TRUST AND SUSTAINABILITY
Conflict and Partnership Leadership
- Partnership leaders typically hold the responsibility of resolving conflicts that emerge.
- Prospective members need to recognize this responsibility as part of the job description when they consider joining partnership leadership.
- Conflict resolution practices that provide opportunities and mechanisms that are both formal and informal appear effective across partnerships.
- Early partnerships experience conflict from the personalities or persons involved (as individuals) or the perceptions of the roles and goals of the organization represented by persons joining the partnership
- Mature partnerships view conflict as welcome and necessary for the group to evolve and maintain trust
- Personality-driven conflict dissipates as relational trust grows
- Priority-driven conflict declines as responsibility-based forms of trust grow
Building Trust and Sustainability
- How do you define trust within your partnership?
- Trust can be defined as one party’s willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that the latter party is benevolent, reliable, competent, honest, and open.
- How do you build trust within your partnership?
- Successful partnerships build on trust by being specific about the goals they have and regularly evaluating and re-aligning goals, as well as commit to the time required to achieve those goals.
- What is the purpose of trust within your partnership?
- The purpose of trust in collaboration is to make inter-organizational relations function more effectively by reducing complexity and fostering cooperation in ways that more formal contracts cannot.
- Have you considered different forms of trust? How are these addressed within your partnership?
- Relational trust is defined by the personal connections that individuals have within the movement.
- Responsibility-based trust is defined by duties or roles.
What supports partnership sustainability?
- Partnership leadership/governance
- Commitment
- Desire or interest to end human trafficking
- Quality of efforts and shared goals
- Funding
- Multidisciplinary or multi-agency partnership
- Legislative Support
- Resolving conflict or address tough personalities
- Open communication
Have you considered creating a sustainability plan?
- A sustainability plan is a tool that considers a full range of necessary resources and outlines specific strategies and action items toward long-term viability. Sustainability planning includes:
- Vision: What does sustainability look like? Ensure the sustainability vision aligns with the organization identity.
- Results orientation: Develop short and long-term goals specific to achieving the sustainability vision, define specific action items under each goal that will help the project move forward, define benchmarks to assess progress toward sustainability goals.
- Strategies: Determine specific action items for developing and maintaining key partnerships necessary for sustainability.
- Resources: Outline the resources needed for sustainability and strategies for securing and maintaining resources.
Key Trust and Sustainability Resources
Explore Other Sections of the Partnership Toolkit
Partnership 101
How do you define a partnership? How will you be intentionally inclusive in your membership?
Funding Your Partnership
How will you fund your partnerships’ work? What funding sources are available to you?
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