How to balance competing stakeholder interests?

Leading through complexity. 

In boardrooms across Europe and the rest of the world, a new leadership challenge is taking center stage. Not managing change, but navigating complexity.

This isn't just about juggling competing projects or prioritizing tasks. 

This isn't about doing more. 

It's about thinking differently. 

It’s about balancing the interests of customers, employees, shareholders, regulators, communities, and the planet. Often with conflicting priorities and under significant pressure. And they must do it while markets shift (think trade tariffs), technologies evolve (think AI), and expectations rise (think stock market). All at once. And in real time.

Leaders today are under pressure to act faster and think deeper. Strategy can no longer be shaped in isolation from ethics, social expectations, or sustainability. This challenge cannot be solved with sharper KPIs or a new framework. 

The issue isn’t lack of skill. It’s often a lack of perspective. What’s needed is a different kind of leadership capacity: the ability to make sense of interconnected systems, hold paradoxes without shutting down, and act with integrity in ambiguity.

What distinguishes the leaders who thrive in this landscape?

Leaders who succeed here have not just learned more. They’ve changed how they think. They’ve developed the ability to think in systems, see patterns in chaos, and respond with clarity in ambiguity. Not by knowing more, but by understanding differently. They don’t just add new tools. They evolve how they interpret and respond to what’s happening around them.

A compelling example is DSM-Firmenich, a Dutch-Swiss health and biosciences company. Long before ESG became a boardroom buzzword, DSM was embedding sustainability, ethics, and stakeholder alignment into its core strategy. But what’s striking isn’t just the policies. It’s how leadership decisions are made.

Executives are expected to balance short-term performance with long-term value. This means actively engaging with societal and environmental concerns while still delivering on business metrics. One initiative involved aligning innovation targets not just with market trends, but with global nutrition and climate goals. Leaders are trained to ask bigger questions: Who benefits? Who bears the cost? How will this decision play out over ten years?

The company builds this capacity through immersive learning, cross-functional collaboration, and decision-making frameworks that deliberately surface conflicting interests. It's not just about training people to manage stakeholders. It’s about developing leaders who can think in interconnected ways and operate from a broader sense of purpose.

Five ways to build this kind of leadership capacity

So how do you start building this kind of capacity in your organisation? Not by issuing a checklist. But by engaging in deeper practice. Here are five essential shifts that help leaders develop the 'inner architecture' to meet today’s complexity:

1. Move beyond "either-or" thinking Most leaders are trained to weigh pros and cons, choose a side, and move on. But complexity doesn’t offer clean choices. The ability to hold conflicting needs (speed and inclusion, innovation and stability, cost and care) and work toward integration is essential. This takes patience, reflection, and the courage to sit with discomfort before jumping to resolution. Don’t immediately default to “either-or.” 

2. Widen the Lens Siloed thinking is a liability. Leaders need to see how decisions cascade across systems. How a product launch might impact supply chain ethics, brand reputation, or internal morale. Encouraging systemic thinking means helping leaders trace patterns, question assumptions, and see beyond the immediate. 

3. Slow down to make sense In high-stakes environments, urgency often wins. But without time to reflect, leaders default to habitual responses. Sense making is the disciplined pause: stepping back to notice what’s shifting, gather multiple perspectives, and ask better questions. It’s not a delay. It’s a form of strategic intelligence. In complexity, rushing often leads to poor judgment. Make time for sense making and structured conversations that explore emerging trends, tensions, and blind spots.

4. Develop broader thinking habits Leadership in complexity is not just about intelligence. It’s about maturity. Leaders need to grow their ability to hold multiple perspectives, manage internal tensions, and respond without reactivity. This requires practice, feedback, and environments that stretch leaders beyond just support. This isn’t just about adding skills. It’s about cultivating more sophisticated ways of seeing and making meaning. Leaders can learn to reflect more deeply, hold multiple perspectives, and stay grounded in uncertainty.

5. Bring stakeholders into the room Complex problems can’t be solved from behind closed doors. Involving stakeholders, early and honestly, creates better outcomes and builds trust. Don’t assume what others value. Involve customers, employees, and partners early. Dialogue leads to better-informed, more robust decisions. I see this first-hand in my own team coaching engagements with leadership teams. The teams who dare to involve stakeholders and have active dialogue with them, are setting themselves up for success. Yes, it can be a bit scary and it needs to be well-prepared. But it's a goldmine. 

The future isn’t getting simpler. But the way we grow our leaders can get wiser. If your leadership development still focuses only on knowledge and skills, it may not be enough. What if the next shift wasn’t about training harder, but thinking deeper?