One of the most important and challenging aspects of leading a coalition – or really any team – is getting clear on roles. This is especially true when you have new staff, leaders and members. When you find yourself overwhelmed by all of the work or frustrated that no one is volunteering, unclear roles are …
Although you have a shared passion and interest for the work, staff (and contractors) have much more capacity to spend time in the coalition than leaders or members. In most coalitions, staff are paid and volunteer leaders and members are unpaid. Even if your coalition leaders or members work aligns very closely with the work …
Clarifying roles for coalition staff, leaders and members Read More »
When working in coalitions, you are constantly thinking about roles. How can you engage your members in meaningful ways? What roles will people play (or not)? One of the areas we don’t spend nearly enough time considering is the specific roles for staff to play. As coalition staff, it can be really easy to become …
No one wants to talk about it (and we did – check out Part 1 and Part 2 Masterclasses!) but accountability is an important aspect of coalition building and trust building. When some people are held accountable and others are not, trust is difficult to maintain. If you have been following my blog posts on …
Although it would be nice if we could “check the box” on trust and move to the next item on our list, trust is a lot like a muscle. You have to keep building it and regaining it when it is lost. Similar to exercise, when you keep practicing trust, it is much easier to …
If you are struggling with loss of trust in your coalition, you CAN regain it over time. As much as it would be nice to just do one “big” thing to regain trust, the little things over time make the biggest difference. Since trust usually isn’t lost immediately (although I just had an experience where …
Trust is one of those concepts that you don’t even think about when you have it, but when it’s compromised, you pay a lot of attention to it! In our coalition work, there can be trust issues within the coalition overall or there can be trust issues between specific members of the coalition that impact …
Last week, we highlighted the importance of trust in coalition building. We can easily say “trust” is important or we want more “trust” in our coalition, but actually building trust takes time and intentionality. Building trust = building and maintaining relationships. This is why trust is so critically important for coalition building. Honestly, when we …
Coalition building is all about working together with others to do more than we could do on our own. If we are going to work with others and make an impact, we have to trust the people in our coalition. Since most people involved in coalitions volunteer their time, we must create networks, teams, workgroups …
You can have a clear purpose, a prioritized strategic plan and clear roles and responsibilities but still struggle with your coalition. While these are important aspects of coalition building, they are not enough to keep coalition members working together. The “secret” to sustaining coalitions is Emotional Intelligence. When we demonstrate high levels of Emotional Intelligence, …