When stakeholder engagement is ‘performative’

The Burnham Government has just declared itself keen to curb actions that are ‘performative’.

To put things in context, the recent Cabinet Statement Rewiring the State, published on 31 July 2026, aims to make changes to the machinery of government. It feels that policy-making and implementation get bogged down by too much process treacle, and suspects that much of this is a case of ministers and civil service just ‘going through the motions’.

The words are:

‘…to replace the current model of consultation by default with new and modern forms of public participation. This includes considering where performative statutory duties to consult can be revoked and how we can more actively bring the public into the policy-making process instead…’

In other words, some of the ways we engage the public, and clearly key stakeholders, right now is not good enough and needs to be improved. So, let’s examine the idea of being ‘performative’.

A word that has changed meaning

The word has become fashionable and has moved from its original usage as ‘operational’ to a pejorative suggestion that one is doing something in order to be appreciated, literally as an actor ‘performs’ for an audience.

Critics of President Trump claim that much of what he says and does is just for effect and is designed solely to make a certain impression. Similarly, there are those in the UK who complain that ‘government by press release’ is ‘performative politics’, driven entirely by short-term publicity and media management.

No serious engagement should be ‘performative’, that is, done just so it looks good as a PR exercise, but sadly there have always been such exercises.

Sometimes they have been well-intentioned. ‘Let’s engage with people and see what they think’ can be a popular response to a difficult issue, and hard decisions are usefully postponed.

More cynically, decisions may have already been taken, yet politicians or chief executives want to pretend that they still have an open mind. Worse still, stakeholder engagement can be used to shut down debate completely and avoid discussion of sensitive issues.

Stakeholders can usually tell

In reality, stakeholders are pretty astute and can readily see when they are being subject to a ‘performative’ charm offensive.

In many industries there is a tradition of generous hospitality, whether it is a day at the races, executive seats at a premier league fixture or even a box at the Royal Opera. The private sector has few scruples about wining and dining its suppliers, customers or clients, and many cultures are far more open than ours about such activities. The danger is always that such behaviours easily morph into corrupt practices, with immense reputational and commercial risks in consequence.

But this is not being ‘performative’. Those relationships are probably transactional, and often kept largely hidden or below the radar.

‘Performative’ is when organisations make a song and dance about their relations with particular groups without any credible sincerity. The phrase ‘gesture politics’ is used when things are said or done to ingratiate themselves to a particular audience, and many charity stakeholders will complain that large, well-resourced businesses have a habit of seeking positive media coverage with initiatives that provide little meaningful help to the cause.

It can make life difficult for many stakeholder managers who have the best intentions.

They feel ‘damned if we do, and damned if we don’t’. You may be genuinely keen to support stakeholders focused on particular groups of customers or members of the public, yet be criticised for programmes of activity, even when generous.

Accusations of paying lip-service abound, and campaigners are adept at using social media as well as the traditional press to pour scorn on perfectly sincere, well-designed initiatives. For some, there is never enough.

It often depends on the stakeholder

Much therefore depends upon the perspective of your stakeholder. They vary so much, and attitudes often reflect the history of the relationship, and how their interests relate to yours.

There are stakeholders whose future is strongly tied to yours. You win, they win. You lose, they lose. But there are also situations where organisations are in competition, and the relationship is more adversarial. Whether the style and content of your engagement is seen as performative may well be a function of how well disposed the stakeholder was towards you in the first place.

It is not necessarily a subjective test. Engaging with stakeholders can often appear routine and formulaic. Sharing important information with them is often done perfunctorily, more as a defensive ploy, and may just be a case of ‘They can never say we didn’t tell them’. It is not always possible to be creative and imaginative on the day-to-day stuff.

Five ways to show you mean it

The challenge therefore is to convince your stakeholders that you really do mean it, and are not just pretending. There are many ways to do this, and experienced relationship managers know that they work. For example:

• Personalise as much as possible. You may be engaging with 20 different councils, all with similar concerns and interests. But they will all have unique characteristics, traditions and preferences. Treating them exactly the same might appear to some to be ‘performative’.
• Better targeting matters. For your messages to be meaningful, they must be relevant. If you have nothing to say that is of interest to your stakeholder, it might be better to say nothing.
• Make it a dialogue. Telling people is seldom as effective as a genuine two-way exchange of views. ‘How will this work for you?’ is always better than ‘This is how it’s going to be.’ Hearing and absorbing feedback should be a key feature of a successful relationship.
• Seek areas of mutual interest. Many of your stakeholders may share your concerns and anxieties, and they may have to respond to the same external pressures. Make common cause whenever possible, initiate research, co-produce papers or identify collaboration opportunities.
• Accept responsibility. If your actions will cause difficulties for your stakeholders, come clean about what’s happening and the implications. A policy of true candour is better for sustaining trust in a relationship, even though it may create tension and be uncomfortable for the parties in the short run.
  
  

Standards, systems and the challenge ahead

Best practice stakeholder management has always involved monitoring the position of your stakeholders and being careful to show you care about them. When those with whom you have the relationship feel that they just happen to be on a list, and subject to highly predictable messaging designed to tick a box, then allegations of being ‘performative’ are very likely.

The Government will find it hard to identify too many consultations that are just ‘performative’, because there may often be a small number of consultees who find them useful. With stakeholder engagement, however, there may be more communications that are too generalised and amount to little more than superficial, inconsequential padding. With AI-generated content about to explode into our inboxes and risk drowning everyone in a sea of content, there are serious challenges ahead.

Highlighting the dangers of ‘performative’ engagement has been a timely reminder that relationships need careful management, effective standards and the systems that will support them.