How do you work productively with people who can change the direction of your work?

I find that, usually, designing the interface isn’t the hardest part of the job. The harder part is working with the people who can change, delay, redirect, or even cancel a project altogether.

• A product manager can reshape priorities after talking with customers.
• An engineering manager can uncover a technical constraint that changes what’s possible.
• A senior leader can introduce a new business goal halfway through the project.

Every one of those conversations carries an uneven distribution of power. Someone else can change the scope, timeline, priorities, or even whether the project continues. That changes the relationship while not necessarily making it unhealthy.

Early in my career, I spent a lot of time trying to become better at persuasion. I wanted stronger arguments, better presentations, and cleaner prototypes. I assumed that if I explained my reasoning clearly enough, people would naturally arrive at the same conclusion. Sometimes they did. Many times they didn’t.

What frustrated me wasn’t simply disagreement. It was not understanding why someone I respected seemed to care about something that felt so obviously less important than the user problem in front of us.

Over time, I realized I had been asking the wrong question.

The question wasn’t, “How do I convince this stakeholder?”

It was, “What am I failing to understand about the world they’re operating in?”

That shift changed almost every stakeholder relationship I’ve had since.

Power changes the relationship

One thing therapists and family counselors understand well is that relationships change when power is unequal.

Parents and children relate differently than siblings. Teachers relate differently than students. Managers relate differently than the people who report to them. The relationship itself changes what people notice, what they say out loud, and how they respond to uncertainty. The same thing happens at work.

When someone has the authority to change your project, your nervous system notices long before your conscious mind does. Vague feedback about “this isn’t quite it” suddenly feels personal. Silence after a presentation feels threatening. A change in priorities feels like rejection instead of new information.

Understanding that they were normal was surprisingly freeing. The stress wasn’t coming only from the feedback itself. It also came from the uncertainty of working inside a relationship where someone else had more influence over the outcome than I did. Once I could see that dynamic, I stopped treating every difficult conversation as evidence that something had gone wrong.

Recognizing that difference doesn’t remove the stress, but it does make it easier to respond thoughtfully instead of reflexively.

Learning to interpret before reacting

Once I stopped trying to win every disagreement, I became much more interested in understanding where disagreements came from.

An engineering manager wasn’t pushing back because they disliked the design. They were responsible for keeping a complex system reliable. A product manager wasn’t ignoring research because they didn’t care about users. They were balancing customer needs against time, staffing, and business priorities. An executive wasn’t asking difficult questions because they doubted the team. They were carrying risks and responsibilities that I couldn’t always see.

The more I understood what each person was responsible for, the more predictable their behavior became. Engineering was protecting reliability. Product was balancing competing priorities. Leadership was thinking about organizational risks I couldn’t always see. Once I started looking through those responsibilities instead of through my own frustrations, the conversations became much easier to interpret.¹

Family therapists often talk about shifting the conversation from blame to curiosity.

Reaction	Curiosity	Bonus: Reflection
Why is this person acting this way?	What pressure is this person carrying?	How is this behavior helping the system function—even if imperfectly?
Why are they trying to control everything?	What is this person trying to protect?	What uncertainty or fear becomes harder for them if they let go?
Why won’t they just listen to me?	What might they be hearing that I don’t intend?	What pattern keeps causing us to miss each other?
Why do we keep having the same fight?	What is each of us trying to accomplish in this conversation?	What pattern are we recreating together?

I’ve borrowed those questions for stakeholder conversations.

When someone gives feedback that doesn’t make sense to me, I try to ask myself:

• What responsibility are they carrying that I don’t have?²
• What happens if they’re wrong?
• Who are they accountable to?
• What are they trying to protect?

Sometimes the answer changes my mind. Sometimes it doesn’t. Almost every time, it helps me understand the conversation more accurately. I’ve found the best stakeholder conversations aren’t the ones where everyone agrees. They’re the ones where people feel safe enough to explain which part of the system they’re protecting³. Once those responsibilities become visible, better decisions usually follow.

Staying connected without losing yourself

Over time, I found myself swinging between two extremes. Sometimes I’d defend every decision as though changing my mind meant admitting failure. Other times I’d absorb every piece of feedback, even when it conflicted with the research or with itself. Neither extreme left me feeling particularly grounded.

What helped was learning to stay connected to the conversation while keeping hold of my own judgment. I could genuinely understand the internal politics while still advocating for the user. I could change my mind when the evidence changed without feeling obligated to change it every time someone more senior expressed an opinion.

The goal is to stay connected to the other person without losing your own judgment. Make room for someone else’s perspective without requiring you to abandon your own. That often means saying things like,

“I think I understand the business concern. Here’s the user risk I’m still worried about.” Or,

“Help me understand what’s driving this request before we decide how to solve it.”

Family systems therapists describe this ability as remaining connected while maintaining a clear sense of self.⁴ I’ve found that it’s just as useful in design reviews as it is in personal relationships.

Translation comes after understanding

For years, I’ve described design as translation. I still think that’s true, but I’ve come to think translation happens later than most designers realize.

I’ve noticed that the quality of my translation depends on the quality of my interpretation.⁵ When I misunderstand someone’s concern, I end up translating the wrong problem. If I assume an engineer is simply being resistant or an executive simply “doesn’t get design,” I’ve closed the door on understanding the part of the system they can see and I can’t.

Translation isn’t about changing vocabulary. It’s about helping two people understand each other’s reality well enough to solve the same problem together.

I’ve come to believe that’s one of the designer’s subtlest responsibilities. We don’t need to win every argument, and we don’t need to make everyone happy. Helping people understand one another well enough that the conversation becomes more productive than it would have been otherwise, and a lot less stressful.

Invisible relationship work

When people talk about stakeholder management, they often focus on influence, persuasion, or executive communication. Those skills matter, but I think they miss something deeper.

Invisible relationship work often looks surprisingly ordinary:

• sitting with ambiguity a little longer before deciding what someone meant
• asking one more question when feedback feels confusing
• staying curious when someone with more authority sees the situation differently
• recognizing the responsibilities behind someone’s behavior before responding to the behavior itself

And through all of that, maintaining enough inner stability that you can keep translating instead of defending.

None of those moments appear on a roadmap. Most won’t get mentioned in a performance review. Yet they shape the quality of almost every important conversation that follows. When it goes well, stakeholders feel understood instead of dismissed. Designers feel grounded instead of threatened. Better conversations lead to better decisions, and better decisions eventually lead to better products.

The interface is the visible artifact, but the the relationships are the designs we made along the way.

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Series

1. Intro: Invisible relationship work
   Setting up interpretation, emotional regulation, relationship maintenance, and power navigation as a running theme for the series
2. Part 1: Stakeholders and Power (this article)
   Question: How do you work productively with people who can change the direction of your work?
   How designers absorb ambiguity, translate concerns, and maintain trust with people who influence priorities, resources, and decisions.
3. NEXT: Part 2: Coworkers and Reciprocity
   Question: How do teams share the work of keeping collaboration healthy?
   How teams depend on invisible work during onboarding, mediation, coordination, documentation, mentoring, and emotional support.
4. Part 3: Users and Boundaries
   Question: What do we owe the people we design for?
   Responsibility without self-sacrifice.

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Notes

1. Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and Family Therapy. Structural family therapy emphasizes that behavior often reflects roles, boundaries, and relationships within a system, not just rather than individual personality. ↩︎
2. Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1978). The Social Psychology of Organizations. Later work on role theory and role conflict expanded how organizational responsibilities shape behavior. ↩︎
3. Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. ↩︎
4. Bowen, M. (1978). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. The concept of “differentiation of self” describes the ability to remain emotionally grounded while staying connected to others, especially during conflict or uncertainty. ↩︎
5. Bateman, A., & Fonagy, P. (2019). Handbook of Mentalizing in Mental Health Practice (2nd ed.). “Mentalization” refers to understanding behavior by considering the thoughts, emotions, and perspectives that may lie beneath it rather than reacting only to observable actions. ↩︎