How To Successfully Collaborate With Organizations and Community Stakeholders To Solve Community Challenges

Collaborate With Organizations and Community Stakeholders To Solve Community Challenges

There is no doubt among top leaders and thinkers from business, government, education, nonprofits and other sectors.

To be successful in addressing many of the challenging issues in our communities requires working in cross-sector partnership and collaboration around common purposes.

Your success as a leader in your community hinges on successfully working with other community stakeholders that you may not have initially thought you would need to work with.

There are goals you all have that are very closely related, but you all have been ignoring each other for so long that none of you are aware that you have these goals in common.

You may not like a particular organization, business, or government entity.

But you must put your personal feelings aside and focus on common purposes in order to achieve greater results in addressing community issues.

Ongoing Communication & Collaboration Is The Key

There is a strong need to effectively build trust among organizations and community stakeholders.

Again, you have to put your differences aside and find that common ground and work from there.

So how do you build trust amongst each other?

It all starts with communication; and in order to communicate and collaborate, you have to meet on a regular basis.

You’re a leader, so take the initiative to reach out to these other stakeholders and create a place where representatives from each organization can meet in person on a regular basis for the sole purpose to collaborate.

This place will be like a cross-sector center for you all to collaborate.

After You Collaborate, Study Your Targets

So you may be thinking, “Well, I’ve tried to get together on a regular basis with other organizations within the community, but that didn’t work.”

Well, my question to you is: How much research did you do on individual representatives of these organizations before you approached them or tried to collaborate?

You see, you absolutely must be strategic in how you approach others.

You can’t just say “Hey, let’s get together and talk about this.”

That will not work when it comes to larger organizations, especially the government.

What you need to do before you approach anyone is research who does what within the organization, as it relates to the goals they have that are inline with yours.

Then, sit back and observe what they do and how they do it. Watch what they do in person within the community as well as online.

In many cases, the specific individual may not be doing anything directly in person within the community, but there may be a lot of online activity going on.

What are they tweeting about? Do you know what they are posting on Facebook?

Which pics are they posting on Instagram? How do they interact with others on all of these social networks?

Watch, listen, and learn all you can about them during the time you collaborate.

Finally, once you’ve done that, you will be able to position yourself in a way where they will be more open to hearing what you have to say.

You will already be able to pretty much predict their reaction, because you have studied them.

So now that you know what to do, it’s time for you to take action and do it!