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Helping business to
serve shareholders AND society
SIMULTANEOUSLY
28 Expert tips on
stakeholder engagement in emerging markets
-Edited by Wayne Dunn
www.csrtraininginstitute.com/knowledge-centre

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Compiled from contributions made by faculty and participants at
an Executive program on How to effectively engage stakeholders in
emerging markets. Edited by Wayne Dunn
None of us is as smart as all of us
That was pretty clear this week in London as I spent a couple of days
with a brilliant group of participants in a Stakeholder engagement
program that Toby Webb (Innovation Forum) and I ran.
We had a fantastic faculty for sure, but the experience and diversity
of the participants brought as much to the overall experience as Toby,
myself or the rest of the faculty.
The program, which focused on Successful stakeholder engagement
in frontier markets included
20 hours of lectures, cases, group time
6 speakers / faculty with well over 125 years combined
experience in frontier markets and combined experience in
over 75 countries
7 case studies / scenarios
At the conclusion of the program the combined expertise of the
faculty and participants identified 28 tips for engaging stakeholders
in emerging markets.
Some are glaringly obvious. They are presented below in random
order.
Credit shared is goodwill created. Acknowledge, recognize, praise
and promote partners and collaborators (government, NGOs,
communities, organizations, etc). Do it every chance you can. You
gain much and lose nothing.
1. Share credit – it
will multiply.

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28 Expert tips on stakeholder engagement in emerging markets
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Everyone believes they are an excellent communicator. Most of
us are not! Take training. Make training available. Try to make it
mandatory. Everyone in your company is a communicator, but make
sure communications are kept memorable and simple, and trust your
people to do the right thing.
Resist the urge to compartmentalize information. Treat all
communications as if they were going to be posted on the internet
for all to see (because, that may just happen). Act authentically but
remember everything can and often will, end up on the record.
Remember there is no such thing as reality: There are only perceptions.
This is why brand power works, because they are made of perceptions
based on your view of the world. Recognize the importance of
perception in stakeholder engagement. Prepare for it and work with
it. Perception is reality!
Constantly search for alignment between company/project interests
and stakeholder interests. Be creative – sometimes real opportunities
lie outside the box. Interest intersections, where your interests and
stakeholder interests align are valuable gems. Think inside and outside
the box to find them. Gems can be hiding in unexpected places.
Developing partnerships with on the ground NGOs are vital. So are
partnerships with governments, development agencies and others
with shared objectives. Look for shared interests and objectives and
build on them. They can help you to go further and be stronger when
you get there.
Show communities what is happening with their data, or risk negative
speculation about your intentions. Think of ways their data may be
used to support their interests and objectives.
2. Communication
Training helps!
3. There are no
secrets.
4. Perception rules!
5. Interest alignment.
6. Partnerships are
good.
7. Help stakeholders
understand why and
what.

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28 Expert tips on stakeholder engagement in emerging markets
Sometimes they will lie. So will your bosses and your reports and your
colleagues, and probably you too. That’s life. Get used to it. Work
with it.
Your mistakes and shortcomings don’t go away if you don’t
acknowledge them. Own them, learn from them and move on.
Nobody expects perfection. Don’t be afraid to be human and fallible.
Honestly owning a mistake or shortcoming and moving on can build
trust and strengthen relationships. Trying to hide them can do the
opposite.
Realistic time frames and budgets for stakeholder engagement are
vital - and make sure your CFO understands and approves a realistic
budget. Help them to understand the financial cost of stakeholder
engagement failure.
Stakeholders don’t expect perfection so don’t wait for everything to
be perfect before you start stakeholder engagement. Engage early,
engage often and build trust.
10. Stakeholders are
human too.
11. Own your
shortcomings.
12. Realistic time
frames and budgets
13. Early is better.
It will destroy trust and relationships. Resist the urge to hide behind
policy and procedure. Work with relationships, not policy. Make sure
your team is fully on board with this.
Risk assessments for stakeholder management are very important.
A sustainability issues matrix can help to understand, prepare and
manage risks. Make the matrix fit the realities of your project and
your stakeholders. One size DOES NOT fit all.
8. Officiousness kills.
9. Understand your
risks.

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28 Expert tips on stakeholder engagement in emerging markets
There is something in this for you and your company. Own it. Don’t
ever try to hide behind do-gooderism at the corporate or individual
level. Your company is not a charity. Nobody will believe you if you
try to present it as one.
If you are in a stakeholder engagement press conference you’ve
already lost! A press conference is not engagement: Any kind of
confrontation means you have lost and need to rebuild.
Let your humility and humanity show. Relax and enjoy meeting people
and learning and being human: Early tension in meetings can be
quickly relieved by smiling and being relaxed.
Use the phrase: “Let’s get caught doing the right thing!” to build simple
internal buy in. Listen to the little voice inside – it is a great compass.
Communication is critical. Listening is key. Seek to understand before
you try to be understood. Think about how you say things: Use soft
language, not hard, emotion generating terms. Try to understand the
interests and motivations of your stakeholders.
15. You are
motivated by
shareholder value.
16. Press conference
= you lose.
17. Smile.
18. Do the right
thing!
19. Understand
before understood.
Know why you are complying! Effective stakeholder relationships
requires a balance of compliance and strategy. Don’t be seduced
by the illusion of certainty in compliance. Know what you want to be
compliant with and why. Don’t be afraid to venture into the uncertainty
and ambiguity of strategic engagement practices. That is often where
the breakthroughs are found and value is created.
14. Strategic
Compliance.

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28 Expert tips on stakeholder engagement in emerging markets
Use third parties as necessary (they can be very helpful) but don’t
contract out stakeholder engagement or difficult communications -
your company must be the face stakeholders see and learn to trust.
Stakeholder expectations will shift and change. But, guess what,
corporate, government, and other expectations shift and change too.
That’s life. Accept it and prepare for it. Engage, monitor, scan and
adjust as required.
There are lessons in success and failure. Analyze them both. Learn
why you succeeded or failed and adjust. Don’t expect the lessons
to be absorbed without doing the work of analyzing and capturing
them.
Complexity will cost you. Simple guidelines beat complex prescriptive
procedures every day of the week. Be realistic. If your stakeholder
engagement plan, process, procedure is too complex who is going
to follow it? Would you? Don’t turn stakeholder engagement into box
ticking! Train and trust your people. Give them room to be creative
and responsive but let them know where the boundaries are.
21. Own your
stakeholder
relationships.
22. Expectations
change (but seldom
reduce).
23. Learn from
success and failure
24. Simplicity is
good.
Every contact between the company and stakeholders builds or takes
away from relationships. Everyone should be trained in stakeholder
engagement at some level. Right person to right position: If you
delegate, train and build capacity. Make sure your people know how
do it right, never assume. This means your bosses, your reports and
others across the company.
20. Everyone is the
face of the company.

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28 Expert tips on stakeholder engagement in emerging markets
Mapping stakeholders and interest mapping is vital, and must be
reviewed often. Find and develop the interest intersections where win,
win, win can be found. Remember, be creative and think inside and
outside of the box.
The importance of taking note of culture cannot be underestimated.
Things change from country to country and project to project. Rigidity
will often crack and break. Allow room for adaptation to culture and
use it when necessary.
Ongoing communications even when there is no obvious demand –
Be open and transparent, it builds trust. Think about being counter
intuitive with regular communications about the good and bad. Get
the balance right. Communicate frequently enough that you are not
forgotten but not so frequently that you are ignored. Don’t always
wait for a big win, or failure. Share the ebb and flow of dailyness
once in a while
Compliance is the price of entry. Go beyond. Don’t rely on compliance,
or believe that claims of legality offer you meaningful defense or
protection.
25. Interest
intersections are
critical.
26. All is not the
same.
27. Stay in touch.
28. Don’t be left at
the starting line.

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Wayne Dunn is President & Founder of the CSR Training Institute and Professor
of Practice in CSR at McGill. He’s a Stanford Sloan Fellow with a M.Sc. in
Management from Stanford Business School.
He is a veteran of 20+ years of award winning global CSR and sustainability
work spanning the globe and covering many industries and sectors including
extensive work with Indigenous Peoples in Canada and globally. His work
has won major international awards and has been used extensively as ‘best-
practice’ by industry and academia.
He’s also worked oil rigs, prospecting, diamond drilling, logging, commercial
fishing, heavy equipment operator, truck driver and underwater logging, done
a couple of start-ups and too many other things to mention.
Wayne’s career includes big successes, and spectacular failures. He hopes
he’s learned equally from both.
Wayne Dunn
About the author
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28 Expert tips on stakeholder engagement in emerging markets