Overview
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and many of today’s societal, environmental, business and humanitarian challenges are so complex and interconnected that they can only be tackled by different sectors working together. From local NGO-business collaborations to global alliances: governments, business, civil society, and development agencies are joining their resources and competencies to stimulate innovation, ensure sustainability and create maximum value for all. However, effective collaboration between stakeholders with different missions, interests, cultures and even vocabularies is difficult to achieve. It requires common understanding across partners; collective leadership; a collaborative mindset and a key partnering skill set; and both strong relationship management and output-focused project management. With these critical elements in place, partnerships can achieve real impact. Without them, partnerships are likely to under-perform or fail altogether
Who should attend
The course is for practitioners from all sectors who need to build their knowledge, understanding and skills of how to work effectively in partnership. It is suited both to new partnership practitioners and those with some partnering experience who wish to complement and formalize their learning with frameworks, practical tools and experiential learning.
Participants will gain:
- Understanding the rationale for, and how to maximize value from, partnering; the risks, and when, and when not, to partner.
- Appreciation of what each societal sector brings to the table along with their drivers, societal roles, mindset and challenges.
- Clarity over what constitutes a ‘transactional collaboration’, what is a ‘genuine partnership’ and where each may be appropriate.
- Understanding of the essential process of developing partnerships and appreciation of the ‘guiding principles’, challenges and success factors behind effective collaboration.
- • Insights and ability to influence the ‘Partnership Black Box’ of power, trust, equity, and mutual benefit.
- Understanding of what it takes to be a ‘good’ partner, and development of essential human relationship-building and negotiation skills.
- Understanding how to create partnering agreements, implement, manage and review partnerships successfully.
Course Outline
- Why partner?
- Transactional vs Transformational collaboration
- Maximizing value creation
- Six Key Elements of Effective Partnerships
- Understanding your partners
- The Partnering Cycle
- Building relationships
- Innovation and creativity
- Trust
- Power
- Interest-based negotiation
- Partnership agreements
- Common challenges
- Working with different organizational cultures
- Reviewing and revising partnerships
- Managing partnerships