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Competency Coordinates: Stakeholder Orientation

Stakeholder Orientation

Identifying and taking into account the interests of other people, understanding the organisational context of stakeholders, disclosing with stakeholders how engagement data is obtained and used.

Resisting to “listening” without noticing

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• Most people agree that, in concept, listening is something good. Listening is at par with a democratic attitude, with equality of opportunity, and with sustainable and accountable decisions. Still, in practice, most people struggle with the craft of listening! In the real-world listening is often regarded as way of losing power and leverage on a decision, of downplaying the role of experts, of producing unnecessary complexity, and of igniting social unrest and discontentment. In the words of the master Oogway (from the Kung Fu Panda movie), “one often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it”. Not listening in order to avoid bad outcomes is more likely than not to be the cause of bad outcomes because of the mistrust and unfairness it can instigate in stakeholders.

• Here we highlight 6 forces that feed the resistance to listening:
  
  • Status differences. Complex (and even simple) decisions in projects are likely to be supported by people with expertise, technical knowledge, and years of experience. These people devote many hours to training in their fields of expertise and to discussing, testing, and implementing their ideas. Why would experts need to listen if they know better?
    
  • Assumption of ignorance. Self-perceptions of status differences (“I am the expert here”) are often associated with the assumption that stakeholders do not have much to offer when the topic is something complex and technical (“They know very little about this”) and that they only care about the outcomes (“All they need is to understand the results and compensations”).
    
  • Conflict avoidance. Listening to people is often associated with opening a can of worms. There is a pervasive belief that, regarding a stakeholder’s contestation potential and discontentment, ignorance is bliss. The caveat with this reasoning is very simple – you can’t manage what you don’t know!
    
  • Expectations management. There are two types of question that always come attached with the idea of listening to communities – “What if they don’t agree?” and “What if we don’t know the answer?”. This portrays a pervasive confusion between active listening practices (giving a space for the narratives to emerge, acknowledging and recording those narratives) and information, problem-solving and conflict management practices (answering questions, explaining decisions, negotiating alternatives).
    
  • Resources. Listening requires resources – time and money. Managers often forget this and when the time comes to build communication channels, their hands are tied! There is such a resistance to planning for active listening that it is like we are talking about a dark witchcraft!
    
  • Perceptions of weakness. If someone wants to listen, it’s because he needs something – it can be some sort of local information, insights into agreement with a course of action, or alternatives to a course of action, to give a few examples – and approaching communication in need of something opens space for losing a position. Again, listening in need is something completely different form active listening. Listening expects nothing in return besides the knowledge that comes with it. Don’t let negotiation and planning (as important as they might be) get in the way of knowing your stakeholders!

Corrosive damage of non-involvement

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• Two capuchin monkeys are held seperately in a cage. They are given a rock and, if they put that rockinside a box, they receive a reward. Capuchin monkeys are quite smart, particularly when rewarded with food, so they learn how to do this task very easily. Now, what would happen if the two monkeys were rewarded differently for the exact same task? Imagine, one monkey receiving cucumber (which they like) and the other monkey grapes (which they love) for doing exactly the same – putting the rock inside the box. The monkey receiving cucumber, although that is a perfectly fine food for him, becomes very upset to the point where he almost destroys the cage! Breaches in distributive justice, on how rewards (or punishments) are distributed, have a powerful impact on behaviours, monkeys and humans alike. Not taking into account the interests of other people is likely to make you, maybe unconsciously, give cucumbers to some and grapes to others for the exact same thing!

• Three groups of students are enrolled to choose course scheduling for a semester. In the pre-voicecondition students gave their opinion prior to the decision and the schedules were adapted according. In the post-voice condition, students gave their opinion after the decision, when the schedules could not be no longer changed. Finally, in the no-voice condition, students could not give their opinion, they simply received the schedules, game over. The results show differences – satisfaction with the schedules was the lowest in the no-voice condition and the highest in the pre-voice! This means that although it matters to people to influence the outcome, instrumental participation is still extremely important. Capitalizing procedural justice in a decision impacts perceived fairness, satisfaction with the outcome and compliance. And yes, this applies beyond the academic context and students – satisfaction and compliance with legal cases still results in custody disputes, and human resources policies and organizational change, and development-induced environment changes are among a list of many more contexts where procedural justice matters.

Ways to improve stakeholder orientation

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1. What are your beliefs about stakeholder engagement?

• Lima, Moreira and Marques wrote about two decision making paradigms: the exclusion paradigm, where decision making is based on technical opinions, the negotiation with a restricted group of entities, the exclusion of the majority of the local agents; and the inclusion paradigm where, conversely, decision making incorporate practices of social participation. Try the questions below, giving a 0 if you disagree and a 1 if you agree. Any result equal or above 2 suggests you endorse to some extent the exclusion paradigm. If you are curious check the paper here.
  
  
  • Involvement should be restricted to knowledgeable and powerful stakeholders as much as possible.
  • Decision-making is mainly a technical issue.
  • Decision-making should be only influenced by experts.
  • Relationship with local communities should be limited as much as possible to information providers.
  • Local stakeholders often lack the resources, interest or ability to participate in decision processes.
  • The involvement of stakeholders constitutes an unnecessary loss of power, money and time.

2. Learn more about how hard inequity can impact people

• Frans de Waal provides a very funny and engaging overview about fairness, reciprocity, empathy, and cooperation in the animal kingdom in his TED talk about “Moral Behavior in Animals”. This is a great place to start, it is worth your 15 minutes.
  
• Richard Wilkinson has a famous book on inequity named “The Spirit Level” and widely seen TED talknamed “How Economic Inequality Harms Societies” available here. Consider spending 15 minutes with the TED talk and if that spikes your interest, look for the book.

3. How well do you know your stakeholders?

Many managers and practitioners fail to listen simply because they don’t know how that can be accomplished! There are many tools out there that can be used to give voice to the stakeholders’ narratives, perceptions and opinions, without judgement or critique. One interesting example is the WWF Landscape Outcome Assessment Methodology (LOAM). Here participants are asked to identify what are the conservation values in a region and to assign the level of development, importance, and needed investment. Check the details about LOAM on the WWF site, here.

4. Master the principles of procedural justice.

The “father” of the social psychology of justice has outlined with greater detail (over 3 decades of research) what procedural justice is made of. Follow these 3 golden rules:

• Participation: give stakeholders the opportunity to express opinions about what should be done;
  
• Trust in authorities: make clear the motives for awarding rewards (or punishments), namely, express benevolence (concern for needs) and ethics (orientation to do what is right).
  
• Interpersonal treatment: provide access to true, timely and appropriate information and to mutual respect and sensitive treatment.