Supporting partnerships

Partnerships are everywhere. Their role in providing local public services has grown as policy makers and leaders realise how complex are the causes of some of society's most intractable problems and how important it is that different agencies collaborate to tackle those problems.

So in health and social care, children's services, community justice, education – in other words, everywhere – groups of agencies are working in collaboration to achieve outcomes that a single agency could never hope to do. Furthermore, there is now much legislation – such as the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) and the Children Act (2004) – requiring them to work together in this way.

We have done a great deal of work with and about partnerships of all descriptions. For instance, find out about some of our work with partnerships in the field of community justice.

Leading a partnership can be very different indeed from leading a single organisation. Just determining who should be doing that leading can be difficult enough. In a single organisation, the 'legitimacy to lead' comes as part of the job description of top managers. But in a partnership, where people of similar seniority may come together from different organisations, it can be difficult to ascertain who amongst them should be 'the leader'.

Indeed, many partnerships are finding that, to a greater or lesser extent, everyone in the partnership has to exercise leadership. Good leadership does not just involve acting within the partnership context, but also understanding the relationship of individual organisations to the whole and to each other, and using this understanding to 'unlock' human and financial resources in the partner organisations. Effective leaders will focus to a far greater extent on understanding complex situations; they will do so in an inclusive and deliberative way, negotiating solutions amongst the partners.

But how do you do it? A national evaluation of local strategic partnerships that we undertook for the DCLG is reported on the Department's own website. As we worked on this evaluation, it became apparent that further research was needed into the competences required for partnership leadership. We set out on such research, with the aim of arriving at a 'competency framework' that public sector professionals could use to assess their leadership skills and abilities. An important principle of this project was that it is those people who have worked in partnerships who are the experts on effective leadership.

Our competency framework is now ready, along with a set of tools – such as a self-assessment questionnaire – to help you use it. We have designed these so that people working in partnerships can use the framework:

prior to the partnership, as an indication of the skills and behaviours needed
when already working in a partnership to assess their current strengths and weaknesses
as a 360 degree assessment tool, to receive feedback from colleagues working within their partnership.

How we can help

You can find out more about our work in this area, by emailing Paul Tarplett or Lesley Campbell or try the 'taster' below.

And try out our on-line self-assessment tool for senior people working in partnerships. PI will help you find out how effective your own leadership style and practice really is, in the context of the partnership of which you are part. Find out more

If you would like more information about our work on partnerships generally, please contact Paul Tarplett, t: 020 7239 7842 7815 or email Paul