I have a challenge with a member of the client's team. Of mediterranean disposition - impulsive, unstructured, poor at articulating feedback and communication. He controls a lot of feedback from his boss who is the ultimate client for this, and in doing so causes a tremendous amount of value loss - I believe about 60% of what gets communicated doesn't get back to us. I have also been instructed from my line manager to take feedback from him with caution. I am faced with a moral dilemma:- ignore his feedback and requests: pro: improved project outcome / con: alienating a trusted and senior client team member- take in his feedback and requests: pro: reasonably happy client / con: project outcome may be compromised (i.e. business results) and team morale will degrade as result of incessant reworking.Thoughts?

To gently bump this thread up and provide some clarification - trigger for this post was a recent 1-hour debate where said client was particularly unrelenting with a particularly inane request. My (tentative) approach is to listen selectively and only play back post-feedback content in front of his boss and himself, in sessions which occur on a fortnightly basis.I'm sure there are more than a few creative minds on the board who can provide a strong (or at least humorous) perspective?

It's not a moral dilemma - it's a business decision you have to make. My perspective:You are responsible for the outcomes of the project. Perplexingly, and somewhat ironically, pleasing your client in the short term is occasionally not an option you should pursue if, in doing so, you compromise your long-term goals.We're all worked with the "mini-boss" - which is the low-level client Manager who believes he is the only possible communication channel to the boss, actively dissuades you from going to their boss, gets the power trip from the filtering he/she does and sees you as "his" resoruces. Worse still if this mini-boss is reactionary with little respect of the scope or process.I don't see this as black or white - you have more than two options. Firstly you need to find the middle ground - where clearly he feels valued, included and not bypassed AND making sure (by being a strong and client orientated senior leader yourself) that your project results are not compromised - and here I would ask the question what your line manager is doing in this situation? He/she should ideally be participating in the activity of stakeholder management with your ultimate client - at a more strategic level. It is your boss who should be highlighting these issues as compromising project quality in a steering committee capacity. Leveraging this more senior level will open up an entirely different angle of communication and I believe is key in any project / programme.Put simply, it seems your problems are more about your internal relationship mapping and communication flow...More details?

Thanks Arby - you are quite right. I get no support at all from line manager (and exec sponsor on our end) who is mostly absent (turns up 1 a month,) and when he's around he just does a bit of PR and then buggers off. Assume time is running out before a board presentation and I get no support from my company. I am super invested in the project and I desperately want to make it work, but I have limited scope to do anything except just do good work and protect it from ludicrous change requests.

Powernap, watch out, you're about to get shafted. Document the decisions you take that are driven by the difficult client. Play everything back at the fortnightly meeting you have with the boss. I presume in these meetings you reach agreement on actions and next steps? Make sure you document these and where there's any deviation from them you escalate them early.Most importantly flag this as a major risk internally - but have some specific evidence of its impact on the project. Otherwise you'll just get some useless "how to work with difficult clients" feedback.I'm worried that you're about to get in to a position where there are only bad outcomes for you. No one will recognise what a good job you did of getting 'close to the desired business outcomes under difficult client circumstances' down the line. If you feel it's not working out after a short while, and you're in a position to exit the role, I suggest you do.

Pwernap,Good engagement is equal parts "keeping the customer happy" and challenging the client when there are problems. It sounds like you have a weak engagement manager and SenorMick is right when he says you need to document the issues and keep a record of the times you have asked your boss to sort things out. Watch your back.

CharlieFB and SMick - thank you for the urgent words. You are right, situation is ripe with sh*t-splattering possibilities, and thankfully I have a full record of everything to date, I just think it hasn't gone any further up the chain of command. Axe will fall squarely on line manager's head - possibly the dull end, but it will hurt without a shadow of a doubt. Sad reality is pipeline and reputation-wise this is a good piece of work and it will be a shame if it concludes in such a disgraceful manner.