To coincide with the launch of the Association, we have published a comprehensive report into the role of partnership brokers in multi-stakeholder collaborations. This brings together the practical experiences of 250 accredited partnership brokers and seeks to help both partnership brokers and the wider partnering community to better understand the partnership broker’s role in building and maintaining effective, efficient and innovative partnerships.
The enquiry finds that partnership brokers can make a difference to partnerships in two key ways:
- By helping partners address typical partnering challenges
- By improving a partnership’s efficiency, effectiveness and innovation
‘What do Partnership Brokers do?’ uses brokers’ personal reflections on their practical experiences of partnership brokering to draw out what the most common roles they play are, and what challenges they face.
Some of the key findings are that brokers:
- Spend considerable time on relationship-building and relationship management.
- Exercise a range of specific skills that also demonstrate approaches that partners can adopt and use themselves.
- Assist partnerships by pulling partners together when they fall out with each other and by pushing them to achieve more.
- See real value in becoming more ‘reflective’ in the way they approach their work.
- Have a need to balance effective, valuable input and potential dependency on them.
This research starts the ball rolling in assisting a greater understanding of the role of a Partnership Broker. The vignettes from brokers in their own words convey a real need for effective brokering – if partnerships truly are to achieve their ambitious goals. There is more work to be done, and we invite brokers to share their experiences with the partnering community to continue the quest for learning.