How we can support you
We are here to help you to be more effective partners and to optimise your partnerships and collaborative ventures.
Working with, rather than for, you, we identify critical questions as a prompt for exploring options together and co-creating ways forward.
We aim to tailor our approach to achieve the greatest impact for you, your team, your organisation or your partnership(s). Examples of the types of support we offer are shown in this diagram.
We work with you in a spirit of exploration and enquiry; and always begin with an open conversation.
Contact us if you would like to discuss your needs with a member of our team.
How we do this
Identifying the right Partnership Brokers to support you
Our rich and diverse group of PBA Associates are located across the globe. All have signed up to PBA’s Commitments to Ethical Partnership Brokering Practice. We carefully consider the range of skills, expertise and experience that would be of greatest benefit to you, and match these with our Associates. PBA has a strong collegiate spirit, and we all stand ready to help one another whenever that is needed, so that we all benefit from the learning that emerges.
Accompanying you on your journey of change
PBA works alongside individuals, partners and partnerships, to accompany them on their partnering journey – offering observations, reflections, suggestions, questions and guidance. This involves sharing frameworks and new thinking about partnering processes and practices, ‘de-layering’ issues to reveal new insights, and bringing attention to things that are often taken for granted or ignored.
This approach builds deeper understanding of, and empathy with, those involved. Over time, and working at the pace of the individual/ partner/ partnership, a level of transformative change is reached. Accompaniment has been found to be extremely enriching when those involved are prepared for it.
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Challenging practices that block collaboration
In our experience, change often begins from challenging the status quo, whether in poor partnering practices, top-down approaches, unhelpful behaviours or systems that hinder effective collaboration. Tackling these is a priority for breaking through to better, more sustainable or transformative outcomes. We consider this an important aspect of how we can be of greatest support to you. Such challenging requires courage. ‘Being Courageous’ is one of the five partnering principles PBA promotes, possibly the most important one!
Brokering better partnerships
Using a range of interventions (taster sessions, in-person discussions, on-line workshops and more) we explain what we as partnership brokers can offer. Every support activity is tailored to the needs and aspirations of the specific individual, organisation or partnership – and can be adapted for different levels of staff, functional teams or thematic groups. We work with a wide range of collaborative models including partnerships, collaborations, alliances and consortia.
We also provide 1-2-1 Professional Support.
PBA has worked with numerous entities across the globe: government departments, philanthropic funders, international and national NGOs, United Nations organisations, institutional donors, multinational corporations international networks and alliances.
To find out more, please get in touch so we can explore your needs and how we can help
How you can support us
For twenty years and more, PBA has been at the forefront of new thinking about partnering. As pioneers of the concept and practice of partnership brokering, we have often found ourselves in situations that require critical re-thinking and re-framing.
- What is the potential for partnerships to emerge new forms of collaborative leadership?
- How can partnering best support locally-led development?
- What does it take for cross-sectoral collaboration to become the prized approach in responding to complex, wicked, problems?
- Where are the partnership brokers of the future; and how do we find and promote them?
- What will it take to make our insights into partnering well available, accessible and affordable to all?
To address such questions, we have relied on the energy, vision and support of many different entities working with us. These have included multi-national corporations and a range of funders without whom our vital experiments and explorations would have been impossible.
Would you like to work with us on some new aspect of partnering that is of particular concern to you?
Contact us to see whether we can co-create and invest in a new initiative that will contribute to shaking and shaping the partnering paradigm.
