✨ How to Win Participants and Influence Challenging Stakeholders
A Guide to Effective Communication and Design Leadership
Have you ever been in the middle of a conversation that was going nowhere?
Perhaps you were discussing politics with an uncle who had a little too much to drink. Maybe you were at a standup meeting, and one of your colleagues was being more combative than usual. Regardless of the scenario, you probably found yourself hitting a wall. More importantly, you might have found yourself struggling to navigate the conversation forward. If this has been your experience, then this article is for you. You’ll discover
- Methodologies and frameworks that will help you move the conversation forward
- Establish thorough communication methods
- Become recognized as a team leader.
For May, SDXD held a remote workshop: How to Win Participants and Influence Challenging Stakeholders. The focus of this workshop was to enhance these communication techniques, particularly in the context of interacting with stakeholders or workshop participants. This was all made possible thanks to our host Facilitation for Designers, our speakers Michael Vargas and Nick Casares, and Adobe XD, which powered the event.
Michael’s Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and background in Improv theater provides a unique approach to training corporations on team culture, creativity, communication, and team development. So unique that the likes of Dropbox, Salesforce, and Kaiser Permanente have been fortunate enough to have him train their teams.
Nick has over 12 years of UX and product management experience, which has led him to be Program Director at Polyient Labs. Nick helps entrepreneurs turn early-stage ideas into meaningful product strategies. His approach to collaboration emphasizes total team participation and viewing customer and user experience through a holistic lens. Throughout his career, Nick has planned and facilitated dozens of workshops to help teams generate ideas, make decisions, and challenge their assumptions. In his spare time, co-hosts Fork the Product, a podcast about product and UX for blockchain. Nick also teaches aspiring product managers through the General Assembly.
Why Do These Techniques Even Matter?
That attitude is exactly what Michael’s techniques are designed to tackle. He has an array of methods, that when put into practice, enable you to navigate any combative conversation and get to the root of the problem.
Michael began his workshop by discussing why he believes these techniques are so important:
- Allows designers to move designs forward
- Improves soft skills for better communication
- Reflects on your communication style
- Generates meaningful feedback that draws out insights and solutions
He then explained how the workshop can help not just designers, but anyone who is in a role that relies heavily on communication. It came down to 5 key points:
- Develop a new mindset around challenging participants
- Learn multiple ways to navigate tough situations
- Provide a better workshop experience
- Help build relationships with your peers
- Develop your leadership skills
These are crucial to being an effective designer, and especially an effective design leader. As a designer, your job isn’t just to make things look pretty, but also sell your concept so it can be approved. This is why your communication skills are essential as a designer, especially when people can get defensive. They allow you to read the stakeholder, break down their needs, and come to a compromise about what will work for you AND them. This can be applied to interacting with stakeholders, workshop participants, colleagues, and as I mentioned earlier…your tipsy uncle.
How Groupthink Can Cause Toxic Positivity
If you don’t know what groupthink is, it is when a group strives for harmony and conformity which results in irrational decision making. Have you ever been in a group where you felt everyone was encouraged to not necessarily speak their mind, but instead follow a certain lead and stay within those parameters? Then you’ve experienced groupthink.
Now how do we address this? Michael had 5 things to keep in mind when challenging toxic positivity and addressing it with a challenge-centric approach
Remove Your Ego
If you are working in a group scenario there is no room for your ego, only for understanding. You need to set it aside you can reap the benefits of everyone’s input. Remember, the point of working in a team is not to fight tooth and nail or persuade others to choose your idea. It is taking the best parts of everyone’s ideas and culminating them into one final deliverable.
These Are People Who Care
The people who you’re interacting with — whether it be stakeholders, teammates, or workshop participants — will care about the workshop. The fact they care means that when they are presented with an opposing opinion, they may speak up to share their perspective.
We Get To Take Care Of People
Imagine if every time a user told you about all the faults in your prototype, you got extremely defensive. You’d never get anything done. This is no different: you’re simply getting feedback on your communication skills and/or how easy you’re making a colleague’s life. Try to look at it through their perspective and see if it helps.
This Is A Chance For Growth
The likelihood that both you and the people you’re interacting with are 100% right is pretty slim unless you share the same ideas. Because of this, there will be disagreements where some individuals will be wrong and others will be right. Look at this as an opportunity to grow.
If you’re wrong it’s a chance for you to grow, if they’re wrong it’s a chance for them to grow — Michael Vargas
Acknowledge That Challenging Behavior Is Healthy Behavior
As I mentioned earlier, when groups don’t challenge each other it can lead to toxic positivity. This is because everyone thinks everything is fine when it most definitely is not — everyone is just in agreement. Challenging participants’ ideas are necessary in understanding what is going well (and not well). The more you push, the more you uncover, the more you know. As you challenge an idea or issue individuals will begin to express themselves, and conversations will emerge. These conversations will reveal what is truly important to the individual(s) you’re engaging with and will be more beneficial and enlightening then you could have ever imagined.
Methods For Engaging With Others
Now that we’ve talked about how toxic positivity can lead to group dysfunctionality, its time we cover how to improve communications with participants and stakeholders. I’m sure some of you are wondering “How do I challenge someone who is not used to being challenged without them blowing up?”, and this is a valid concern when interacting with stakeholders, colleagues, or workshop participants.
Level 1 — A Simple Communication Format
This is a communication framework, which I call MA²T, that focuses on clarifying information that can be lost in translation when 2 individuals communicate with one another. It consists of 4 points:
- What people Mean to say
- What people Actually say
- What we Actually heard
- What we Think they heard
Working on this type of communication is extremely important in all aspects of life. For example, Twitter. Have you ever seen a tweet that outraged many people, maybe even you, and it was all because the person didn’t choose their words carefully? If you have, then you understand that while most humans have mastered language we haven’t mastered communication and interpretation. We tend to articulate information, assuming people will infer our point of view. On the other hand, we as humans tend to assume everything said or written down was carefully thought out and therefore there is no need to frame it a particular context to understand it. This gap in human communication is what this framework aims to fix.
Level 2 — Navigate Caring Participants
To navigate a conversation, you must be able to deal with scenarios where participants may get a bit upset. Remember these emotions arise because they care deeply about the outcome, and not because they have something against you.
“Getting people in the right mindset and right place can really make people work more effectively” — Michael Vargas
To accomplish this there are 6 things you have to set out to do:
Try to understand their perspective and be on their side. The ability to clarify communication is not always enough. You also need to be able to fight for their cause and be on their side.
Provide reflections so they feel heard. It is important when you provide reflections you do not simply repeat what they said, but instead reiterate it with different words. This shows a level of understanding instead of memorization, and by understanding them they feel heard.
Make sure you ask clarifying questions. In order to get clarification, you want to ask questions. Questions such as “Are you telling me X or are you telling me Y?”. You want to make sure you understand exactly what they’re saying and not misinterpreting what they’ve said.
Ask the group for their thoughts. If you’re in a group it is always a good idea to get input from everyone on what an individual said. This ignites group discussion.
Share your thoughts. When acting as a facilitator for these types of interventions it is best that you let everyone in the group give their input first before you say anything. By the end, you may not have much to say at all, and if you do, it will be because you felt the didn’t achieve what you were expecting.
If it gets too heated, unsure, or longer discussion is needed — table it and write it down. As I mentioned before, there will be instances where regardless of how well you communicate, participants will get upset. If someone gets stuck on a point and is frustrated, let them know that you want to discuss this point with them afterward then physically write it down. Writing it down is extremely important because this action makes them feel heard. When this happens you can simply say: “You know what I think that’s a great question and we don’t have time for it, but I’m going to write it down so we can talk about it later”. Once the session is over approach the users who were most frustrated and tell them “Hey, I thought what you were saying back there was really important and I’d like to talk to you about it”. This will allow for clear and concise insight, which in the end will help push the design forward.
Level 3 — Mitigating Violent Conversation
Now if letting the person feel heard isn’t enough to calm them down, you’ll want to be able to mitigate violent conversation. This is most commonly used when you don’t know what to say, the individual you’re interacting with has become somewhat unreasonable, or a mixture of the two.
There are 4 components to mitigating non-violent conversation:
Observe — Analyze what is happening in the situation without introducing any judgment.
An example of this would be the statement “Nancy bit her fingernails while watching TV yesterday.”. This a judgment-free statement and is simply stating what happened. Instead of saying, “John was angry with me yesterday for absolutely no reason” say “John ignored me all day yesterday. I think he was angry with me.”
Feelings — Understand how they are feeling when we are observing this action. Are they hurt, scared, joyful, or irritated?
This requires you to actually try and understand the person instead of being dismissive. Perhaps you have expressed something and someone tried to brush it off by saying something like “Oh you’re being silly, that’s not important.” when instead they could have tried to understand what is going on by asserting the question “Are you feeling frustrated right now?”. This not only acknowledges that you are clearly feeling some type of emotion but tries to uncover what that emotion is. Always remember that when someone is expressing their feelings they need to say what they are feeling, not what they aren’t feeling.
Needs — What needs of theirs are connected to the feelings they’re expressing?
Everyone has needs and when you’re dealing with participants you need to understand what they are. When expressing needs you must directly say what your needs are. For example, don’t say “It makes me sad when you don’t talk to me”, but say, “I feel sad when you don’t talk to me and need consistent communication if this going to work.”.
Request — A very specific request, addressing what they want.
It is common for us to tell someone that something they do makes us feel a certain way, assuming they can infer what it is we need them to do in order to fix this issue. While this may seem obvious to the person making the statement, it isn’t always obvious to the person hearing it. Always say how they should go about the action that will result in our needs being met. For example, don’t say “I want you to stop teasing me.”, but say “I’d like you to stop directing embarrassing comments towards me and speak to me normally to me at work.” When you make requests make you tell them what to do, instead of what not to do.
What should I do with all this?
Trust me, I know this is a lot of information to take in and a bit hard to know where to go with it. That’s why Michael provided these tips to help anyone properly implement these communication practices I have talked about.
Start Paying Attention to Your Own Communication Patterns
In order to improve your communication skills, you need to first hone in on your communication style. Everyone is different, and very few people are excellent communicators. We all have different upbringings, which have impacted how we express ourselves and expect people to understand us. Once you can acknowledge where your faults lie, you can begin improving them.
Look for Low-Risk Opportunities to Practice The 4 Step Method (MA²T)
This is a style of communication that not too many people practice on a regular basis, but can have a profound impact. Because of this, you want to find minor situations where you can exercise it. Perhaps try it when you and your partner are arguing about where to eat. This way the risk of it backfiring is minimized, and you can build up your skills for when you’re dealing with a stakeholder.
Consider Participants and Stakeholders’ Goals, Needs, and Motivations
In order for you to properly implement these techniques, you need to be able to empathize and relate to the person you’re trying to communicate with. This is vital when you’re getting people to open up and express how they really feel about a situation.
Be Mindful of Business Context and Plan Accordingly
What is important to remember is that you may not always be able to get to level 3 and that’s fine. Before your meeting, analyze the context you’ll be working in to properly set up your expectations. Perhaps you’re only meeting for 5 minutes and therefore have a time constraint and are anticipating you’ll be able to get level 1 to establish a baseline connection. That is perfectly fine. You’ll walk away with a better understanding of what they need, and they’ll be able to see you as a leader. After all, the core reason designers should focus on communication is so they can lead companies. With the user-centricity that designers provide, we need to be able to guide everyone in the company. If we aren’t able to lead them then we’ll never see true change.
Prepare People Ahead of Time so they are Mentally and Emotionally Ready to Engage and Participate
If you can anticipate a specific topic coming up during the session that may be charged or cause the participant to go on a long tangent, meet with them before the session and ask them about this specific topic. This will allow them to get all their ranting out of the way and chisel away at what they really need. This will save a lot of time and lead to a more productive session. If you aren’t able to see them before the meeting than find a way to build the topic into the conversation so that they won’t feel bamboozled and will let them continue the conversation in a very natural manner.
I got involved with SDXD because I believe it is one of the best design organizations in San Diego. SDXD holds some of the most informative events and always attracts an excellent crowd to network with. This combination results in events that truly resonate with designers from all aspects of UX ranging from research, design, development, and content creation. This is why I decided to volunteer and would encourage anyone who is interested in UX to do the same!
If you enjoyed this article and would like to get in touch you can reach me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or my website.
About SDXD, San Diego Experience Design is a catalyst for a vibrant San Diego experience design community. A professional networking and education organization, they serve primarily UX research and design practitioners but welcome anyone who works in, or is simply interested by, the various experience design disciplines and techniques (UX, IxD, usability, prototyping, HCI, service design, industrial design, etc.).
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