Dealing with crappy cross-functional partners

Hello Fall, where did you come from? After soaking in the last bits of summer, we are back with another edition of Sticky Situations, where your office dilemmas turn into productive leadership learnings. We’ll feature a situation submitted by you, with our advice on how to approach it. There’s no shortage of sticky stuff at work, so let’s get into it.

Today’s topic is about cross-functional partners. Crappy ones.

The Situation

I’m a program manager at a large tech company, and I lead a high profile initiative for my business unit. There are several cross-functional stakeholders I need to interact with and have dependencies on. I have a pretty positive relationship with most of them, but there’s one in particular that always is short with me and shoots down my asks or ideas as soon I say them. They are the type of person that says “we already tried that, it didn’t work.” It’s so draining to work with them, but their work is critical to this project. What can I do?

My Take

Thanks for your submission Myra from Amazon. JK, but I could have written this myself! I think many of us can relate to having a stakeholder that is tough to work with.

When cross-functional woes are getting you down, it’s time to take it back to the basics. I’ve used these tactics in some of the toughest, awkward situations and they work. There’s no easy button, but rebuilding trust can do wonders for any work relationship.

Here’s how:

• Schedule a recurring 1:1

• Understand their priorities

• Re-align on joint goals

• Agree on ways of working

Schedule a recurring 1:1

This is the first thing I ask when people have a challenging work relationship - do you have a regular 1:1 with this person? When I look back on all the challenging relationships I had at work, they all have this in common - I had no 1:1.

It’s never too late to start this. You need to learn more about them as a person, their priorities, and their pressures. And they need to learn about you. Maybe they are going through something really tough. Or they have other priorities.

This is best done in a 1:1 outside of whatever meetings you have for the project. In this 1:1, don’t talk about the project. At least not at first. Ask them about their life: What are you up to this weekend? Where do you live, what’s your commute like? Are you a big candy person because I brought some with me? (ok this last one maybe is specific to me). Have some small talk and share about yourself as well. Prep this, especially if small talk isn’t your specialty.

Now, one 1:1 is not going to solve everything, so it’s important to schedule this recurring. Maybe bi-weekly to start and then move to monthly. As you continue to have these, always start with small talk to get to know them even better. Once you start to earn a little trust, you can dive deeper into ways of working on this project.

Understand their priorities

After some small talk in your 1:1, ask more about their role. What else are you working on right now? Have anything big coming up? What are your team’s priorities/goals this year?

This will help you understand what other things they’re working on and anything critical coming up that’s not your initiative. You might even learn that your project is not even part of their goals. Or that they have a huge deadline that they’re on the hook for. You can also ask them to send you their goals or their latest roadmap doc to learn more yourself. Do this out of curiosity and not with the intent of double-checking if your project is a priority.

And then you do the same, even if they don’t ask. Share your top priorities and even consider opening up about some of your challenges. “I am on way too many SMEships this year so it’s been hard to juggle.” or “My leader only cares about XYZ so we’ve all been trying to focus on that.” The more open you can be with them, the more they will see that they can do the same with you.

Re-align on joint goals

Once you feel good about 1 and 2, then you can re-align on this project. BUT you cannot skip straight to this step! Doing so can potentially backfire and make them more defensive. You need to earn a little trust before coming in with this.

In one of your 1:1s, ask about the project and state your intentions. I want to level-set goals with all the POCs on this project - the main goal for me is ABC. Are you aligned with that? Are there other things I’m not thinking about from your perspective?

Keep discussing until you have an understanding of their perspective. If you aren’t getting any answers or feel they are being dismissive, suggest an action. I want to make sure everyone’s aligned moving forward, is there anyone else we need to bring in to discuss this?

Agree on ways of working

Now that you’ve built a little rapport, you can agree on new ways of working. In a 1:1, ask for their thoughts or expertise. I know this has a different priority level for each person in the group, so I’m thinking of revamping some of the ways of working. Do you have any suggestions before I bring it to the whole group?

Or if you have ideas bring them up here. I am thinking of doing this, what do you think? Would that work better for you? You can even be transparent and say I know the weekly update format isn’t working for you and some others, so instead I was thinking of this. What do you think?

Bring them in on the process, as a trusted and valued opinion. They will be more committed to it if they had a hand in it.

Now you can see how this process of earning trust would be better done before or early on in the project timeline, vs reactively. But better late than never. So schedule that 1:1!

BTW - All the while, you should be keeping your manager in the loop on your progress, giving proactive updates on the steps you’re taking to build trust and re-engage this stakeholder. When things start to turn for the better, great! But if you still are not getting their collaboration, it’s time to figure out another game plan. Ask your manager for advice - suggest a next step and get their thoughts. Is it time to escalate? Bring in a new POC? Or tough it out with minimum inputs? Get some perspective before moving forward.