About the Author
At the Delphi Economic Forum 2026, just minutes from the ancient centre of the world, a V+O Group | SEC Newgate session “Corporate Diplomacy: The New Playbook for a Fragmented World” brought together corporate affairs leaders to explore how organisations can build trust, manage uncertainty, and lead with clarity in a shifting global landscape. What follows is a brief account of the setting and the discussion that took place.
Delphi at a glance
I picked up my lanyard, name and company printed in bold, after 185 rather stressful kilometres filled with calls, fragments of conversations, and unfinished thoughts about clients and business. And then, almost abruptly, I was inside the Delphi Forum.
A dense, restless swarm of people moved at speed, dressed in suits and formal dresses, only to pause abruptly, even mid-staircase, allowing conversations to take over and the steady flow of movement to suspend itself. Small circles formed and dissolved just as quickly. Brief encounters. A word here, a gesture there. Laughter, hugs, handshakes. Hundreds of delegates, business leaders, and journalists moved through space. The Delphi Economic Forum 2026 brought together more than 1,100 speakers over four days, with over seventy nationalities converging in one place.
And then, beyond the crowd, the landscape fought restlessly for your attention. Gracious mountains rose abruptly, while near-vertical cliffs dropped more than six hundred metres to the valley floor, which opened out to orchards and olive groves, and in the distance, the sea.
It is easy to grasp why the ancient Greeks chose this ground. Considered the navel of the earth, Delphi became the site of the most important oracle of the known world. Here, the Pythia was consulted by emperors, kings, leaders, and peasants. Channelling Apollo’s wisdom, she predicted the course of lives and wars. More likely, she drew on the wisdom of her priests and knowledge gathered from all corners of the earth, though, from a storytelling perspective, the Apollo version is far more memorable; and all the more engaging.
Yet Delphi was also a neutral ground where city-states sent envoys not only to consult, but to observe, signal, and position themselves. Decisions on war, alliances, and law were shaped here, often indirectly, through presence as much as speech. It functioned as a crossroads of influence.
There could hardly be a more fitting setting to introduce a term that resonates with both the spirit of our time and the character of this place. A concept that denotes a new practice and a new way to make sense of today’s unpredictable reality.
The session took place as an official side event to the Forum and brought together:
- Dan Doherty, Global Chair Corporate Affairs at SEC Newgate
- Vivian Bouzali, Chief Corporate Affairs & Communications Officer at METLEN Energy & Metals
- Michalis Vlastarakis, Group Chief Marketing & Corporate Communications Officer at Eurobank SA
- Jefrey Pollock, Co-Head of North America at SEC Newgate and co-founder of our US agency Global Strategy Group, who joined remotely from the US
The panel was moderated by Teti Kanellopoulou, Group CEO of V+O Group | SEC Newgate.
The conversation
The room had that particular quality of attention that forms when people recognize they are being asked to think rather than simply to listen. Teti Kanellopoulou made the necessary introductions and set the definitional frame.Corporate diplomacy, she said, is “the new playbook for businesses today,” directly linked to “geopolitical developments”, and a “highly politicised environment” where “constant disruption is the new norm”.
Jefrey Pollock sharpened the lens, with a warning. Companies, he said, misread “weak signals,” overestimate political theatre, and continue to separate politics from commercial risk. Presenting the evolving US landscape ahead of the midterms, he stressed that rhetoric often becomes policy: “words that seem symbolic actually become policy.” Firms, he noted, “over-weight election outcomes… and daily political drama,” while “under-weight deeper structural signatures,” even as geopolitics materialises through “sanctions, supply chain restrictions, investment controls, [and] data localisation.”
Dan Doherty pushed further. Corporate diplomacy, he argued, cannot be confined to “acute moments of crisis.” Companies that do so “fall behind.” Instead, it requires aligning business objectives with the surrounding environment while helping to “shape that environment.” His definition was clear: a “holistic view of audiences” in a “fragmented and polarised moment.” Not PR, not lobbying, “everything together.” The practice rests on relationships that generate influence, supported by “a local approach and a decentralised global corporate narrative,” real-time decision-making, predictive analytics, and “ears to the ground.” It’s no surprise, he concluded, that ESG has become “a political, polarising term,” shifting the focus to impact.
Vivian Bouzali was the one who made it concrete. Corporate diplomacy, she noted, is “very embedded in our daily work,” yet distinct from corporate or governmental affairs. Multinational exposure is defined by ongoing uncertainty: “uncertainty is a constant.” The response has been to “embrace uncertainty” and “anticipate,” investing in foresight and mapping “each country, its challenges, and its specific conditions” as a form of hedging. “If it is only a narrative”,she was clear, “it will collapse”. We, as companies, she said, need to become a “part of [people’s] life”. “We thus need”, she continued, rapid stakeholder mapping and an understanding of “hidden decision-makers.” Uniform approaches are bound to fail. “We need to preserve our DNA while embedding it locally”.
Michalis Vlastarakis contended that structure and discipline are the keys. The central challenge, he argued, is defining “what should remain stable, and where should you be adaptive and flexible.” His answer: stable anchors include purpose, values, and strategic consistency, supported by a “stable strategic narrative, but evolving messages.” Relationships must be “based on trust.” His conclusion extended to sustainability, linking it to standards, measurable outcomes, and SROI: “every euro we spend translates into five euros of value for society.”
In closing, Teti Kanellopoulou, drew an unequivocal and daring conclusion: corporate diplomacy “is not a communication option,” but about “strategy,” “access,” and “survival.”
A brief exchange: two questions with Dan Doherty
Discussions of this kind rarely end with the session. Later that day, I put two further questions to Dan Doherty.
Q1. If you were consulting a new client on corporate diplomacy, starting from scratch, where would you advise them to start?
Dan Doherty: Start with the business objectives, not the communications plan. Corporate diplomacy reverses how most companies enter this work. We begin by asking what the business is trying to achieve over the next one, three and five years — which markets it intends to grow in, where it’s exposed, where licence to operate is most fragile. Then we map the stakeholders that matter, the relationships that need to exist before they’re needed, and the local capability to make it real. Done well, corporate diplomacy compounds over time. Done episodically, it never moves the dial.
Q2. What makes SEC Newgate the ideal partner to provide counsel for a company or organization looking to implement the principles of corporate diplomacy?
Dan Doherty: Three things, all pointing in the same direction. We work local-to-global — sixty offices, thirty countries, real teams with real relationships in the markets where decisions actually get made. We bring proprietary intelligence: the Impact Monitor’s longitudinal dataset across twenty countries gives us a depth of audience understanding no competitor can match. And we bring senior counsel both through our Geopolitical Advisory Council and senior teams who do the work themselves rather than handing it down a chain. In a moment when companies are navigating genuinely existential decisions, the combination of local depth, proprietary insight, and senior access is what corporate diplomacy actually requires.
The concept of corporate diplomacy re-defined as a practice
The Oracle of Delphi, to remember where we stood, did not predict the future. Pythia interpreted the present with more precision than anyone else in the room. That, stripped of its mythology, is what corporate diplomacy requires. Not foresight in the oracular sense, but the discipline to read what is already there: the weak signals, the structural shifts, the hidden decision-makers, before they become the conditions everyone else is reacting to.
What the discussion at Delphi made clear is that this is no longer a specialised capability. Corporate diplomacy sits at the intersection of strategy, geopolitical sensing, stakeholder relations, local execution, and measurable public value. It is the mechanism through which a multinational interprets pressure, earns legitimacy market by market, and translates a global position into locally credible action. It is the central operating question for any organisation with an international footprint: not how to respond, but whether you are structurally equipped to anticipate. Trust is tested continuously, not built once. Local legitimacy has overtaken global scale as the currency that opens doors. And uncertainty is not an episode to be managed. It is the permanent condition inside which strategy must function.
Corporate diplomacy is a practice grounded in anticipation. It requires disciplined signal-reading, the ability to interpret weak and early indicators, and the capacity to act before conditions fully materialise. It demands flexibility and constant adaptation. At its core lies a simple premise: uncertainty is not episodic. It is structural. At its centre lies a paradox the ancient world would have recognized immediately: flexibility generates stability. For things to remain the same, change must be constant.
The question, therefore, is no longer how companies respond nor how they manage relations. It is whether they are structurally equipped to anticipate, interpret, and act. It asks them to see and think things differently. It should not therefore be treated as a crisis tool. It should be embedded into decision-making and everyday operations.
One could take the discussion a step further and enrich corporate diplomacy as a practice by focusing on diplomacy itself. Even a brief engagement with thinkers from antiquity to the present can be instructive. Valuable lessons on power, negotiation, signalling, and influence emerge from the work of Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Tuchman, and Joseph Nye, to name but a few. There are principles the corporate diplomat would do well to keep in mind, from the Greek historian’s stark reminder that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” to Kissinger’s observation that “international order is not built on good intentions, but on a balance of power.” Yet this is a path worth exploring another time.
Epilogue
In this world of geopolitical complexity, businesses are increasingly called to navigate beyond markets alone. They are no longer only economic actors. They are increasingly geopolitical participants. Corporate diplomacy, therefore, is emerging not as an adjunct capability, but as a core discipline for organisations operating across markets, institutions, and societies.
I left the Forum much the same way I had entered it, lanyard still hanging, the noise still lingering, conversations unfinished, thoughts already returning to clients and business. Only this time, with the sense that the discussion had found its mark, and that the strength and international reach of our footprint had been presented with clarity, at precisely the right moment. We did, and can, offer a genuinely global perspective, combined with local depth, and a shared ability to interpret, connect, and act across markets.
The Sages who inscribed their words on the Temple of Apollo left a maxim of daring and enduring force: Γνῶθι σαυτόν. Know thyself. In a world of shifting conditions and continuous pressure, it may be the most demanding, and the most necessary, place to begin.
The discussion is worth continuing.