Dan’s Difficulty: Being a Mutual Learning Leader with Customers

Dan had a problem.

He was responsible for developing a new product for his organization’s largest customer and the relationship had stalled. The problem wasn’t between Dan and the customer; it was that the customer – represented by two individuals – who couldn’t agree with each other on what they wanted from Dan’s organization.

Dan (not his real name) couldn’t move the product design forward because the two individuals were disagreeing with each other about what their organization needed from Dan’s organization.

Dan was stuck. He knew that unless the customer spoke with one voice, the product design couldn’t move forward, but he didn’t know how to make that happen. To make it more challenging, Dan couldn’t use his technical expertise to persuade the customer to go one way or another. Either way made sense (they couldn’t do both), but the customer needed to figure out what it wanted the product to do. The individuals could have bumped up the decision to higher levels, but that would have taken even more time and the project schedule was already slipping. Dan left the meeting with the customers at impasse and his product design project in limbo.

Have you ever been in a situation like this with your customers or clients?

I know about Dan’s problem because he brought it to us, looking for a solution.

A couple of weeks later, Dan met again with the same two customers. They picked up where they left off, but by the end of this meeting, the customers had agreed upon the key elements for the product design. Dan left the meeting able to move the project forward. What did Dan do?

Simply put, Dan used his Mutual Learning leadership skills with these customers. He helped identify what about each of their proposed solutions was important to each of them, what assumptions guided each of their solutions, and what information each was using to propose their solutions. Using this, he helped them explore how they could come up with a product design that met both of the customers underlying needs, even though it was different from what either one of them had envisioned.

At the end of the meeting, the customers were not only satisfied with the design, they were grateful that Dan had been able to help them as he did. In short, by using the Mutual Learning approach, Dan not only moved forward a major contract, but also added significant value for the customer, and increased their trust in him.

Originally published April 2007