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What kind of leader are you and how does this fit with the partnership you are in?
And how is your partnership doing? Does it have the leadership it needs or is it taking steps to develop them?

Leadership in partnerships can be very different from leadership of a single organisation. Recently, we saw this very clearly when we undertook a national evaluation of local strategic partnerships for CLG.

It was also apparent that someone needed to do some further research into the competences that leaders of partnerships -- as opposed to leaders of single organisations -- need.

We've now done such research. Our aim was to arrive at a 'competency framework' that public sector professionals could use to assess their leadership skills and abilities.

An important principle of our project was to use the experience of people who have themselves worked in partnerships. They are the experts on effective partnership leadership and they helped to propose the questions, frame the issues and come up with the ideas on which our competency framework is based.

Our framework is now ready and we are looking forward to using it with a range of partnerships across public services. We have called the framework, and the set of tools we've designed to help people use it, partnership intelligence™ (Pi). It will help people determine how well their partnership is performing, and how strong and effective the leadership is (whether this is one main person or the wider, shared leadership that we found characterised many partnerships).

We have designed Pi 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.

We'd be very pleased to talk to you about the ways we can use Pi to help support your partnership, such as by helping you to:

• gather data and evidence – with an emphasis on outcomes rather than processes
• think about the important areas of evidence that you need to consider
• put together a self-assessment document that reflects your achievements.

You can find out more by emailing Paul Tarplett or Lesley Campbell.

In the meantime, to get a taste of what Pi is about, please try our self-assessment on-line questionnaire.

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