Jennifer Redmond Knight

One of the most important and challenging aspects of leading a coalition – or really any team – is getting clear on roles. When we find ourselves overwhelmed by all of the work or frustrated that no one is volunteering, unclear roles and realistic expectations are likely part of the problem.  While our vision for […]

When we bring together multi-passionate people toward a common cause, there is an endless number of things that we could be doing. No matter what your area of interest and focus is, there are so many needs and opportunities that it is easy to become overwhelmed by all of the possibilities. When you try to

Although building, repairing and restoring get most of the attention in relationships, one of the most exciting aspects of coalition-building is maintaining relationships. These are the relationships that continue for years and often extend beyond a particular position or role. When you maintain coalition relationships, you are able to see the power of working together

When we experience relationship challenges, we often want them to be fixed immediately. While we can practice the three recommendations from last week’s post that help us repair a relationship, the process of restoring a relationship can take more time. The amount of time and work needed depends upon the foundation of the relationship prior

One of the most rewarding things about coalition work is developing, growing and sustaining relationships. If we are honest, relationships can also be challenging (some more than others!) 🙂 When we work with diverse relationships and engage with people who may think differently than we do, it’s only a matter of time before we will

We have all kinds of encouragement to build relationships from our boards, funders and coalition supporters. Occasionally, we will hear that we should “sustain” or “maintain” relationships. While both of these are important, we also need to talk about what happens in the “messy middle” of relationships that is critically important to maintain them. In

Coalition work is all about relationships. Although we may have the name of an “organization” listed as our member or partner, we do not work with an organization. In coalition relationships, just like any other relationship, we need to spend time together in order to understand, support and learn from one another. We will also

We are all on a journey. Whether you have been leading coalitions, teams or partnerships for a few weeks or 20+ years, you have developed practices, routines and rituals that set expectations for participation and engagement. If you have been doing this work for a while, your partners have expectations about how you will show

Whenever we develop a workplan or a coalition strategic plan, focusing on action and implementation is easy but finding time for reflection is difficult. Although we may include evaluation, many times it becomes a “check the box” type of activity. When our calendars get so busy that we are moving from one meeting to another

As coalition leaders, we can easily spend all of our time on meetings, projects, reports, plans, budgets and addressing other people’s needs that we rarely find any time to pause, reflect or rest. And we definitely do not have time to invest in ourselves. When we do invest in ourselves, we often focus on improving