More Stories Like ThisPartnerships
Cross-Sector Partnership Brokers - Overcoming the Complexity of Partnerships
Cross-Sector Partnership Brokers - Overcoming the Complexity of Partnerships
My observations tell me that not a single international forum since Rio 2000 has gone by without a call for more or better collaboration between sectors to help alleviate poverty.
‘Partnership’ has been the buzzword in sustainable development for many years now. Dig deeper, however, it has also become increasingly clear over time that multi-stakeholder collaborations, whilst being energetically promoted, have been struggling to achieve their ambitious goals. Indeed, many struggle simply to become partnerships – in any meaningful sense of that word. Many partnerships often fall far short of expectations and many fail.
Partnering is not easy.
It critically depends on establishing strong working relationships between key individuals often from radically different working cultures. It requires a radical change of mind-set (in the individual, his/her organization, and in the partnership entity formed ) and behavior together with a willingness to think and act in new ways. For this reason, partnerships take effort and professionalism both to establish and to nurture to maturity. Partnering effectiveness requires specific skills, persistence, courage, tenacity and imagination in those involved – and leadership is also undoubtedly and possibly the critical success factor.
Look into successful partnerships and you will invariably find someone who has taken on the role of a partnership broker. He or she makes a significant difference to the effectiveness and impact of partnerships, role modeling a new form of facilitative leadership that has markedly different attributes to the kind we find in traditional, single sector environments.
The role of a ‘partnership broker’, however, and the value a broker adds to the success of a partnership is not widely understood. So, what do brokers do?
A report entitled ‘What do partnership brokers do? An enquiry into practice’, produced by the Partnership Brokers Association (PBA), the world’s first professional entity for cross-sector partnership brokers, offers some answers.
Drawing on the experiences of 250 PBA accredited brokers, the report concludes that partnership brokers undertake a number of clearly defined roles which can make a significant difference to multi-stakeholder collaboration. They help partners address a wide range of typical partnering challenges and improve a partnership’s efficiency, effectiveness and – sometimes – its capacity for innovation.
Some of the key findings are that partnership brokering is most effective when brokers:
- Spend quality time on relationship-building and relationship management.
- Exercise a range of specific partnering process management skills that partners can learn from and adopt themselves.
- Build stronger partnerships both by pulling partners back together when they fall out with each other and by pushing them systematically to achieve more.
- Work as ‘reflective practitioners’ in order to get to the heart of what is needed.
- Are confident, capable and professional in what they whilst empowering partners to the point where brokering becomes unnecessary.
These are special skills, which do not appear on any traditional curricula. The PBA is the only entity running a unique professional training programme for brokers, promoting partnership brokering and supporting a sizeable community of partnership brokers worldwide.
More than 800 people from 70 countries and representing all sectors have completed the PBA basic partnership brokers training course with more than 250 going on to qualify as accredited partnership brokers. Several organisations have sent significant numbers of their staff through the course – including AusAID, CARE International, Nike, Rio Tinto, Shell, and World Vision. Other organisations have commissioned partnership brokers training for their employees and / or partnerships, including the Africa Development Bank, GTZ, Microsoft, Newmont, and the government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
You can find information on the Partnership Brokers Association and its activities at PBA
One response to “Cross-Sector Partnership Brokers – Overcoming the Complexity of Partnerships”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
FEATURED
Spotlight
Business Fights Poverty is proud to be a Founding UK B Corp.
© 2021 Business Fights Poverty. The Business Fights Poverty logo and tree device are registered trademarks. View Terms and Conditions.
Check this out:
UNIDO Business Partnerships
Working closely with companies and foundations, UNIDO builds partnerships that advance inclusive and sustainable industrial development while simultaneously driving business value.
UNIDO Business Partnerships in Action
UNIDO’s business partners represent a broad spectrum of industry sectors. Here you can find a selection of our recent partnerships which are pooling resources and expertise to create new jobs, new trade opportunities and new sustainable markets.