A Practical Guide to Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders

All project stakeholders have different needs, objectives, responsibilities and priorities. For many project managers it is disturbing to realise that, for any number of personal or professional reasons, some of their stakeholders may not be as co-operative and helpful as they expect. It could be a negative and powerful sponsor (the 'Anti-sponsor'), a demotivated team, low-maturity or unrealistic external clients, maliciously compliant gatekeepers and finance teams, or uninterested internal customers. The reality of project management is that stakeholders can be difficult! Jake Holloway, Professor David Bryde and Roger Joby bring their years of project management experience and combine it with research and insight from social psychology to delve into how and why project stakeholders can be difficult. The book describes some of the common stakeholder types - such as Sponsors, the Team, Gatekeepers, Clients and Contractors - and associated unhelpful or difficult behaviour profiles that you will often come across on projects. It then provides practical ideas, techniques and methods that will help the project manager to effectively manage the impact of these stakeholders on the project. As projects get larger and more complicated, the role and influence of stakeholders grows too. A Practical Guide to Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders will provide your project teams with the basis for a more sophisticated and resilient approach to stakeholder management.

Jake Holloway is an experienced Project Manager, Management Consultant and Business Development Director in the areas of IT, Digital and Marketing. He has managed and sponsored 100’s of projects and portfolios, and has been involved in building and designing project management systems. Jake’s interest is in the difference between the reality of how people behave at work and how it is described in management theory. Dr David Bryde is a Professor in Project Management at Liverpool John Moores University. Previously, David worked as the head of the technical support department for Metier Management Systems, supplier of Artemis - a project management software package - and as a project manager for ICI. David is an experienced researcher, teacher and consultant on various aspects of project management. Roger Joby is Managing Director of 1to1to1 and has over 20 years’ experience in project finance, project management and line management within the pharmaceutical industry both in the UK and Europe.