Stakeholders are like toddlers—ignore them for 5 minutes and everything’s on fire

No one warned me that half of project management is just… people management with fancier titles.

You’ve got: • The “just checking in” stakeholder who checks in every 4 hours. • The ghost stakeholder who vanishes during planning, then reappears at go-live with concerns. • The VIP stakeholder who says nothing… but somehow influences everything. • And let’s not forget the one who wants to help but causes more problems than the problem you started with.

Here’s what PMP studying taught me (and therapy confirmed): • Identify ALL stakeholders early. If they can say “why wasn’t I consulted?”—they’re a stakeholder. • Engage based on power and interest. Not everyone needs a daily briefing. Some just need donuts and a status email. • Manage expectations like a PR rep. Overcommunicate the good, the bad, and the “we’re working on it.” • Don’t wait for them to come to you. You own the engagement. Schedule those 1:1s. Send those updates.

Stakeholder management is 80% emotional intelligence, 10% conflict resolution, and 10% just keeping people from derailing your Gantt chart.

PMs of Reddit: what’s the wildest stakeholder moment you’ve had? I’ll start—one asked me to “pause the project until Mercury was out of retrograde.”