Listening and Learning: Equitable Partnerships in Consulting
Our lessons to improve partnerships in Pacific consulting
Marita Manley & Merewalesi Nailatikau
5 August 2025
In the world of consulting, the emphasis can often be on attracting clients and meeting their standards. At Talanoa Consulting, we have learned that finding values-aligned partners and being a good partner, can be more of a challenge than it should be. The extra effort in defining and sticking to our boundaries and our instincts is always worth it and leads to work that is more effective and fulfilling.
Working with people and communities who share our values of centring local perspectives, mutual respect, collective learning, and active listening is what gets us out of bed in the morning. We have amazing partners who we know believe in the work as much as we do and with whom we have ongoing trusted relationships.
We also know what the opposite experience is like. It can be dehumanising, demoralising, and detrimental to the hard-won progress in creating a fair, equitable and enabling environment for the emerging Pacific consulting landscape.
As a small Fiji-based and Pacific focussed firm, we are inspired every day by the incredible work happening across the region, and our ambitious belief is that in a small way, even a tiny consulting firm can disrupt, respectfully, the international development landscape.
We used to get triggered by approaches from larger international consulting firms that said:
“We’ve assembled our international team of experts and need the help of a local consultant to support consultations, logistical support, data gathering and presentations back to communities.”
Our team includes globally recognised experts and assuming that our only value is in stakeholder engagement, data gathering and logistical support (whilst extremely important aspects of the work) can feel insulting.
Now, we respectfully decline and direct them to read our strategic plan, watch our introduction video and read more about our team and our approach. We want to be seen as an equal partner (not subordinate), co-designing from the start.
To make the most from our mistakes, and to contribute to the accountability needed in this space, we have developed and shared tools of our own, like the Screening Tool we use for assessing whether we are the right people for the work, and to make sure we are not parachuting into other Pacific Island countries and undermining other local consultants.
Here, we share ten lessons we have learned from our consulting partnerships with the hope that it motivates others to genuinely invest in equitable partnerships.
1. Trust your instincts
First impressions matter for a reason. The way a potential team leader or collaborator shows up early in your discussions, is them telling you who they are. An initial approach which fails to recognise your expertise, a tendency to micromanage, an inability to listen to others’ views, and a lack of communication are unlikely to improve with time.
These are matters best nipped in the bud – either by raising them directly and assertively, or by politely declining the opportunity. We have developed template responses for different scenarios to convey our decisions in ways that are honest and respectful, delivering feedback that can assist with finding a better match.
2. Mutually understand expectations
We’ve made mistakes by not clarifying expectations early on. It is impossible to do good work if both parties have different understanding and expectations of what the work looks like.
From the outset, clarify any issues that are not well defined and encourage partners to share their expectations of the final deliverables, arrangements for ongoing communication and focal points within teams. We like to share early skeleton outlines for any final products, facilitation or learning plans to ensure we are all working towards the same vision of the work.
Be confident in asking someone what they mean and to provide more context or background as needed. And mutually agree on boundaries – what the work will not be able to cover – especially if time and budget are limited.
3. Avoid scope creep
Working with in-country consultants means that partners benefit from deep relationships and networks. These will remain after the conclusion of any individual contract and it is easy to go beyond the agreed Terms of Reference, especially if you’re working with partners with whom you have ongoing relationships. We often have to catch ourselves when we agree to do things that aren’t included in the work.
We use a project management tool that keeps track of all of our contracts, sub-contracts to associates and contracted deliverables to ensure we are working within agreed work. It doesn’t need to be fancy – ours is in Google Sheets but it does the job.
4. Draw contractual boundaries
If you’ve found yourself working above and beyond your contracted days, you are not alone. It is important to use the contract and agreed deliverables as the basis of the work.
We use a tool called Toggl to log our time. If we find we are working in excess of our allocated days on a contract, this helps us to have a conversation with a partner, with evidence of the time we’ve spent. Making sure you are also taking into account all of the time spent planning the work, getting up to speed on the background, attending briefing meetings is important and is time that should be valued and paid for as part of the contract.
Where you find yourself getting close to agreed numbers of days for certain work, communicate this early so that you can jointly re-prioritise the work.
By being clear with partners on expectations and the use of our time, we have had instances of partners understanding the constraints and providing more resources to support the work. We’ve also had partners understand the need for additional time from within their own teams to support the work. Good partnerships should be open to these conversations.
Things to look out for as part of contracts:
- Are you going to have to pay for things before you get paid? Is there a way to build in a contract signing fee or an early deliverable like an inception report or work plan?
- Do you get paid when the work is delivered to a partner or only on approval of that work by the ultimate donor? We have been burnt by clauses that tie payment to something beyond our control.
- Consider having a minimum number of days that you’ll engage in work for (e.g. 5-10 days). Multiple small contracts take a lot of administrative work.
5. Don’t absorb disorder
A disorganised partner can pull you in directions that make you uncomfortable and can undermine existing relationships and your reputation. Plan according to your needs and priorities. If you know something will take 5 days to complete and you are asked at the start of the week to deliver something by the end of the week when this was not communicated previously, don’t feel guilty for letting them know that you had planned for your work differently and need more notice to plan your inputs.
Tell partners what direction and planning you need from them to work effectively. Invest in a strong operations and finance team or invest in upskilling in these areas. A strong foundation is essential for being on top of multiple contracts, deliverables and invoices.
6. Centre community contexts
We have sat in planning meetings or reflection sessions about work without the presence of those for whom the work is being designed or evaluated.
Our best work comes from finding partners that genuinely listen to our understanding of the context and enable us to centre and amplify the voices of the people for whom the work is targeting. Ensure that resources allow for meaningful engagement with those critical to the work and who should be involved in shaping it. If a Terms of Reference underestimates the time needed for genuine consultations, it is best to politely decline rather than have your values compromised.
7. Maintain ethical integrity
If you ever feel uncomfortable and you’re being asked to do something that doesn’t sit well with your values, explain this to the partner you are working with – and if you need to, walk away. It is important to do this professionally and respectfully. Burning bridges is not an option when working in small places.
Relationships and networks are everything in the Pacific. Protect them fiercely. Don’t give partners access to them unless you trust them. And if you know similar work has been done before, don’t let another partner go and extract the same information from the same stakeholders – use your knowledge to connect the dots
8. Avoid inheriting urgency
Someone’s bad planning should not become your problem. We regularly receive Terms of Reference where the first deliverable was due yesterday. There is usually a significant amount of optimism bias in the contracting process – with everyone along the chain thinking things will move faster such that when the work does start they can be unreasonable about what can happen in the time available. Keep calm and maintain your boundaries. And whilst it might be tempting to start work ahead of receiving a contract, we try to instil discipline.
We have worked hard to get in proposals in a rush, stating that deliverables are needed urgently, only to find that when we pushed back letting them know that we were not available until a certain date, there was flexibility. Ask partners to be flexible by being clear about your availability rather than assuming they can’t be. And don’t use the timeframe in the advertised call to decide whether to put in or not – we’ve rarely done work where the timeframe matched the timing in the request for proposals.
9. Offer constructive solutions
Consulting contracts are rarely without their challenges. Don’t complain – offer solutions. If you find yourself close to using the number of days in the contract for a certain deliverable, suggest where you can reallocate days from other deliverables rather than just presenting it as a problem.
If we decline the work, and the partner has been genuine in their approach, and committed to localisation, we feel it incumbent on ourselves to help them find others.
If you feel that a partner is not a good fit, be polite and respectfully decline the work. Where possible offer referrals to others as a potential solution. We have an associates list and a referral list with other firms in the region and use this regularly to support good partners to find others.
10. Close the loop
Consulting work can be detrimentally extractive when done badly. We all know partners who spend hours ‘learning’ from stakeholders in key informant interviews, but who don’t provide the results and findings from their work back to those that gave up their valuable time to share insights.
Ensuring that partners are genuine from the outset, plan and budget for returning to stakeholders and communities to present findings and provide outputs is critical to being respectful and safeguarding long term relationships.
Fantastic synopsis of the realities of ethical consulting in the Pacific context, with some sound advice from this sage team! Thank you Talanoa Consulting for caring – and sharing!