Navigating how to work with a new stakeholder is challenging. After all, they're often a stranger when you kick off the project. As your working relationship begins, your stakeholder's bad habits may start to emerge. The narrative we tell ourselves about those habits matters. We can get overwhelmed with needing to grow a sixth sense for mitigating disaster. But staying flustered like this will prevent you from getting to know your stakeholders—how they think and what’s important to them—and forming a productive and enjoyable working relationship.
Instead, if we exercise empathy and examine those same “bad” habits, we can focus less on how the stakeholder operates and more on why. In my experience, the bad habits of a stakeholder usually stem from one of three reasons: disorganization, absence from the process, or being very hard to please. Decoding the reasons a client operates the way they do is paramount to finding the right tactics to use when forming a healthy and productive working relationship.