What is Meaningful Dialogue?
“Dialogue is communication or discussion between people or groups…If you describe something as meaningful, you mean that it is serious, important, or useful in some way.”
A bee engaging in meaningful dialogue with a flower.
For me, meaningful dialogue is at the heart of good public relations.
It underpins effective stakeholder engagement. PR is too frequently seen as publicity in support of promotional marketing and brand building. I see it as a strategic business discipline that is much broader than that.
The Public Relations Institute of Australia defines public relations as “the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.” Publics is the plural of public, but I prefer the term stakeholders, which is more widely understood. Both refer to the groups of people that interact with an organisation and have the potential to impact it.
Typical stakeholder groups for most companies include their customers, employees, investors, suppliers and regulators. Since the mass media is a relatively cost effective way of reaching all these stakeholders at once, PR practitioners often default to media relations as their primary channel. As public relations has matured as a discipline it has splintered into different specialisations, including for example government affairs, investor relations or community relations.
From a corporate communications perspective, public relations is fundamentally about reputation management. Reputation is the result of what you do, what you say, and what others think or say about you. Building and maintaining a meaningful dialogue with your stakeholders can help protect your reputation.
Meaningful dialogue creates a conversation that leads to action and the opportunity for positive change to benefit all parties.
To engage in meaningful dialogue well, you need to understand your audience. You need to know what motivates them and what they think about you. You need to understand your organisation: your purpose, your values, your mission. And you need to be prepared to listen and learn.
From a societal perspective, listening to opposing views seems to be a rare commodity these days. The media agenda, including social media, is predominantly driven by conflict and polarising views. It does not encourage meaningful dialogue between different parties. Fortunately, an alternative perspective, an antidote, is on the rise: the concept of the social enterprise, also known as stakeholder capitalism.
Stakeholder capitalism is on the rise
Stakeholder capitalism is defined by Professor Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum as “a form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimize short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large.” Schwab notes that “the stakeholder concept is ready for a comeback, albeit in an updated, more comprehensive form. We are facing a whole set of social, economic, and health crises, and the best response to these challenges, would be for all actors in society to consider more than their narrow and short-term self-interest.”
Forward thinking business leaders are reading the tea leaves and listening to their stakeholders.
The social expectation is that business takes the lead: 68% of those surveyed globally for the Edelman Trust Barometer say CEOs should step in when the government does not fix societal problems; 66% say CEOs should take the lead on change, rather than waiting for government to impose change on them.
While North American companies, such as Patagonia, and many others, are often held up as poster children of the social enterprise movement, we are also seeing some Australian companies starting to recognise the value. In August 2021, Australian national telecommunications company, Telstra, made calls from its national network of payphones free to all Australians, with CEO Andrew Penn noting that “Telstra’s purpose is to build a connected future so everyone can thrive. To deliver on this ambition we want to contribute to a better, more caring and more inclusive Australia.”
Stakeholder capitalism is on the rise, with business recognising the power of purpose to lead engagement with those stakeholders critical to their continued growth: conscious consumers, impact investors and activist employees.
Effectively building and protecting corporate reputation means monitoring the environment the organisation operates in and the perspectives of the stakeholders it engages with. It means adapting organisational behaviour as required to maintain a social licence to operate. It means engaging in meaningful dialogue.
