5 Ways to Create a High Performing Partnerships Team
When commencing the planning process for a strategic corporate partnership, it is crucial to create a partnership culture within your organisation. By including other team members in the process, you will be more efficient, have a broader reach and ultimately attract more donors and funding to your cause.
1. Create an internal partnerships culture
When recruiting and building your internal team, remember that those with a similar vision will work best together. Therefore, it’s vital that you connect your colleagues to the end product of what you are aiming to achieve — make sure they see your vision.
Commonalities bring people together; find those who are passionate about what you are proposing. People will commit themselves to their passion.
Find people who are invested in the outcome of the initiative.
2. Let the creative juices flow
Set up regular meetings with colleagues to understand their priorities and agree ways of working together. Provide opportunities for their input, as this will help spark new ideas.
Not only will these ideas grow off of one another to become better, but people find passion in what they create. Don’t inhibit people’s creativity, instead, allow the creative juices to flow between all individuals.
Being a significant part of the process inspires.
It is good practice to receive input from colleagues before making decisions, as part of a habitual process in the workplace. When problems arise, avoid enforcing a plan for your team. Instead, ask for their potential solutions to ensure they remain a crucial part of the process. By empowering your team members, it instils their confidence to think critically and make their own decisions.
Delegate roles to help increase buy-in from your team
Within any team, there are a range of skillsets. This presents an opportunity to play to people’s strengths. For example, if an individual has marketing experience, you could provide the opportunity to create a cause-related marketing plan. Delegating individual tasks will create a feeling of ownership, which will maintain enthusiasm and determination. Ensure you provide clear expectations when delegating and introducing new tasks.
3. Invest in The Team
Investing in your team means investing in your mission. The mission follows the team; if the team is working well, then the mission will be fulfilled.
Help connect your team with the overall mission.
- What will their work achieve?
- Will their efforts create new job opportunities for those furthest removed from the marketplace?
- Will they help provide children with a better start in life?
Just as you will want to frame the impact to donors about what their funding and support will achieve, making the connection for the partnerships team will help them stay motivated throughout the process. They are the ones making this possible.
4. Encourage the work you wish to see.
Employees appreciate support and encouragement. People rarely know how to complete every task at hand without guidance. Therefore, it is important to continually provide guidance.
Strive to understand each individual’s strengths and weaknesses on your team.
Work becomes a lot more enjoyable if individuals can focus on the tasks they enjoy. Learning together will unite the team and increase everyone’s skills and confidence. Foster their failures and celebrate their successes — in a team, they are everyone’s failures and successes.
Take the time to truly get to know your team, get a sense of what they enjoy, what they’re good at and what motivates them.
5. Evaluate to Improve
Constructive criticism is a positive thing for any high performing team. Evaluation provides an opportunity to identify where we can improve and reflect on what we are doing well.
Evaluation is a balancing act.
Set high expectations so that they stretch people outside of their comfort zone, but not so high that they are discouraged and defeated.
At the same time, do not set the bar too low – the result will be a low performance. People will meet the expectations you set for them.
Recognise that this is not a one size fits all situation. Every person has different capabilities, attitudes, and personal goals they wish to achieve. Expectations should be set on an individual basis.
Encourage each member of your team to set tangible goals with timelines. There is a significant difference between “do outreach” and “reach out to 15 people this week to ask them to support the initiative”.
By creating concrete action items, team members will be accountable for their contributions.
A great way to set goals is to make sure they are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.