We are starting the new year with an invitation to reflect on your partnership practice by diving into experiences and insights from other partnership brokers in our series Stories from Practice.
Shahina Bahar embarked on her PBA Accreditation journey in 2015 when she worked as an internal broker for a large international humanitarian organisation, at a time where the humanitarian sector saw significant shifts in the external environment as part of reforms and localisation agenda.
In her paper Shahina introduces the idea of “tactical agency” as a strategy to navigate complexity in a partnership. She explores how advancing or withdrawing different aspects of her role, according to the situation and perceived needs of the partnership, may create more space, visibility, legitimacy and traction for a partnership broker.
The paper reflects on the brokering identity and how ‘tactical agency’, linked to notions of identity and awareness of opportunities and constraints in an operating environment, can be a useful strategy when navigating complexity. The paper provides examples of how tactical agency highlights the interplay of the broker as a change agent/actor; the partnership (phases, considerations, different models) and the external environment in which these partnerships operate as well as the tactical agency that partners exercise themselves. It can be a valuable device on how to traverse the ‘grey zone’ drawing from learning within the humanitarian sector.
Read Shahina Bahar’s paper here. If you would like to share your comments with the author or us, please email learning@partnershipbrokers.org, or tweet about your views and experiences using #partnershipbrokers.