Building relationship and gaining trust in work

One of the projects I am working on at the moment is rolling out a relocation services contract via a third party vendor into the Middle East countries. I have a Project Manager reporting to me to handle the implementation plans and to cover operational stabilisation. The project timelines of the implementation had been overly slipped due to some opposition from the local Human Resources unit. Actually the implementation has been simplified by a regional contract scope and a standardised implementation plan however due to poor coordination and miscommunication by the project team, the eventual slippage was inevitable.

During the latest project implementation review, the Project Manager, let us call him K, and I had a long discussion on how to recover loss ground and roll out the contract successfully. We identified that there is a specific personality in one of the Middle East countries who was very vocal in opposing the plan. Let us call him G. G had been questioning the contract rationale and had not been able to accept the explanation provided to him.

From my observation, there are some areas where K needs to improve himself. Firstly, K expects G to change by just accepting the contract. Secondly, K needs to strengthen his interpersonal skill as he is a natural introvert and increase his drive to secure a closure in work.

We spoke openly about my observations. I informed K that forcing the contract to G would not be conducive, as this would place G subservient to the contract. Not many human beings would be able to accept this condition due to their pride. It would be better to approach G from a level playing field where his pride would be safe guarded and at same time the implementation of contract is kept in tact. On his skills, we spoke about establishing relationship with G as a stakeholder of the contract by gaining his trust and cooperation. If these elements of trust and cooperation are secured and G's pride is safe guarded, the roll out of the contract would be effortless.

Within a week, K had taken up the advice and the contract implementation is now on tract.