I Finally Figured Out Why Some Stakeholders Drove Me Crazy - And It’s Not What I Thought

I’ve been working on something for the past few weeks that started as pure frustration and ended up as a whole framework. It’s helped me understand workplace dynamics in a completely new way, and I thought it might be useful for you too. Here’s what I learned.

You know that feeling when you present a couple of options to a stakeholder, along with all the research, supporting data, and all the pros and cons? And they barely look at the details before they just pick one? And you’re thinking “But doesn’t all that detail matter? Shouldn’t that information make a difference to the decision?”

Or maybe you’re the stakeholder who can look at options and just know which one feels right. Sometimes it’s frustrating to work with colleagues who analyze everything, who want to know why, before they make a decision.

For years I’ve been the first person, the analyzer. I only recently came to appreciate how valuable other stances can be. I only knew that sometimes I didn’t necessarily get where other people were coming from, or what kind of information and interaction they needed from me.

As I examined that I came to think that everyone has a distinct stance toward the world and each other. I found two dimensions that seemed to provide a way to map the different stances people can take up. Seeing them as positions across a shared landscape helped me see that no one stance is better or worse than any other. Each stance has its superpower and its Kryptonite.

Looking at the 2x2 matrix (yes, another 2x2 matrix) I could see that at the extreme corners stood some archetypes - what I’ve come to think of as The Four Stances(tm). They are the Connoisseur, the Artist, the Artisan, and the Consumer.

Once I began to see relationships through this lens of the Four Stances, I was able to start working with people in the stance they’re holding instead of against it. I was able to appreciate the strengths of stances that are different from my own. And I came to see that none of us is stuck in one stance forever or in every situation. We can choose to operate in a different mode - take up a different stance - when it’s important.

The Four Stances™ seems to be a genuinely useful framework, at least to me. I hope it turns out to be useful to other people, too. I’ll be sharing more about The Four Stances framework in other upcoming work. For starters, there’s an ebook in the works going into more detail about each archetype and how to recognize them, guidance on identifying stances, how I’m thinking of using the framework for stakeholder mapping, and what it can contribute to team leadership. It’s a big part of what I’ve been working on recently. I’m pretty excited about it.