INSIGHT REPORT

How To Engage
Stakeholders Effectively
Through Social Intelligence
 Contents
Pre-Emptive Approach to Deploying Social Intelligence in a Major Initiative................ 2

Stakeholder Mapping: Setting the Stage....................................................................... 3

Stakeholder Assessment: The Basis for Project Success............................................. 4

Strategic Stakeholder Engagement During Implementation.......................................... 6

Empathetic Listening...................................................................................................... 7

Echoing and Mirroring.................................................................................................... 8

Curious Questioning....................................................................................................... 8

Building Rapport............................................................................................................ 9

Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 9

About the Author.......................................................................................................... 10

About Intelex................................................................................................................ 10

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Should you care about social intelligence? Only if you want to get anything done with
other people.

Social intelligence refers to the strategic capacity to evaluate and influence other people’s
emotions and relationships. Research in behavioral science and cognitive neuroscience shows
that our emotions—not our thoughts—determine what we decide and how we behave 80-90
percent of the time, implicitly and even explicitly. Given that, social intelligence offers the key
to engaging with and influencing our stakeholders effectively.

Social intelligence involves a number of skill domains, such as: identifying your key
stakeholders (also called stakeholder mapping); stakeholder assessment; empathetic
listening; echoing and mirroring; curious questioning and building rapport. By using these
skills in the service of effective stakeholder engagement, social intelligence empowers you to
cultivate a community of collaboration through conversations, connections and communities.
Best of all, a subtle deployment of social intelligence will tilt the floor of this community of
collaboration in your favor.

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Pre-Emptive Approach to Deploying Social
Intelligence in a Major Initiative
While social intelligence will help you engage stakeholders in any day-to-day matter, it’s in
major initiatives that social intelligence becomes truly indispensable. For example, consider a
case study of a quickly growing biotech startup with 110 employees and two cutting-edge
products. It wanted to replace its current Excel-based quality management system with a
software-based Quality Management System (QMS).

The Quality Assurance (QA) Director, Myron, who long pushed to upgrade their quality
management system, made a strong business case to the CEO, CFO and COO for a QMS.
Myron was particularly motivated by some of the quality management failures in other
organizations associated with the recent COVID-19 roll out, which he had been seeing in the
news. With this in mind, they agreed to move forward. They dedicated appropriate budget
and assigned the QA Director and the Information Technology (IT) Director, Sarah, as co-leads
on this project.

While the IT Director expressed excitement over the project, she felt concerned due to the
hiccups in the recent implementation of the Resource Management Software (RMS) adopted by
the company. Politics severely hindered the implementation of the RMS. Multiple departments,
and teams within departments, fought with each other over many aspects of the RMS.

Looking back, Sarah realized it’s not surprising that such conflicts occurred, due to this new
software impacting so many people’s roles and behaviors. She wished she recognized the
dangers in advance and took steps to address them early on in the process of selecting and
implementing the RMS. Myron, while not directly involved in the implementation of the RMS,
observed from the side the multiple conflicts and problems with that project. After Sarah shared
some behind-the-scenes horror stories, he very much wanted to avoid these sorts of issues for
the QMS. After all, similar to the RMS, the QMS required the collaboration of multiple teams and
departments with competing priorities. It also required significant behavior change.

Fortunately, Myron had researched effective stakeholder engagement via social intelligence, as
discussed in my Quality Digest webinar, my book The Blind Spots Between Us and my
consultancy, Disaster Avoidance Experts. His pre-emptive approach to deploying social
intelligence provided the best opportunity to minimizing problems down the road.

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Stakeholder Mapping: Setting the Stage
The first step in effective stakeholder engagement using social intelligence involves determining
your key stakeholders. This seems simple, almost self-evident, but I’m shocked by how rarely
it’s actually done. Project leads simply assume they intuitively know everyone who should be
involved. They then proceed to gather those people to start implementing the project.

“
Almost invariably, in the middle and later stages of project implementation, other stakeholders
come to the fore. They complain about not being included, demand resource-expensive In the case of identifying
changes to the project to accommodate their needs or simply obstruct the project, passively
or actively.
your stakeholders,
instead of going with your
One of the major causes for this problem stems from what researchers call the empathy gap,
our inability to predict accurately the intensity of other people’s feelings (and often even our intuitions, assumptions
own). That includes other people’s attachment to what those people perceive they own, such and gut reactions, an
as their roles in an organization or their current ways of doing things. The empathy gap is one
of over a hundred mental blind spots called cognitive biases by scholars. Fortunately, we can
effective, research-driven
also use research-based strategies to notice such blind spots so we can overcome them. strategy is to use a
In the case of identifying your stakeholders, instead of going with your intuitions, assumptions checklist to map out your
and gut reactions, an effective, research-driven strategy is to use a checklist to map out your stakeholders in advance.”
stakeholders in advance. As Ben Franklin used to say, “An ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure.”

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Here is a checklist for 10 groups to consider for any major project you want to implement in
your organization. Keep in mind that the same person or team may be in different groups, and
that some stakeholders may be outside your organization, such as vendors or clients:
• Those whose support you truly need to succeed with your initiative.
• Those whose opposition can single-handedly undermine it.
• Those who control resources needed for your initiative: budget, social capital, official
permission and control structure.
• Those whose behavior is directly impacted by your initiative, meaning whose behavior
would have to change for your effort to be a success.
• Those whose resource access will be impacted by your initiative.
• Those whose jobs will be made harder due to your initiative.
• Those whose jobs will be made easier due to your initiative.
• Those whose career progress may be altered by your initiative.
• Those whose political networks in the organization may be substantially impacted by
your initiative.
• Those whose ego may be tied in some way to your initiative.

With this checklist, Myron and Sarah realized they weren’t thinking sufficiently broadly about
their key stakeholders. They focused on the leadership of teams in the operations and R&D
departments. However, the QMS would require behavior changes from many rank-and-file
staff. Moreover, many people’s jobs would be made initially more difficult due to fewer
opportunities to cut corners and the stricter, data-driven quality evaluation enabled by a QMS.
The company’s vendors would be impacted, too, due to their role in the QMS input process.

An especially tricky point arose when considering the “ego” angle. The startup hired Myron as
a professional QA Director a couple of years ago. Before that, the firm’s old-school “various
Excel” quality management system was set up by a major early investor and current Board
member who pitched in some sweat equity as part of his investment. How would he feel about
it being replaced by a digital QMS?

Stakeholder Assessment: The Basis for Project

Success
Regardless of the urgency, do a pre-engagement check before you engage with your key
influencers directly. This will prepare you for the meetings and lead to a productive discourse.
Otherwise, you might fall into the mental blind spot known as the false consensus effect,
where you assume other people are more similar to you and more inclined to do what you
want them to do than is really the case. The questions below form a checklist you can use to
assess your key stakeholders in preparing to engage with them.
• What are their feelings, values, goals and incentives around this issue?
• What is their story around this issue?
• What is their identity and sense of self as tied to the issue?
• How are they the hero in their own story?
• Why should they want to listen to your message and do what you want?
• What obstacles would prevent them from listening to your message and doing what
you want?
• How can you remove the obstacles to, and increase the rewards for, them listening to you
and doing what you want?
• Who do you know that can give you useful feedback on your answers to the previous
pre-engagement assessment questions?

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Myron and Sarah recognized some uncomfortable facts after going through this process and
holding some exploratory conversations with stakeholders. Very few of the stakeholders had a
strong and direct incentive to pursue the process of implementing a digital QMS.

Sure, higher-quality products would benefit the company as a whole; and better compliance
would please government regulators and auditors. However, those who would work within the
QMS wouldn’t get much benefit. Thus, both the managers and the rank-and-file in operations
and R&D would face the hassle of learning to use a new system. They would also face more
accountability for individual and team quality due to better quality data tracking and assessment.

Yet they would not see a direct benefit to themselves as individuals. Their story was that the
digital QMS is an additional obligation, an unfunded mandate, and one that they would have
little incentive to support. Indeed, given that Myron and Sarah had little direct influence on
them, giving the operations and R&D managers and staff many obstacles and few rewards for
going along with the new software created tons of potential for sabotaging the implementation
and repeating the ERM struggles.

Recognizing the problem, Myron and Sarah went back to the company leadership and laid out
these issues. After consultation with the CEO, CFO and COO, they came up with a solution.
Given the better data tracking for quality via the QMS, they would create incentives for higher
individual and team quality performance through public recognition as “quality employee of the
month” and “quality team of the month.” Those who consistently scored high on quality would
also be invited to share their best practices in “master classes.” Such public recognition would
also be considered during the review and promotion process.

Why not financial rewards? Because research shows financial incentives often harm motivation
rather than helping it for tasks that have an intrinsic motivation component, such as performing
high-quality work and documenting it.

Sarah and Myron dealt with other issues they discovered in similar ways. For example, they
decided to consult the investor and Board member who initially came up with the startup’s
early quality management system for advice and input on selecting the new QMS software.
They made sure to frame it as “his baby growing up” rather than a rejection of his approach.

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Strategic Stakeholder Engagement During
Implementation
After addressing all the problems they identified in advance, Sarah and Myron worked on
selecting a QMS software vendor with all the information they gathered in mind. If they had
not, they would not have been able to select the right software to fit the needs of various
stakeholders.

In their selection process, they made sure to find a digital QMS that was flexible enough to
integrate techniques based on social intelligence, behavioral science and cognitive
neuroscience. In our digital and virtual age, it’s especially helpful to incorporate such research
into technology-based solutions to automate the cultivation of a collaborative culture around
quality. The most important part of a QMS is the way it represents a synthesis of people,
processes and technology. Unfortunately, the technology discussion often eclipses the people
element. QMS software developers specialize in technology and, lacking appropriate training
and knowledge, fail to incorporate sufficiently research-based approaches to the most
important part of managing quality: the people part.

After selecting a sufficiently flexible software platform, Myron and Sarah felt ready to launch
the QMS implementation plan. However, as I pointed out to them, things may not go smoothly
with their plan. It’s too easy to fall into the cognitive bias called the planning fallacy, where
when we make a plan, we feel things will go according to plan. As a result, we fail to predict
unanticipated risks and problems and underestimate the resources required to accomplish the
project. In particular, for a project relying on collaboration around multiple stakeholders with
competing interests, it’s critical to refine skills in four areas: empathetic listening, echoing and
mirroring, curious questioning and building rapport.

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Empathetic Listening
Go beyond the surface level when trying to understand your key influencers. This means that

“
when they are communicating with you, you should listen to what they mean and not just what
they say. Your goal is empathy, the skill of understanding what other people feel. Focus not
only on their message’s content, but also on their tone and body language. By doing so, you
One of the best ways to
will be able to figure out what they mean and what explains their feelings. demonstrate empathy
One of the best ways to demonstrate empathy while engaging with your key influencers is to while engaging with your
show them that you are paying full attention to them and nothing else through the following: key influencers is to show
A) Nonverbal signals of attention, which includes the following: them that you are paying
• Constant eye contact (casual, not intense). full attention to them and
• Keeping your feet and shoulders pointed to them. nothing else.”
• Keeping your arms open, if you are sitting.

• Standing straight and not slouching, if you are standing.

• Smiling, nodding and using hand gestures at appropriate times.

• Duchenne smile, not fake smile (includes eyes in smiling).

B) Non-interruptive verbal signals of attention, such as saying “uh-huh”, “ok”, “go on”, etc., at
appropriate times.

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Echoing and Mirroring
Another way of showing that you are paying full attention is through echoing and mirroring,
which includes the following:

A) Rephrasing the essence of what your key influencer is saying with your own words every
one to three minutes. For example:
• “So, what I’m hearing you say is ________. Is that right?”
• “You’re saying that _________. Do I have it correct and complete?”

If you have it right, the person you are talking to will be grateful that you were paying attention.
If you don’t, they will be grateful that you checked and will correct it.

B) Using their jargon: Notice specific words that your key influencer is using relevant to the
issue and integrate them into your echoing.

C) Mirror in broad terms their tone and posture. For example, if they’re speaking formally, do
so as well. If they’re leaning towards you, do so as well. Just pay attention to their body
language and tone and try to match it, but don’t try to mirror everything quickly. When done
correctly, this will help your key influencers feel connected to you and build trust.

Curious Questioning
Injecting some genuine curiosity into your questioning will go a long way in expressing your
sincere interest in your key influencer’s needs and concerns. It will help facilitate effective
knowledge sharing and further refine your understanding of them.

The best way to do this is to envision what they would want you to ask them and to express
curiosity in your questions without coming off as probing or provocative. Keep in mind that
many people may not want to reveal their emotions directly, so an effective approach would be
to ask them indirectly. For example:

A) “If I were in this situation, I would feel _______. How about you?”

B) You can also share a story about someone who felt an emotion you think they’re feeling in a
similar situation and see how they respond.

You should already have some basic ideas based on a pre-engagement assessment,
empathetic listening and echoing to check for understanding. Remember that the goal is to
further refine your understanding of their emotions, goals, incentives, values and obstacles.

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Building Rapport
Finally, you can show your stakeholders that you understand them by building rapport. You
need to help them feel that you are on their side and that you are part of their tribe. Without
explicitly stating it, signal that you grasp their emotions, goals, incentives, values and
obstacles by doing any of the following:

• Express compassion (sense of caring) towards their emotions.

• Find points of commonality between your goals and values and theirs.

• Convey implicitly that you get what their obstacles and incentives are.

• Use humor to help bring down defenses, while keeping in mind the following:
— Avoid making fun of them or what they value.
— Avoid sarcasm as it’s too often misunderstood.
— Lightly make fun of yourself, as you’re the safest target.
— The most impactful humor feels spontaneous. However, you can still build it in, and
people will still appreciate it.
— Integrate humor into your messages, both individual and broad.
— Do diverse types of humor.
— Perhaps one of the easiest types of humor in talks is the use of funny slides.

Rapport establishes trust between you and your stakeholder. In addition, it facilitates better
communication and seals the connection. Building rapport is definitely one of the social
intelligence-related initiatives you should invest in because when executed correctly, it
translates to both short- and long-term rewards.

Conclusion
Using these techniques, Myron and Sarah dealt with a number of unanticipated problems that
came up. Building rapport proved especially helpful with a number of senior operations people
who resented the feeling of being more closely monitored and tracked through the QMS
software. They also adjusted their plans. For instance, based on mid-project feedback, they
worked with the top leadership to adjust the quality incentives system to include more
competitive elements between teams.

When I reconnected with them a few months after the implementation of the project, Myron
and Sarah both felt very glad about the results. Everything went much more smoothly than the
problematic ERM implementation. Despite a few hiccups and delays, the digital QMS was up
and running. So was the incentive system, which increasingly started to show results of
workers paying attention to their quality metrics.

After the initial implementation, the QMS software cut down 27 percent of the previous time
staff spent on documenting quality, providing serious cost savings. Moreover, it provided much
better tracking of quality by individuals and teams. It also brought tangible improvements in
product quality, catching issues earlier in the process and reducing costly fixes later down the
road. The automatic integration of behavioral science and other research-based strategies
helped automate compliance and reduce conflicts.

Overall, Myron and Sarah perceived the key take-away as relying on social intelligence-
based methods for any major projects. They felt confident that, having learned these
techniques in implementing the QMS software, they would be able to apply them to future
projects down the road.

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About the Author
DR. GLEB TSIPURSKY
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is an internationally-renowned thought leader in future-proofing and cognitive bias risk management.
He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-proofing consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, which specializes in
helping forward-looking leaders avoid dangerous threats and missed opportunities. A best-selling author, he wrote
Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Career Press,
2019), The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships
(New Harbinger, 2020), and Resilience: Adapt and Plan for the New Abnormal of the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic
(Changemakers Books, 2020). His cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 550 articles and 450 interviews
in prominent venues such as USA Today, Inc. Magazine, CBS News, Time, Business Insider, Government Executive,
Fortune, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Fast Company, and elsewhere. His expertise stems from his background of
over 20 years of consulting, coaching, speaking, and training on change management, decision making, and risk
management strategy. It also comes from his research background as a behavioral scientist with over 15 years in
academia, including 7 as a professor at Ohio State University. Contact him at Gleb@DisasterAvoidanceExperts.com,
follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter @gleb_tsipursky, Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky, Medium @dr_gleb_tsipursky, Facebook,
YouTube, and RSS, and get a free copy of the Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace by signing
up for his free Wise Decision Maker Course.

Contact: For a free consultation, email Gleb@DisasterAvoidanceExperts.com, or call 614-407-4016.

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