Tips to toughen up at work

[SLJ161086]

Hi all, hoping for some advice. I'm newly in a leadership role (not very senior but high up enough) and seem to be finding to be seen as an emotional punchbag for complaints. I deal with colleagues so not clients or third party provider but seem to be viewed as a "service". Two stakeholders in particular are always on my back about poor processes and the way my department works. I am really struggling with pushing back on them. Can anyone offer advice on how to have difficult conversations with people more senior? I don't want to be a yes man/woman, I want to make changes but also be assertive and push back. I wish I could do it!

It's difficult to say without knowing more about the organisation - and the degree to which you have enough autonomy to resolve this yourself. Also, whether these are genuine problems that they are identifying.

I find that stakeholders sometimes don't understand why we work in a particular way and equally, team members become very attached to existing ways of working - and don't look to change/improve them.

Could you look for trends in the problems that the stakeholders are raising and use this information to identify how these issues can be best resolved?

Assuming that they are genuine problems, could you then take these to your team and say that collectively you need to come up with solutions.

If they are not problems that you can resolve yourself, I would suggest that you show the information gained from monitoring the problems to your line manager and say that you would like to discuss how they can be addressed by the organisation. Point out that senior stakeholders are raising them and it is affecting the reputation of your department.

If having gone through this exercise, the issues raised by the stakeholders are not genuine, I think that you would find it easier to push back. You could say I have appreciated you coming to me with your concerns and have used this opportunity to see how they can be resolved. I didn't find that this was an issue because..... If you find these conversations practice and visualise the discussion beforehand.