Fence-Sitters—How to Deal with Them

Q. I work with someone who will never give me an answer unless I push for it, and even then I’m not sure if I can count on him. How can I get a faster commitment? – Lois T.

A. Trying to get a fence-sitter to make a decision can be a major challenge. These folks are usually "middle of the road" on everything—they can't make decisions, commitments, accept responsibilities, offer opinions—you name it. They don’t like to take a chance on anything, because they fear people might blame them if something goes wrong.

As a result, they’ll spend a lot of effort sheltering themselves from criticism. They’ll often confuse and frustrate you because you’re really not sure where they're coming from. For example, if your department decides everyone should upgrade their computer skills, you might hear them say something like this: "We probably should take that computer course. It would help us implement our inventory control change more easily. On the other hand, it's three nights a week and I don't know if I want to spend that kind of time going to classes. Maybe we could find another less time-consuming course or maybe we really don't need to take any classes. I can't really decide what to do right now. I'll have to give it some more thought."

The reason they like to put off decisions is insecurity, and your best response is to create a situation where the fence-sitter can’t fail. This is going to make more work for you, but you have to help fence-sitters believe that there’s little risk in doing what you want; that they’re not likely to fail. In other words, you give the fence-sitter a solid chance for success.

Make Honesty Safe

When you talk to fence-sitters, help them to feel that they can trust you. Mirror their body language and speaking style. You’ll probably want to slow down your conversation a little, and don’t begin any meeting with them by jumping right in and talking business; you may overwhelm them. Let them get used to your style, and show you’re interested in them.

You could say something like, “What’s a good time to talk to you about something?” Follow up with, I need to find out____ and I’d like to talk to you about it. What’s a convenient time for you?” When you do get that time, you might begin by saying, “John, I really need your help with something and your experience could save me a lot of time and frustration.” You might even make a few pleasant comments about some family pictures on their desk during the conversation, to let them know you just don’t want to pop in, get a decision and leave. The idea is to show a real interest in what they say, and try to cultivate a working relationship (even if it’s short-term) with them. It’s important to build trust with them and to help them to feel comfortable with you. This is a process you can’t hurry.

For the long-term, work at strengthening the relationship—especially at times when you don’t want something from them. This may seem like a frivolous use of your time, especially if you’re a bottom-line, get-it-done person. But look at it this way: you can either invest the time up front, building a connection with this person, or you can spend it later on in the discussion, trying to get the fence-sitter to take a firm stand that you can count on.

Clarify The Issue

Calmly explain the situation, outlining the positive side first. Keep things as simple as possible, and avoid negative words like afraid, cannot, crisis, fail, frustrating, losing, must, overloaded. When you have to explain the down side of the issue, deliberately use words like confident, succeed, winning, improve, cost-effective, valuable, productive, increase.

Help them decide the issue by showing the benefits of making a decision now.

Be thoroughly prepared before presenting your idea or request. Know all the background so you can answer questions and not leave any loopholes. Have all the facts and figures ready, correct and up-to-date. Try to anticipate any possible objections and be prepared to overcome them. If you can’t overcome an objection, the fence-sitter will use that as excuse to wait until you get the information.

Once you get the commitment, confirm it—again with positive words: “John, thanks for your support for this project. With your help, I know we’ll succeed. Let me run over this one once more. You’ll e-mail me the month-end figures by Friday noon so I can have them ready for the 2 p.m. meeting. I’ll give you a summary of my report so you can see how they were used, and credit you with making the extra effort. Is that how you understand what we’ve agreed to?”