Your stakeholders aren’t crazy.

After 6 years of product management, I’ve realized: every “difficult” stakeholder behavior has a hidden logic.

A thread on the psychology of product stakeholders 🧠 **

1/ Sales: The Future-Focused Hunters

What they see: • Revenue targets looming • Competitors taking deals • Prospects making demands • Commission at risk

What they feel: • Urgency to close deals • Fear of losing opportunities • Frustration with product gaps • Personal financial pressure

This is why they: • Push for custom features • Make promises to customers • Escalate to leadership • Sound desperate sometimes **

2/ Support: The Problem Absorbers

What they see: • Customer pain daily • Repeated issues • Workarounds failing • Mounting tickets

What they feel: • Emotional drain from complaints • Responsibility for customer success • Powerlessness to fix root causes • Pride in finding solutions

This is why they: • Escalate aggressively • Get emotional about issues • Create elaborate workarounds • Take product issues personally **

3/ Engineering: The Complexity Guardians

What they see: • Technical debt growing • Architecture breaking • Timeline pressure • Quality vs speed tradeoffs

What they feel: • Pride in craft • Fear of future maintenance • Pressure to deliver faster • Frustration with unclear requirements

This is why they: • Push back on timelines • Focus on technical elegance • Seem resistant to change • Want perfect requirements **

4/ Marketing: The Market Watchers

What they see: • Competitor movements • Market trends • Brand perception • Campaign deadlines

What they feel: • Pressure to differentiate • Fear of market irrelevance • Need for clear narratives • Anxiety about positioning

This is why they: • Push for feature parity • Request “marketable” features • Focus on competitor moves • Need long-term roadmaps **

5/ Analytics: The Truth Seekers

What they see: • Usage patterns • Conversion drops • Engagement metrics • Growth opportunities

What they feel: • Confidence in data • Frustration with gut decisions • Need for measurement • Pride in accuracy

This is why they: • Question assumptions • Push for more tracking • Focus on metrics • Resist intuitive decisions **

6/ Product Executives: The Vision Keepers

What they see: • Board expectations • Market opportunities • Resource constraints • Competitive threats • Organizational politics

What they feel: • Pressure to deliver growth • Fear of strategic missteps • Responsibility for team success • Frustration with execution speed • Anxiety about market position

This is why they: • Change priorities frequently • Push for faster delivery • Focus on high-level metrics • Sometimes contradict themselves • Micromanage key initiatives **

7/ Fellow Product Managers: The Territory Guards

What they see: • Overlapping responsibilities • Shared resources • Dependencies • Career competition • Political dynamics

What they feel: • Ownership anxiety • Resource scarcity • Career pressure • Fear of being overshadowed • Need for recognition

This is why they: • Resist cross-product initiatives • Guard their roadmap territory • Compete for engineering resources • Sometimes withhold information • Push back on dependencies **

8/ UX/Design: The User Advocates

What they see: • Inconsistent experiences • Design debt • User frustration • Quick fixes accumulating • Research insights ignored

What they feel: • Pride in craft • Frustration with compromises • Responsibility to users • Creative ownership • Professional standards pressure

This is why they: • Push for perfection • Resist quick solutions • Need research time • Get emotional about details • Fight for user testing **

9/ Business/Strategy Teams: The Number Crunchers

What they see: • Unit economics • Market sizing • Investment returns • Competitive analysis • Strategic fit

What they feel: • Pressure for business case clarity • Fear of poor investments • Need for quantifiable results • Frustration with vague value props • Career risk from failed bets

This is why they: • Demand detailed forecasts • Focus on financial metrics • Push for market validation • Question every assumption • Need extensive documentation **

10/ The Master Key: Understanding Incentives

Every stakeholder’s behavior makes sense when you understand:

• What they’re measured on • What keeps them up at night • Who they report to • How they get promoted • What risks they carry

Unfortunately often the incentives are misaligned and it doesn’t help to wish they weren’t.

I spent years fighting stakeholders before learning this. **

11/ The PM’s Role: The Synthesizer

Your job isn’t to make everyone happy.

It’s to: • Understand these perspectives • Find common ground • Make informed tradeoffs • Keep everyone informed

I learned this after years of trying to please everyone and burning out. **

Stakeholder management can feel overwhelming.

That’s why I curated clear, contextual frameworks at - so you can find exactly what you need when dealing with specific stakeholder challenges.prodmgmt.world/products/produ… **

13/ Remember:

Your job isn’t just building products. It’s building trust networks.

Every stakeholder relationship is a long-term investment.

Build these bridges before you need them.

You’re not just managing a product. You’re orchestrating a complex human system. **

14/ Practical Application:

For each stakeholder: 1. Map their incentives 2. Listen for underlying fears 3. Acknowledge their constraints 4. Show you understand before pushing back **

15/ Remember:

Everyone is trying to do their job well.

Their “unreasonable” behavior usually comes from: • Misaligned incentives • Different time horizons • Incomplete information • Personal career risks

Understanding this changes everything. **

Get instant access to stakeholder-specific conversation templates and frameworks by grabbing my AI prompts collection: )prodmgmt.world/products/ai-pr… **

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