One of the most important roles for a coalition leader to play is that of a “master facilitator.” Although you may think you need to be the one to “do” everything, if you are really going to be able to achieve more together than you can on your own, facilitate conversations and connections. Join me […]
Coalition Engagement Skill #5: Facilitate conversations and connections Read More »
Do you know what only you can do as a coalition leader? Do your coalition members know their roles and how they “fit” in the coalition? As a coalition leader, it is easy to “assume” that everyone knows what role(s) they are playing as part of the coalition. You may also have different expectations for
Coalition Engagement Skill #4: Clarify meaningful roles and responsibilities Read More »
In order to engage coalition members, you have to know them. What are their interests? Where are their passions? Do they have capacity to participate in your work groups or teams? The more you can understand your coalition members and what is important to them, the better you can engage them in the coalition. It
Coalition Engagement Skill #3: Know your members’ interests and capacity Read More »
How many times have you been to a meeting and you can clearly see that one organization’s agenda is clearly more important than any other organization? How often have you experienced competition among members? When you are convening groups of people around a common purpose, someone needs to provide a neutral forum. In my experience,
Coalition Engagement Skill #2: Create a neutral forum Read More »
Why do you exist? Why are we meeting? What is the purpose of this workgroup? As a coalition leader, even though you may think you have been clear about your purpose, it can be really easy for coalition members to be confused and then struggle with coalition engagement. Also, even if you are clear, it
Coalition Engagement Skill #1: Be clear about your purpose Read More »
Engaging coalition members (who are usually volunteers to the coalition) can be extremely challenging. We can struggle with recruiting the right people to participate, keeping them engaged and helping them follow-through with coalition tasks even though they have full-time jobs.
10 Essential Coalition Engagement Skills [+ FREE Checklist] Read More »
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’ Martin Luther King Jr. As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday today, we can learn a lot about coalition building from him and his work. As a leader, he knew how to build coalitions, engage his members and interacted positively with
Learning from a successful coalition leader Read More »
Since coalition work involves working with people, there will always be conflict. 🙂 Conflict can be helpful, healthy and can aid the coalition in making better collective decisions. Unresolved conflict can be very destructive to a coalition and can erode trust and engagement. Conflict may be related to coalition decision-making, priority setting or among member
Partnership Pitfall #10: Unresolved conflict Read More »
One of the best ways to energize your coalition toward collective action is to identify passionate champions who can provide leadership, inspiration and energy to accomplish the collective goals and objectives. Sometimes, these passionate champions can be very loud and insistent on their way. If “their way” aligns well with the coalition interest overall, that
Partnership Pitfall #9: Letting the loudest voices get their way Read More »
When we are leading a coalition, we can feel like we are always talking about what we are doing and can sometimes start to think that everyone else knows what we are doing too. 🙂 Even though we can be easily overwhelmed by emails, if there is infrequent and only occasional communication with only a
Partnership Pitfall #8: Under communicating Read More »