If you are facilitating a requirements elicitation meeting, a user story workshop, a replenishment meeting or any other session where your goal is to elicit business requirements, stakeholder requirements, features, scenarios, etc., the task of dealing with difficult people is one of the biggest challenges. This video will explore different types of personalities that can stand in the way of a successful outcome and give you some tips on how to manage them.

Communication Skills Are a Must for Facilitators, Product Owners, and Business Analysts

A comedian once quipped, “Earth would be such a lovely planet if it weren’t for all the people.” Whether you agree with that comment or not, it is obviously not a great attitude for anyone trying to elicit requirements. We all have issues with certain behaviors of other people, in particular when we are trying to achieve a specific outcome from our interaction.

There are some people with whom you have instant rapport and there are others with whom you just fail to connect. Knowing the difference, recognizing that there are people that you would consider “difficult” is a first step.

Learning business analysis techniques or soft skills on how to deal with difficult people is a key success factor for effective communication. It will allow you to develop a mutual understanding about your User Stories or stakeholder requirements and can dictate the success of your requirements meetings and User Story Workshops or Replenishment Meetings.

The good news is that there are ways of dealing with every behavior, if you only have time to think about them and plan ahead.