30. Stakeholder Relationships (feat. Sarah Gibbons, Vice President at NN/g)
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This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast. I'm Therese Fessenden. Whether you're a UX leader, designer, a researcher, or a board member, you work with people. And you know that building relationships with different types of people is a critical part of our day-to-day work and getting things done. But just because we do it day-to-day doesn't mean that navigating these relationships is an easy thing to do.

Even though UX professionals are more integrated and more interconnected than ever before, we still face the additional challenge of being part of a discipline that a lot of people aren't that familiar with. And so we spend a lot of time trying to translate what we do into terms people can understand. That's a lot of work. So today we're featuring a conversation with two of my colleagues, Samita Tankala, a co-producer of this podcast, and Sarah Gibbons.

Sarah is a vice president at Nielsen Norman Group and has not only worked with a range of different types of stakeholders, but has also been one as well. She even recently created a course, Successful Stakeholder Relationships. So in this episode, Samita and Sarah discuss the inevitable challenges that come with working with stakeholders and how to try to overcome those challenges to build better relationships overall.

I was just thinking about how you were on the podcast when we had first started. And I think you had talked about empathy, adaptability, and design. By the way, everyone should listen to it. It's really great. But it's so great to have you back. I'm excited to be back. It's hard to believe that you've had so many episodes since I've been on. Since it's been a while. Yeah.

I'd love for you to just tell folks a little bit about yourself and maybe what you've been working on at NNG since then. I just hit seven years at NNG. It's been a really interesting period in the industry. When I joined, Jacob and Don really brought me on to kind of build out this more kind of design-centric side of what I think of NNG as, which is kind of traditional usability, actually. So...

more focused on the things that happen within an interface or kind of digital touchpoint. And since then, I think the industry as a whole has really expanded

and somewhat mastered and not, you know, we all experience bad websites, but there aren't as many questions as what to do kind of within an interface as much kind of how we can create the people processes and systems to actually deliver those really great experiences. I think if you look at the kind of trajectory of my time at NMG, I think it really mirrors the industry in a lot of ways. Anna Kaley and I have

developed a series which kind of gets into the strategy. I created roadmapping, which is kind of more about strategically planning the problems your team is going to solve. And now into kind of stakeholder relationships, which I'm doing a lot of in my role as vice president. It's kind of the next challenge in a way of our field is how do we

start to interact with stakeholders that are really important at organizations, but maybe not fluent or of high UX maturity? I think about it a lot. In any design-related work, there are always these big questions around, okay, how do we get it done? Who do we need to have involved? What kind of deliverables do we need to have in place? And so we're no longer in this space where...

There's this clear organizational hierarchy and we work on our tasks, we report to our managers and boom, it's done. Today, we're spending a lot of time talking to stakeholders and involving them every step of the way. And so I'm so glad you're on the show today and you're the perfect person to discuss this topic, which is no stranger to us as UX professionals.

My first question is, what exactly is a stakeholder? And

Who are those people? Yeah, it's a good question. And I think helpful to level set, right? So a stakeholder is an individual or group that's going to either be impacted by or influence the success or failure of your project initiative product. They can have different stakes, right? And that's kind of the whole idea of a stakeholder. So some people in your stakeholder group may have an interest in your project project.

because they have some type of rights. So they're entitled or protected by something that your project is going to impact. Ownership being the founders or shareholders or board. I think that you have a stake around kind of impact. So these are the people who maybe supply resources of some sort, whether it be people or time or

In order to get your project done. And then you have your expertise, your knowledge stakeholders, which they hold a specific position.

knowledge or expertise that your project has to leverage. And so what's interesting, and I think what gets really complex about stakeholders is that when we say someone's a stakeholder, I mean, that's a pretty wide spectrum of different types of stakeholders. You mentioned this wide spectrum. How does your interaction as someone working with these stakeholders shift across

different parts of the spectrum. Yeah. It's a really hard thing to teach, right? Because a lot of this is actually being a high kind of emotional intelligence individual to the point of being able to talk to someone, understand what they need and are looking for, and then adjust your actions and what you deliver to align with

not only what they want, but also kind of build that trust as you do that. You may take a group of executives or board members and treat them very differently than you might your subject matter experts or a development manager who are both stakeholders, but those two groups are very different. And so a lot of what I think

understanding stakeholders comes down to is applying the same methodology that we would to our end users and trying to build empathy and understand their motivations, what drives them, and ultimately speak to those things. I have this metaphor in class that I don't know if it's any good, but it's really what I think of, which is if you're going to see any type of success in

It's much easier to grab onto trains that are already passing your station than it is to build your own train, build your own railroad, and then load everyone on. And the train in this sense is like a project, an initiative, an effort. And

I think what's really interesting with all these different stakeholder groups is you have to figure out what train is already in motion for that stakeholder that they believe in. And then you're attaching yourself to that.

You should really be asking yourself, okay, for each of these different types of stakeholders, what is their train? And how do I align my needs and my goals to speak to and jump onto that train? And I think the people who are really good at this are the people we are already seeing succeed in our organizations. And that's a pretty...

you know, tough thing to think about, especially because they're not always the best at their craft, but they're the people who have a really good read on the kind of politics and building trust within an organization. Absolutely. I love that metaphor. It really demonstrates empathy and how it's not just about what I need to get done, but how do I get this person on board? How do I think about their train, how they're thinking about their projects?

I mean, some might say it's a pretty dystopian idea of empathy, but at the end of the day, we all have goals, right? And it's going to be much easier to achieve your goals if they're attached to a stakeholder's goals. And that's kind of the puzzle pieces of navigating empathy.

organizational politics, especially if you're evangelizing a craft, meaning you're trying to make people understand a language and value that is designed in UX that traditionally isn't understood. So even if it is a dystopian idea of empathy, I like to think that it's for the greater good in that you developing empathy for a stakeholder and understanding what motivates them, what they're particularly interested in, what their hopes and fears are, is

is only going to make you more likely to succeed. Absolutely. Switching things around a little bit, I'm curious, have you ever had a terrible stakeholder experience? And could you tell us more about what happened?

I mean, who hasn't had a terrible stakeholder experience, right? And, you know, I'm probably a terrible stakeholder to some people sometimes. And I think it's important for all the stakeholders out there listening. We all have a role to play. But I think part of being a really good stakeholder is also understanding your weaknesses. Yeah.

And then being able to recognize how to either fill those weaknesses or surrounding yourself with people whose strengths then fill those weaknesses. Now, I think what happens is there are a lot of personality types that tend to rise in hierarchy. In the field of design, there are three general buckets and

more geared around the idea of how fluent are they in our craft and how supportive are they? And I think there's one group that are kind of skeptics and they tend to be the people who don't really believe in what we do, don't see the value or really just maybe hyper focus on the negative aspects. So the cost of research or the time it takes to design or you name it, they don't believe in it. And then you have this middle group

I have kind of the neutral leaders or stakeholders. They are open to what you do and potentially I could participate more, learn more than become a champion, but they're not already fluent. And this neutral group, I think, is a really solid group.

And then you have stakeholders within our craft or advocates. They see themselves as advocates for us and for our craft and maybe are actually previously researchers, designers, et cetera. These people are really passionate. And I actually think, and this kind of ties back to my worst stakeholder experience, and it's all relative, so not to pick on

this particular stakeholder. But the worst stakeholder is actually that group to me, this like really passionate person who then that passion ends up being disruptive. In my experience, I had a stakeholder who

really kind of prided themselves on being a really divergent thinker, really creative, really big, great ideas. And in a lot of ways, truly were. However, their inability to actually shelter

those ideas and maybe filter what was shared, that inability actually became extremely disruptive for the team. And so what's interesting is like this person I really like,

And they were a really genuine good person and they thought they were doing good, but they kept having these ideas that both overwhelmed the team, scattered our priorities, and then also kind of sent us off on a wild goose chase that didn't align with our priorities or what we had previously decided. And I think people and organizations really underestimate how disruptive that is.

And that almost actually is more resource intensive than dealing with the skeptic who we just have to kind of prove that these user research insights were valuable or affecting our work. Hi, Nancy Dickinson, who is one of our guest speakers and I think really just like such a

source of insights and knowledge. But it has this saying, which is there are some stakeholders who are really prone to swooping and pooping, which is not an elegant phrase by any means. But it's this idea of swooping in, dropping a bomb on a team, and then flying away and kind of waiting for all the effects to

to take place without being intentional about what they did. And actually, Jacob was sharing a quote the other day from someone that he worked for at Sun Microsystems, which is, the hardest part about being a stakeholder is being really intentional about what is shared and what is not. So my worst stakeholder experience was this stakeholder who

was a really big advocate for UX in our craft. But in and kind of packaged with that passion for our craft came a lot of really distracting ideas. And then I think that really hindered our ability to make promises to all of our other stakeholders and then execute on them. What did you do in that situation?

How did you navigate that? Well, I think it really depends on your role. And I really think that as simple as it is, it comes down to kind of two things. One, as decisions are made, documenting them in a shared place that is concrete and tangible.

Because I think that creates accountability, period. I think having something that a single team can reference as a single source of truth as to what their priorities are and what they're working on, and even better, the criteria that helped sort and rank those priorities. So that's first. And a lot of teams haven't even done that legwork. So that's a really good place to start. The second...

piece of this really comes down to this equation of doing this work. This is the opportunity cost, right? And is that what we, the royal we, we as a team, you know, putting us on the same team with the stakeholders, I think is really important. Is this what we want?

And I think a lot of times when it comes to UX or design as a whole, when we're pitching ideas or arguing against ideas, too often it's like what we're going to get.

Right. Like, what are we going to achieve? What's it going to do? When sometimes the stronger argument is like, what is this going to save? Right. So what are those negative metrics and what are we going to be able to decrease of those? And so to me, it's the second piece is.

Learning the language of these equations, of these cost benefits, and being able to map them out in a non-emotional, matter-of-fact, we-framing. I'm thinking about all of this and we're balancing a lot when we're building these stakeholder relationships. We're trying to meet certain deadlines. We're trying to create deliverables. We're trying to listen, collaborate, and influence. How do we know that?

We are making a good stakeholder relationship. How do you know you're building a friendship in life, right? Like it's not one data point. It's not one sign. It's the combination of a lot of different signs and they happen at different pieces and they're going to manifest in different ways and there are going to be different indicators to see if you're progressing or not.

So you may have no relationship with a stakeholder now and an indicator that you're progressing somewhere new is that they know you by name. And that could be progress towards building a relationship with someone versus say you're close with a stakeholder or you think they trust you, but still you're not sure or maybe they kind of change their mind a lot. Is maybe if you're in that scenario, an indication that you're still building that

A relationship that is positive with that stakeholder would be them either maybe sharing their thought process or giving you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to a certain decision. Actually, this kind of starts to tie back to Patrick Lanzioni's five dysfunctions of a team.

Which is a really great book if anyone has read it or is looking for it. And Lanzioni presents this pyramid, essentially. And each layer ties back to a dysfunction that a team may have. But...

I think it can be applied to stakeholders as well. So at the base of the pyramid is this absence of trust, right? And that's going to kind of be the foundation of any other issues that tend to arise. When you don't have trust, then you have this fear of conflict. So a common, I think, misperception is that conflict is bad. When really a creative person

conflict resolution only makes a team stronger. And I think

conflict is just the natural result of different expertise, different opinions, and is actually really positive. And I think that's a framing that's really hard for teams. So when you don't have trust, then you're going to be fearful of conflict because conflict is going to be uncomfortable and have negative connotations, which is then going to lead to a lack of commitment, right? If I'm not willing to put my head out for a decision or something that

needs to be done, then I'm going to buy into whatever results from that less.

So I'm going to be fearful to tie my name to it and commit formally to either doing it, seeing it through, putting my buy into it, which then leads to an avoidance of accountability. So that's kind of Lanzioni's fourth tier of the pyramid. And then this avoidance of kind of accountability and wanting to put my name on something then leads to bad results, right? And Lanzioni's specifically...

creates that in kind of the context of a team. But if you apply that to an individual, that becomes really interesting. And I think just as valid, right? Where you can kind of start to see how when you don't have trust, and I think trust innately is this like, I don't

sense of transparency, valuing what the other person's perspectives are and an openness to discuss both of those, then you start to get this domino effect of all these other things. And that's what you see in a lot of negative stakeholder relationships. How would you build trust? Yeah.

in those relationships? Yeah, I think it's really hard. I think it really depends on the person and everyone's going to react to different things. I think that the best way to create trust is to make a promise that they're going to care about and follow through on it. I think that that is probably the biggest way. And that goes back to the basics of humanity, right? That

My parents are going to feed me and they're going to provide me food and that's a need. And I trust that they're going to do it because they do it every day. And I don't think it's dissimilar, right? That you need to figure out what the promise is

make it and then follow through and achieve it. I think the problem that people get into is the promises they're making are too big and they're not realistic. And then the stakeholder loses trust because they thought it was going to happen and it doesn't happen. Now, what the context is around that is it's oftentimes, you know, the stakeholder making that promise and the team trying to do it and it wasn't realistic to begin with. And I think some of the most positive relationships that I've seen built

with stakeholders is when someone is willing to say something that is uncomfortable in the sense of like, we're not going to be able to do that. You know, it is a reality that that is just not possible. So what is the next best thing? And in

creating the stakeholder course. I did a lot of research with stakeholders. And the common thread in talking to these stakeholders isn't that they're scared to hear what the reality is. It's that they rather hear it and problem solve together than be told that something can happen and then not see it happen. Yeah, absolutely. I love this

I love how you've emphasized that conflict isn't bad. It really just means a conversation and further collaboration. Now, do you have any advice for people who are just starting to build these relationships? What kind of things do they need to think about? I think the best thing that someone who, whether it's just started at an organization or maybe you're...

new to a team, you switched within or you're new to the field and this is an early first job. Things that I think you want to think about is to really just start to observe

who a stakeholder is and what they're looking for. And this could be a stakeholder who's a peer. So they're another expertise. This could be a stakeholder who's your boss. This could be a project lead. This could be your business unit director, right? They are making decisions every day that say and give us a lot of information about them. So I think paying attention to what someone cares about

is really important. And that can manifest in so many ways. I'm not saying, especially if you're just entering the field, I'm not saying, oh, go meet a stakeholder, figure out what metric they care about, and then do all of your work to align to it. But I think anytime you're speaking with them or you're thinking about aspects of your work, aligning to whether it be their language, the goals that they've created and advertised, or

I just generally their kind of ethos, I think is already going to put you ahead of

a lot of these kind of other people who maybe aren't as in tune with what their stakeholders are looking for. And I think a lot of people, especially if you're kind of more naturally gifted in the kind of emotional intelligence realm, then I think you do this innately, right? You already kind of pick up on certain cues, but I don't think that that boxes out anyone who isn't naturally gifted at this. I think anyone

especially if you're in our field, you're already interested in how humans behave and why they behave the way that they do, especially as it relates to the experiences that we design. You're doing the exact same thing, but internally and with your stakeholders. And then I think it's also important

creating a personal relationship with these people that is outside of the context of your project or your day-to-day work. And it's starting to get to know them as a human. I think that for a lot of people, there are certain stakeholders that that's not possible. They're just too out of reach for us. But I think there are a lot of stakeholders who you can do that with. And what I don't think people think about is that

I trust is something that spreads. And the more people that trust you in an organization, the more likely it is that other people are going to trust you in an organization. And I think starting to kind of think a little bit more strategically about, you know, the position you're in, who you work with, who you have access to, and maybe potentially who you're under leveraging. And that sounds...

I go back to dystopian, it sounds inauthentic, but it's really not, right? We work with humans and it's human nature to want to belong and have fulfilling relationships. Absolutely. I love the part of just like some of this is just human nature. These are basic things that we do in our friendships and with our families and really can be translated into our work environments as we're working with different stakeholders.

just to make everyone who's listening feel less crazy, there are going to be some people that we work with, some stakeholders or peers that just are miserable human beings, period.

just like there are in life, right? At the end of the day, some people you're just going to be better off minimizing interaction with. And that is a strategy in and of itself. If someone is just a miserable human being, then part of that strategy could be spending less energy on that miserable human being so that you can be more successful. So I think that just to make everyone feel heard, there are people that we're just going to have to work with that aren't

who we would have chosen. And part of, I think, building trust is other people watching you handle those types of people without sucking your energy and without them rubbing off on you in a way that then makes you less likely to be trusted. Sometimes it's an it-is-what-it-is situation and you just kind of have to deal with it, make it work. You know, there's a lot to be learned. And then I think also, like,

maybe you don't need to work there. I think that like, there are situations that, you know, if you really want to grow and

Working for someone who's really negative and sucks your energy isn't where you're going to grow most. And I think that's a really hard reality to face. But if you're working for a stakeholder that just is never really going to be willing to see you or your craft or your work succeed, then you need to ask yourself the really hard question of, you know, how much longer do you want to stay somewhere where you're not able to hit your potential and grow?

which is a really hard thing. And there are so many other variables that you may not have control or power over. But I do think that at the end of the day, especially in our field, a lot of organizations are so low in UX maturity that there is like a lot of respect missing from these organizations for our craft. And I think the only way that some of these organizations are ever going to change is if their talent leaves.

And they are forced to kind of reconsider what it means for their product and the success of their organization. Absolutely. So we are at time. And I just wanted to say thank you so much for all of your advice on this topic. We could probably spend days talking about this.

I wanted to ask one more question. If people wanted to learn more about this, where should they look for this information? It's a really good question. I think read Patrick Lansioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It is evergreen in the sense of, I think, providing a lot of

comfort should you be in the storming phase of your team. And I think really does apply a lot to kind of thinking about relationships at work, specifically even potentially with stakeholders. We also have quite a few articles on nngroup.com about stakeholders. I think familiarizing yourself on the more kind of business side will always help with stakeholders, tying it back to metrics and

and revenue and how your business functions, the costs.

I know that seems parallel to this concept of stakeholders, but I think it's so deeply intertwined with how we communicate successfully with them. So I think anything related back to return on investment metrics, et cetera, being fluent in business. And then, of course, I have several videos, both on Nielsen Norman Group and YouTube, where...

I discuss stakeholders. And I think really the key here is actually teaching others who this may not come as easily to how to start to leverage the stakeholder relationships that they can build on behalf of kind of seeing your whole team's success. So successful stakeholder relationships, which is a course that we offer at our conference.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Sarah. Really appreciate your time and great to have you back again. Great. Thanks, Samita. Bye. Bye.

We have a number of articles and videos on the topic as well as a course on successful stakeholder relationships. So if you're interested in learning more about any of these or about UX in general, check out our website, www.nngroup.com. And if you like this show in particular, please follow or subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice. This show was executive produced by me, Therese Fessenden.

And this particular episode was hosted and produced by Samita Tankala. All editing and post-production was done by Jonas Zellner. Music is by Tiny Music and Ola Ola. That's it for today. Till next time. Remember, keep it simple.