Develop a comprehensive list of Principles and Expectations as they relate to best practices in building/maintaining strong partnerships and coalitions among community groups, nonprofits, businesses, and government. Make sure language/vocabulary is easily understood and appropriate for general audiences.
Articulate the Values
To create your guiding principles, identify top core values.
These are the values you believe will drive the behaviors needed to achieve the outcomes of the business.
You must use them to guide every decision, and to lead and engage your people.
Identify the Irrational Rules, Policies, Procedures
Identify the policies, rules, and procedures in partnership and coalition building, which either negatively impact morale or are unnecessary obstacles, getting in the way of your product or service being delivered to your customer cheaper, quicker and of higher quality
Point out those practices that are irrational and don’t support the coalition to achieve its goals. Include examples of poor decisions due to irrational policies or behavior in partnership and coalition building.
Develop the Guiding Principles
As you develop your guiding principles keep these guidelines in mind:
Your guiding principles spring from your Values
The principles need to be consistent with the Vision
Your principles must be consistent with the experience your organization wants to deliver to its customers
Ensure the principle doesn’t outline the exact “how to do”, but does emphasize what is essential to the coalition.
For each value create a statement that completes the statement
“Partners will be (insert value) when they”. Here are a couple of examples:
VALUE = FLEXIBILITY
Partners will be flexible when they:
Work within a structure that encourages and supports multi-skilling
Are guided by principles rather than driven by rules
Know and understand Partner needs
Involved in decision-making that impacts on them
Are involved in planning and organizing change
Understand and appreciate the reason for change
VALUE = TECHNICAL COMPETENCY
Partners are technically competent when they:
Use their training with accuracy, care and attention to detail
Learn and implement skills
Participate in multi-skilling
Are empowered to take decisions in technical areas
Are highly trained and kept informed on technical developments
Applying the Principles
95% of the time, most groups have difficulty clearly stating their values and, certainly didn’t consciously use them to make decisions!
Placing Values/Principles in cards and handbooks do not bring them to life!
Your principles and values must align behavior and drive performance.
To make them real, leaders must:
talk about them
explain them
defend them constantly, publicly, and consistently
Make sure you have enough support, facts, and evidence to explain, validate, and defend your partnership principles. Think about how they can be upheld ad sustained through implementation.
Many organizations spend (probably better said, waste) a lot of time developing their principles and/or values. Maybe even having them printed up and placed in cards and handbooks. And, that is often as far as it goes.
Ultimately, leaders communicate their commitment to the organizational values and principles more by their actions than their words. Be sure to emphasize leading by example and through actions in the conclusion of your principles and expectations for building/maintaining strong partnerships and coalitions.
Useful Resources to Help Develop Partnership/Coalition Principles and Expectations:
****: related to the group’s environmental justice values and goals.
https://www.ejnet.org/ej/jemez.pdf****
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ej-principles.pdf****
https://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/36279186.pdf
http://advocacy.vaccineswork.org/create/how-to-build-strategic-partnerships-relationships/
org/can-we-agree-to-disagree-and-still-get-along/”>https://wrightfoundation.org/can-we-agree-to-disagree-and-still-get-along/
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-disagree-effectively-1917872
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/promotion-strategies/start-a-coaltion/main
https://www.preventioninstitute.org/publications/developing-effective-coalitions-an-eight-step-guide
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