How to build a great partnership

Going it alone is ok, but when our organisations work together, they can make even better things happen.  Going back to basics can help your partnership flourish.

‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’

– adapted from a proverb from Burkina Faso.

Partnership working helps us achieve where we might struggle to alone.  They can help us to understand and take the guess work out of reaching new audiences, lend technical expertise, bring a different way of working or provide extra capacity or facilities. Working through partners is often the key to finding sustainable ways into communities and place-based working.

Partners extend your team. This can help to invigorate an arts, culture or heritage project with fresh perspectives and enthusiasm, as well as more brains in the room to crack tricky problems and bounce ideas around. What’s not to love?

And if your organisation is working to help find solutions to some of our BIG problems like losing species, climate change, the wellbeing epidemic or equity, then it makes sense that no one organisation can do it alone.  In fact partnership working is so important that the UN now has a dedicated programme to improve it.

Quality collaboration is definitely a skills set we need in our future workforce. No wonder funders like the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) are so keen on partnership projects.

So how to build a great partnership?

About 20 years ago I ran my first conference session on the subject of partnership working.  I wasn’t sure how to approach it and there wasn’t a lot of support around.  I did a lot of research and thinking – this led me to stumbling across the 3 C’s of partnership working.

Whilst these aren’t rocket science, they do remind us to return to the first principles of working together. Which sometimes we can forget to make time for when we have a laser-like focus on ticking things off our to do list.

Time spent developing our collaboration skills will help you have the tools to fix broken partnerships, navigate sticky problems when they arise, have more enjoyable relationships with partners and be ready for the next project, programme or job.

The 3 C’s and the 12-steps to partnership building are the bedrock of our 5-week Partnership Bootcamp.  It is packed with practical tools to help you apply them to your work immediately.

Come join us on the Bootcamp if you’re ready for next-level partnership working .

Kate Measures, facilitator for the Partnership Bootcamp who has supported hundreds of partnerships to achieve their shared goals.