Effective Partnerships Through Art of Hosting
Hi everyone!
I'm interested in re-sparking the great dialogue I had at the March Art of Hosting training on Effective Partnerships.
What do you think is necessary for people to best, and most effectively, work together? And how do we use the skills from Art of Hosting to do that? I'm interested in your thoughts.
These are my notes from the discussion I called:
Caller Insights:
- Effective partnerships means 1) Doing things together 2) Sharing purpose and vision
- True partnership takes time
- Focus on the productivity
- Building plan together
Participant Insights:
- Focusing on similarities in the work that needs to be done
- Very effective, continual collaboration
- Good planning is involved
- Takes knowing differences, everyone’s interest/building relationships
- Building a Memorandum of Understanding – logic model
- Develop plan, sharing leadership
I look forward to hearing what you have to say!
Beaudelaine
Comments
These are some really awesome
These are some really awesome insights! I think it's interesting that a common thread through all the bullet points is the need for deliberation and effort (thoughtful planning, taking time, building things together, continuity). This means putting a lot into working together, that just saying we'll do it doesn't cut it. We have to walk the talk, so to speak.
Conflict in partnerships
Another thing that comes to mind when I think about effective partnerships is conflict. An effective partnership will still have conflict, but it will be seen as a way to learn from and express differences while moving towards a common goal. I think of the many spaces that were described in Art of Hosting that will likely have conflict in them that continually gets worked out - divergence and convergence (with the "groan zone" in the middle), the emergent space between chaos and order in the chaortic path. I'd appreciate hearing others thoughts in how conflict is welcomed and used as a productive part of effective partnerships.
Shared purpose & vision
A big one for me is shared purpose -- tethering everything else (disagreement, conflict, strategy, planning, etc.) to the single force that drives your co-creative work -- the minimum common thread, if you will. Without it, I find it is not only very difficult to go anywhere (except in incoherent, likely combative circles), but the emergent space is automatically off-kiltered by chaos.
The missing purpose is like a big tall order of chaos from the get-go, I feel. And when chaos is the baseline for shared work, the work (and experience working together) becomes chaotic -- and difficult to worth with.
Beaudelaine, what do you think makes for most effective partnerships?
Richard
How about self-interest?
I like the idea of sharing the purpose; because, once we agree on why we are here, managing conflict becomes easier and everyone also can feel free to speak up. Conflict is for me an important piece of building collaboration. though it can be very challenging to handle; and often we tend to take it at personal level. But for me conflict shows interest of the parties, and how intentional they are bout moving forward. Thanks Rachel for the way you said it.
But my question for you now guys and for anyone who is following that discussion: what is the place of self-interest in partnership; people and organizations may be motivated self-interest in doing collaboration work. What are the benefits and the challenges of such situations?
Post new comment