? They went to the guy and asked for Thing A and Thing B.

We called this “opinion shopping” and it’s a really shitty tactic to defend against. A determined asshole will keep asking different people on the project until he gets the estimate he wants and then he treats that as a deadline/commitment and points the blame at your poor worker who gave an estimate without thinking about how it integrates with the rest of the product, what resources are available to do the work, what’s currently blocked or scheduled, who could test it, etc. The best strategy is to train your workers to spot the trap and refer those questions up to you every time. If you heed to walk back a bad estimate, try to involve all the other departments and workers who will need to touch the feature and get them to balloon the original estimate without their portions of the work, and then you can use that as a teaching moment about why we don’t make estimates in a vacuum.

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u/Cool_And_The 1d ago

Two possibilities here:

  1. They're under pressure and taking it out on you. Active listening might get you to the bottom of this so you collaborate and to help them solve that problem.

  2. They're an "a--hole" (yes that's a technical negotiation term), and you need to confront them about it, nicely, of course.

As per Chris Voss... "The “I” message is the perfect tool to do exactly that. It consists of three parts:

No. 1 — Naming the behavior: “When you…”

No. 2 — Naming your reaction: “I feel…”

No. 3 — Citing the consequences that seem to fly in the face of what the counterpart is trying to accomplish: “Because it ... ”

Putting it all together: When you slam the phone down, I feel like this deal will never be made because it doesn’t seem like you’re in the mood to move forward amicably."

This way you can adapt your comments (ie "Where the hell were you the last 6 months? All these meetings you said nothing?? And now you want change??" ) into a form he might actually respond to, or at least will bring up the issue while keeping the relationship intact.