Creating partnerships for success

Partners often overlook the development of shared vision and values because they assume these are already shared.

• It is essential to develop a shared understanding of ‘why are we here?’ and ‘where we are heading?’
• Sharing values helps people understand how and why they view things the way they do. This understanding can help develop relationships, dictate what or how information may need to be presented and play to the strengths of each partner in the room.
• It is important for all partners to own, adopt and live these agreements and to revisit them periodically to ensure they hold true.

Taking time to develop a shared vision and understand values, leads to a number of positive impacts. These include:

• stronger and more trusting relationships between partners
• partners being committed to achieving the same outcome
• a clearer sense of direction and purpose
• partners are more engaged and willing to take action
• better outcomes, therefore easier to measure impact
• being able to convey a clear and confident message to other stakeholders outside of the partnership.