12.3 Getting to Yes: The Big Picture

Project management is decision intensive. Even on relatively small projects, you, and your project team, need to make hundreds of decisions. On big projects, you need to make hundreds of thousands, or more, decisions. Now, consider this: On each project, diverse stakeholders have different goals, individual decision-makers bring their own biases—and personalities—to the decision-making process, and organizational cultures vary (often greatly). What is your takeaway? Getting to “yes” on key decisions can be a challenge. Conflict is inevitable.

You may choose to ignore conflict, but you cannot avoid it—and you shouldn’t! If you manage it well, conflict can lead to improved outcomes. Conflict can, for instance, raise valid objections that help you avoid mistakes. Have you ever considered buying a new technology only to be warned that it really won’t meet your needs? When you discovered that the warning was accurate and well timed, did you breathe a sigh of relief? Conflict can also inspire creativity, leading to new ideas or processes. It can promote improvement.

Poorly managed conflict, by contrast, can easily undermine performance, raise costs, and can suck the lifeblood out of your team. Given you will encounter it, let’s talk about two strategies you can use to help you manage conflict successfully: Leverage power and cultivate trust.

Leverage Power to Get What You Want

When it comes to managing conflict, the go-to tool for many managers is power. You probably aren’t surprised; however, using power well to get the results you want as a project leader is more difficult than you might imagine. Why, you ask? Did you know that there are at least five different sources of power? They are referent, expert, legitimate, reward, and coercive power. Importantly, not all power is created equal. Worse, nobody wears a sign that says, “I’ve got XYZ power.” Your first challenge is to discern the source(s) of power of different team members, especially the people involved in key project decisions. Only then can you assess their expected influence in a project’s decision-making processes.

Figure 12.2 depicts these five sources of power and highlights a key takeaway. Your use of power influences colleagues’ behavior, eliciting a helpful or hindering response. Let’s consider some likely power dynamics.

Coercive Power

If you resort to coercive power, which is best characterized by the ability to punish, you can expect resistance. Your colleagues will likely bristle, openly or otherwise, as you promote your desired processes and outcomes. You are inviting conflict.

Reward and Legitimate Power

By contrast, if you focus on reward or legitimate power, colleagues are likely to comply. Why, you ask? They may desire the reward you can offer. But their desire for the reward does not mean they buy in to your ideas.

What about legitimate power? Legitimate power means you have authority. You have a title and a position in the organization that give you power. This means that colleagues with less legitimate power will likely submit to your will. They may not like doing so, but you are the boss. Remember, however, that compliance is not commitment!

The result: An overreliance on reward and legitimate powers may lead to resentment. Colleagues go along to get along, not because they agree with your ideas. What does this mean? In the short term, you may get what you want. You may even think that things are going well, and the project is progressing as planned. You shouldn’t, however, be surprised if conflict eventually emerges. Compliance doesn’t mean colleagues are truly supportive.

Even so, if a decision needs to be made quickly, and you don’t yet have complete buy-in, you may need to resort to reward or legitimate power to get the job done. But you don’t want to make these your power sources of choice.

Expert and Referent Power

Expert and referent power cultivate buy-in and commitment. How does each work? Expert power is the ability to influence others through your experience and expertise. People accept that you know what you are doing. Therefore, they believe you can help get the job done right. Expecting good outcomes, they often support your ideas.

Referent power is really about your personal relationships with colleagues. Strong personal relationships make you likable. Colleagues tend to respect and trust you. The result: Colleagues are more likely to buy in to proposals you support.

Expert and referent power help you earn colleagues’ commitment. They buy in to your ideas and recommendations. If you follow through and deliver to promise, your power, and influence, increase. If you don’t deliver to promise, your influence diminishes over time.

Now that you know about power—and its sources—you should set two goals. First, decide now to build your portfolio of power sources. You should target expert and referent power. You might, for instance, join PMI and become a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). And you should remember the Golden Rule and invest in your colleagues’ success. Second, you should learn how to assess other people’s sources of power. Purposeful observation—i.e., looking for signs of power and how it is used to influence day-to-day decision-making—is a powerful skill. As you learn how to assess other people’s sources of power, you will be able to build stronger, more persuasive coalitions to help you make the right decisions and execute them well.

In summary, grasping how power works will help you be a better project leader. You will be better able to identify key influencers. And you will use power more judiciously, recognizing that commitment is far more powerful than compliance. Most importantly, you will earn colleagues’ trust and respect. Their commitment will enable you to develop and execute key project initiatives more effectively.

Let’s segue with a caveat: The title “project leader” is cool, but it doesn’t convey much power. As a project leader, many, if not most, of your team members come from other functions, or even other organizations. They do not directly report to you. So, your power is limited—you only have a few power levers to pull to get what you want. The good news: Learning to leverage expert and referent power will make you a better manager—and a more effective leader!

Cultivate Trust to Find a Solution

When you can’t rely on power to resolve conflict, try turning to trust. Managers widely admit that trust can help you get to “yes,” even in sticky situations. Trust is a key ingredient to collaboration, especially across organizational boundaries. Equally important, the lack of trust is one of the greatest obstacles to value co-creation. Pundits argue that “trust may be the most overused and abused word in the supply chain lexicon.” Because trust plays a pivotal role in managing conflict, let’s take a closer look at what it is and how you can more effectively build it.

In the sporting world, chemistry separates the great from the merely good teams. What is the business world’s equivalent to chemistry? You know the answer: Trust! Trust acknowledges vulnerability but promotes a willingness to work together—to sacrifice short-term gain for long-term advantage. Trust enables the collaboration, resource sharing, and risk taking needed to effectively plan and execute complex projects with multiple stakeholders.

You may be thinking, “This all makes sense, but what exactly is trust?” As a word, trust seems intuitive; however, as an actionable concept, trust is difficult to define. In interpersonal relationships, trust is typically conceptualized as a combination of credibility and benevolence. Simply put, trust emerges when others believe that you are willing and able to do what you say you will do, and that you will act in their best interest. This belief motivates them to work with you and be willing to make short-term sacrifices. They take confidence that you will not take advantage of them. If you abuse their trust, you will lose it. The result: You invite more conflict and risk undermining your project.

On big projects, you often work with representatives of other companies. Figure 12.3 depicts the core elements of interorganizational trust; that is, trust between two companies. As you can see, interorganizational trust is similar to interpersonal trust, but it is a little more complex. What does this mean? Answer: Trust doesn’t emerge by chance. Trust is a choice. It is a capability you must build. Let’s discuss how you build trust.

Figure 12.3 notes that you need to invest in two distinct capabilities if you want to build the high levels of trust needed to manage conflict on complex projects where you must rely on others’ capabilities or resources to get the job done.

Perform-to-Promise Capability

Trust begins with performance. You must be able to perform to promise. Would you trust a partner that only follows through on commitments 80% of the time? Of course not! Neither can project partners trust your company if you don’t do what you say you will do!

Simply put, you need to be able to promise high levels of performance—and then follow through. You build a performance capability by investing in value-added processes, systems, and skills. As you make these investments, you signal to partners that they can trust you. They can then justify their efforts and investments in working more collaboratively with you.

Relationship-Commitment Capability

Once your project partners see that you perform to promise, you earn enough credibility to pursue closer, more intense working relationships. However, you still must convince them that you are worthy of their trust. You signal trustworthiness by making the relational investments that show you are willing to “put your money where your mouth is.” Relational investments demonstrate that you are willing and able to work with partners effectively. If they reciprocate, you can build capabilities that deliver mutual benefit. Research has identified four behaviors you can use to build trust, mitigate conflict, and achieve breakthrough collaboration.

Share Information

You must learn to share all the information that affects partners’ ability to make good decisions. What information should you share? That depends. Who is your partner and what are you trying to achieve? You will often share information related to costs, risks, and resource availability (how much and when). Open sharing makes it possible for you and your partners to make good decisions, to execute efficiently, and to resolve problems. Open information sharing is the foundation for strong, dynamic relationships.

Invest in Partner Skills

You need to view your most important partners as an extension of your own company. You likely invite many of them to work on a portfolio of projects over time. Besides, you have invited them to join the project team because they possess skills you don’t have. That said, you may possess skills that would help them perform even better. Sharing your expertise (or resources) may help them build their capabilities. The result: The entire team is stronger and better positioned for success on future projects. Further, as you invest in partner capabilities, they know you value the relationship. Their loyalty to the team deepens.

Show Empathy

Partners don’t expect you to be altruistic. They know you are in business to make money. What do they expect? They expect you to think about how your decisions affect them. How much trust, and goodwill, do you think the buyer earned in the following example?

Develop Interpersonal Relationships

Never forget that managers, not companies, make decisions. Your company may have a great reputation as a project partner, but your interpersonal relationships still make a difference, reinforcing or undermining your company’s reputation. Consider the power in this statement: “I never lose sleep when I work with Jim because I know that he will deliver as promised even if he has to lose sleep.”

One final thought on the nature of trust. As Figure 12.3 shows, both perform-to-promise and relationship-commitment capabilities consist of two building blocks—intent and behavior. To build high-trust relationships, you have to really desire to do things differently. True desire, however, is not enough. You need to make the relational investments that enable you to “walk the talk.” If you can’t translate intent into behavior, your partners will view your promises as deceptive communication. The result: They won’t trust you.