Five Good Ideas on how to become a collaborative organization

Collaboration with other organizations can build your organizational capacity, amplify your impact, and help you serve more people – but only if you get it right. Successful collaboration starts at home – with your board and senior leaders building the right internal culture, competencies, and systems before you approach potential partners. 

Join Liz Weaver, former Co-CEO of the Tamarack Institute, and Linda Mollenhauer, Chair of Ignite NPS, as they share practical stories and ideas to help you choose the right collaborations, show up as a strong partner, and avoid common pitfalls. They will draw from free resources in The Collaborative Organization – tools you can use right away. 

Session handout

Answers to questions from the audience

Five Good Ideas

1. Look inward. Culture matters. The values your board and leadership hold shape how others see you as a partner.
2. Understand the why. Get clear on what strategic benefits collaboration will bring to your mission.
3. Be intentional by managing opportunities and mitigating risks. Treat collaborations like investments – assess fit and protect your organization.
4. Get your own shop in order. Make sure you have the internal capacity and systems to deliver on commitments.
5. Put it in writing. Create a board policy that guides how and when you collaborate.

Resources

• Collaboration Coach
• Collaborative Governance and Leadership series
• Catalyzing Systems Change:  Lessons from Five Funded Projects
• Collaboration Under Strain
• What Capacities do Nonprofits Need in Order to Collaborate

Transcript 

This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Elizabeth McIsaac: Collaboration is one of the most powerful tools available to nonprofits, and it changes everything. It extends your reach, it deepens your impact, and it helps more people get the support they need. But great collaboration doesn’t start with finding the right partner. It begins with becoming one. That means your board and your senior leaders are doing the internal work first, building the right culture, the right competencies, and the systems to show up as a strong, committed collaborator.

Today we’re joined by Liz Weaver, former co-CEO of the Tamarack Institute and director of Weaverworks Consulting, and Linda Mollenhauer, former CEO of Imagine Canada and chair of Ignite NPS. They are two experts well-placed to share five good ideas, five practical ideas on how to become a collaborative organization.

Liz is a veteran Five Good Ideas speaker and a longtime friend of Maytree. This is her third time presenting. An experienced practitioner in collaborative governance and collective leadership, she has designed and delivered learning for leaders across topics, including collective impact, community innovation, and policy change.

Linda has led consulting practice for over 20 years, serving funders and nonprofits and published widely on collaboration, governance, and nonprofit leadership.

In their presentation today, they will share practical stories and ideas about choosing the right collaborations, showing up as a strong partner, and avoiding common pitfalls. They will draw from the Collaborative Organization, a free accessible web-based toolkit for board members and senior staff that they have recently developed together. It is my pleasure to welcome Liz and Linda. I’m so pleased to have you here.

Liz Weaver: Thanks so much, Elizabeth. It’s our pleasure to be joining you, both on behalf of Linda and myself and our colleague at Tamarack, Sylvia Cheuy, who also contributed to the Collaborative Organization web resource.

I’m going to kick us off and describe why we engaged in developing the resource. As Elizabeth has said, there are a ton of collaboration tools out there, but we didn’t really see any tools that focused on the board of directors and the organization specifically and what to do before you step into the collaboration space. We also recognize that while it is focused on the board and the organization, it’s also the people at the table and how you might use these resources in a way to make your collaboration experience a successful one.

We’re going to cover five ideas today, bouncing back and forth between Linda and myself. Linda will start with collaboration culture. I’ll focus on the why behind collaboration. Then we’ll cover managing opportunities and risks, getting your internal organization in order, and finally some technical tools — a board policy and a memorandum of understanding.

Linda Mollenhauer: Thanks, Liz.

Our first good idea is to be intentional about your organization’s culture because it has a significant impact on the success of your collaborations. And by culture, we mean the values, mindsets, attributes of board members and staff, which combine to create a culture, or in many organizations, many cultures. Even if it’s not talked about, it is powerful. It influences decisions about where collaboration sits as a strategic option. It influences choices such as who you feel comfortable with partnering with, and it influences how your organization is seen in your community.

If you don’t actively reflect on culture, you may be driven by the wrong things – pressure from funders or respected community leaders, old habits and unwritten rules, norms, sometimes by the strongest personality in the room. Our research found there were three values, mindsets, and leadership attributes that had a strong correlation to an organization’s success with collaborations.

I want to take a few minutes to illustrate what this culture looks like in practice. If you go to our website, you’re going to find more details and helpful tools. As you listen, reflect on your own organizational and governance culture and maybe even of your partnering organization’s cultures.

The first is a culture that is laser-focused on the organization’s purpose – vision, mission, outcomes. Purpose drives every decision and choice. Let’s say there’s an organization with a very vocal accountant and lawyer on the board. They’re fixated on finances, nervous about risk, and they talk a lot about the organization’s survival. The staff keep having to demonstrate what collaboration delivers to the bottom line. This is an inward-focused culture.

A purpose-driven culture is one of abundance. It sees other organizations as potential partners, not competitors. It appreciates that it can’t significantly advance its mission alone. Assets are seen as tools to advance purpose, not just something to be protected, and advancing the purpose is the north star when deciding whether collaboration is the right fit. It is a culture that’s comfortable with agility, adaptiveness, and innovation.

An organization that isn’t these things is more top-down – with cumbersome processes, rigid structures, and programs siloed. This is a tough collaborative partner. In an organization that’s adaptive, innovative, and agile, the board and staff are comfortable with messiness because collaborations are often very messy with inherent risks. They know how to give up power and share decision-making. They can pivot with opportunities as they emerge and they are empowered to make collective decisions with their partners right at the table, not continuously having to check back with the boss.

The bottom line is that if your organization is collaborative on the inside, it’s more likely to be a good collaborative partner outside.

The last characteristic of an enabling culture is a deep commitment to authentic relationships. Equity and inclusiveness are embedded into the fabric of the organization, and this lens is brought to the collaborative table. The organizational leaders cultivate extensive and most importantly, diverse networks – not off the side of their desks – and they share knowledge, connection, resources without expecting a direct or immediate return. This kind of organization, this kind of leader is going to be a sought-after partner primarily because they can be trusted and can help lead a collaboration to success.

So, Liz, anything to add that I missed?

Liz Weaver: Culture is incredibly important. It requires looking inward to your own organization’s culture and considering how that will shape the collaborative experience. As Linda noted, culture can be a real asset in collaboration, but certain organizational habits or assumptions can also create barriers and hinder the process.

Linda Mollenhauer: Yes, exactly. What do you do with this?

First, use our checklist to reflect on your own organization’s culture and attributes of its leaders. If this is your culture already, then celebrate it. If it’s not, have a generative. safe conversation about why these values, mindsets, and attributes are important to your collaboration’s success, and what can be done to close the gap.

We know shifting culture is very complicated, but here are a few ideas.

You can incorporate them into your organization’s value statement. You can incorporate them into the board and staff leadership recruitment matrix to be sure as you go forward, you’re bringing in the right kind of values, mindsets and attributes. You can start shifting a few existing practices and processes and then let culture catch up. And last, use this knowledge to better understand and empathize with your partners around the table as you think about what kind of culture they’re coming from. If there’s a safe space, then name it and have a conversation about the implications for your collaborations.

Liz Weaver: The second idea is about what is the why behind collaboration for your organization. This is a conversation that should happen both at the senior leadership level and at the board level, to examine why the organization would move forward or join a collaborative table. What’s the purpose behind this and what are the benefits to the organization in terms of being involved in one collaboration versus another.

One thing that we realized when we were developing this resource is that if you look at what funders, governments and other nonprofits are saying, collaboration is a strategic imperative which leads to better outcomes and achievements for your organization.

And if you’re a good collaborative partner and sitting at the right collaborative tables, it can also be a pathway towards sustainability because people, whether funders, government partners, or other collaborators, will value your organization’s contributions.

Linda and I were talking about approaching why as a generative conversation – not jumping to the answer right away, but really asking: Why would we as an organization be engaged in collaboration? What is important to our organization? What is valuable to us? What do we hope to gain from collaboration and what are some of the barriers that we might face in saying “yes” to one collaboration versus another collaboration?

We know that many of you are already sitting at collaborative tables, and you might think, “We probably should have had that conversation a while ago.” But it’s never wrong to have this conversation because there might be collaborations that you’re currently engaged in that you feel like, “Oh, maybe that alignment isn’t there. Maybe it doesn’t quite fit the culture of our organization. Maybe it’s not part of our strategic imperative.” Having the why conversationcan be helpful in clarifying what you say yes to, what you say no to, and what collaborations you might withdraw from or other ones that you join. In the resource, we have a great tool around exiting collaborations that don’t necessarily fit your why.

When you’ve landed on your why, then it’s interesting to think about, “Okay, so we’re strongly committed to this why. How are we going to live this out and how are we going to direct our staff team to live this out? And what should our staff team be looking for, those people that are sitting around the collaborative tables both looking for, but also what can they contribute to this collaboration?” So, the why is a both-and kind of approach.

I’m going to share a story that really illustrates this.  Prior to joining Tamarack, I was the director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, and one of our co-conveners was the community foundation in the City of Hamilton, and someone asked the CEO of the community foundation, “Why is the community foundation sitting at the Roundtable?” She very thoughtfully had a good conversation with her board, and she shared that story with the other members of the collaborative roundtable. It was a good illustration of how the board and the CEO were aligned, and their commitment to that work was stronger as a result. Going through a good conversation around the why is critical to being a good collaborative partner.

Linda Mollenhauer: And I would add – even if you’re well on your way into collaborations, the why conversation is worth having. In my experience facilitating these conversations, when I’ve asked, “What do we mean by collaboration and even why it’s important to us?” – often every single person around the room had a different answer to it.

Liz Weaver: You’re right, and that provides a great opportunity. When you know each person’s why, the collaboration can work much better, because you can try to link in and achieve the shared and collective whys as they move the collaboration forward.

Linda Mollenhauer: Yes, it’s deeply linked to culture. It’s a big, integrated circle.

Our third good idea is to proactively manage the opportunities and risks of collaboration. More complex collaborations can bring great benefit to the organization, but also some risks. They might be financial, capacity, reputational, complicated accountabilities. You can’t avoid these, but you can mitigate them. It’s also important to remember that there’s risk in not collaborating: risk to sustainability, to mission advancement, and more.  

We want to focus on two ways to manage opportunities and risks.

One is to do a formal assessment when there’s a potential collaboration opportunity or when determining whether you’ll continue in a collaboration, and you’re in luck because we have several fabulous assessment checklists in the Collaborative Organization resource.

The second is to have a good memorandum of understanding, an MOU, with your partners, which is continuously referenced, kept current, and matches the complexity of your collaboration. It’ll include things like a description of the collaboration’s purpose and goals, the parameters (who’s participating, timelines), and most importantly, responsibilities and capacity commitments for all the partners. Our resource has a checklist for an MOU.

There are four ways to achieve thorough assessment and an MOU create more successful collaborations.

First, they fulfill the board and leadership’s oversight responsibilities, particularly helpful for an organization that’s more risk averse. They take away some of the surprises, important because navigating a collaboration requires real patience and resilience. Three, they enable you and your partners to anticipate problems and address them before they get too entrenched. For example, you’ll have thought about what your organization’s committing to and taking the time to ensure you can deliver on it. And last, they help ensure strategic alignment. And if there isn’t, then you can step away with a solid rationale that you can clearly communicate to others. This is going to help you with your FOMO (fear of missing out) issues and means you won’t join a collaboration simply because someone important asked you to.

Liz Weaver: I’d add that MOUs are living documents. As Linda said, collaborations shift and change over time — new partners join, others leave. We developed this resource for collaborations of all types: very early stage, middle scope programs and services, and complex collaborations tackling big complex issues like poverty or homelessness.

So, if you think about it, you want to have the right kind of MOU for the type of collaboration that you’re engaged in. If it’s a very simple collaboration, you might have a very lightweight MOU. Whereas in a more complex collaboration where there’s resources and funding to be allocated, there might be more agreements that need to be included in that type of document. Don’t put in too much stuff that will be difficult to manage if it’s a very lightweight kind of collaboration.

Linda Mollenhauer: And the same with the assessment. We have various assessments for simpler collaborations, and more risky collaborations. For the simpler ones, your board does not need to be involved in – different assessments depending on what stage the collaboration is at.

Liz Weaver: The fourth idea is to get your own shop in order – thinking from a organizational perspective about what you need and what you can contribute to the collaboration. How are you going to allocate the human resources, the financial resources, other resources that the collaboration might need to be successful? What are the contributions that you can make as an organization to fulfill the commitments that you have when you join the collaborative table.

Another key element is decision-making – not only at the collaborative table, but within your own organization. When do you bring the decisions back up to the board because more resources have been called for?

Getting your shop in order is also about some of those strategies around mitigating risk. What kind of communications will you be having within your organization about the collaboration experience and what you’re learning, how the organization is contributing, what recognition the organization might be getting, and how you’re communicating upward and downward within your organization, what are the challenges that you might be facing, or the opportunities, in terms of supporting staff and volunteers at the collaborative table. When you don’t do this in advance, sometimes there’s an assumption by other organizations that because you’re XYZ organization, you’re going to be collaborating, and you’re going to be contributing these things.

I remember a time when I was the CEO of the YWCA – everybody around the collaborative table thought we could give them free meeting space because we had lots of facilities and meeting rooms. But we used those meeting rooms to generate revenue for the organization. We had to come to a middle ground – partial free use and partial paid – so that that collaborative table could move forward effectively. The more you can do this upfront in terms of what you can both give and what you need to get from the collaboration, the more successful you can be as a collaborative partner

Linda Mollenhauer: Just one quick comment adding to what you said, Liz. The capacity you’re bringing to collaboration will look very different as long as it’s value-added to the collaboration. By taking the time to look internally at what assets you can bring, not just money, but people, technology, client base, and so much more – you’ll be better positioned to navigate power dynamics at the table. That’s another reason to look into your own capacity before launching into collaboration.

Our fifth and final idea is to put it in writing, capturing the key elements in a board policy on collaboration. Our resource includes a great checklist with examples.

A board policy should describe things like the organization’s commitment to collaboration, how opportunities and risks will be assessed, when the board needs to be involved and when it doesn’t, or it shouldn’t, and how collaboration will be supported internally – very tangibly in terms of how you’re going to support the staff sitting at the table so they’re not just doing this off the side of their desks, but also some of the culture pieces that we talked about, enabling culture in place.

There are three benefits of having a board policy on collaboration.

Number one, it signals to stakeholders such as board members or staff sitting at the table to community partners, to funders, the organization’s commitment to collaboration.

Second, it gives the board confidence that it’s fulfilling its oversight responsibilities so they can keep their noses in. In other words, informed and engaged, but fingers out so staff can get on with the work of collaboration.

And last, it helps with leadership transitions because it’s all there in writing regardless of whether some culture pieces start to shift or other things that can happen with transition.

So, we’ll just wrap up and open for questions. Just a reminder, our five good ideas are: culture matters, understand the why, manage opportunities and risks by using a good assessment and an MOU, get your organization’s shop in order and create a board policy. Over to you, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth McIsaac: Thank you, that was terrific. So rich, but I want to start by walking it back. What do we mean by collaboration? What is your definition? And I remember when I started working on a very complex collaboration many years ago, an immigrant employment council, and I went to the dictionary. There were two definitions. One is an artistic endeavor among two or more players, and the other one was working with the enemy, going back to the French history of collaboration.

So, I thought about that, and it has always struck me that there are sometimes elements of both of those depending on what the work is that you’re doing, and as I was listening to both of you now, I felt like you were describing and almost like the applicability of your ideas will shift. The importance of it will shift by the level of formality and on a spectrum of simple to complex. But when I think about people talking about collaboration in our sector, it sometimes is used to describe partnerships, cooperation, alliances, and networks. It becomes a very interchangeable term. I want to throw it back to both of you to start us off with how have you been defining collaboration in this work that you’ve been doing to really sketch out what are the core elements? How do we do this well? How do we make this perhaps a better art form?

Linda Mollenhauer: Briefly, that all those words you use, partnership, et cetera, fall within what we mean by collaboration. They’re different words for what is ultimately one or more organizations coming together with common cause to advance their work. The key thing I would want to say is that collaboration does not mean amalgamations and mergers because that becomes one legal entity, and that’s often used interchangeably and I think scares some people away from collaboration. So, we’re careful to say it is not those things.

Liz Weaver: Our resource includes a backgrounder that goes into collaboration and current trends. I agree with Linda that it’s a kind of spectrum.  The core question for each organization is: What do we mean by collaboration? Are we intentional about being a shared-services kind of collaboration? Are we thinking about a collective impact kind of thing? What do we mean? What’s most effective and will help us achieve our organization’s purpose and mission? What are the benefits to us as an organization? What are the risks?

Organizations often say “yes” to collaborations just because they’ve been asked. If you do some of that thinking prior to joining a collaborative table – and we know resources are tight – you’ll have a better collaborative experience both as a partner and as a contributor to the table.

Linda Mollenhauer: And it definitely involves artistry, and what we would like to stress is it is about seeing potential collaborative partners, not enemies.

Elizabeth McIsaac: Potential allies. One early question that was sent asks about advocacy coalitions with unlikely partners – sometimes called strange bedfellows – where organizations that don’t ordinarily work together come together around the shared purpose. What’s unique about these collaborations?

Liz Weaver: When you’re not usual suspects, a bit more work is needed to build relationships and understanding. We’re suggesting the organization do the work, but each of the partners should do this kind of work around their own organizations in a trustful way and share that at the table. When you know your own why, but also the whys of others and the culture of other organizations, trust and relationships grow from that. When there’s mistrust or distrust or huge power imbalances within a collaborative table, they go off track and go awry.

Knowing your own why, your collaboration culture, and what you can contribute are three important things to weave into that early work of a collaboration.

Linda Mollenhauer: One of our five resources is an article called Collaboration Under Strain.  It answers this question absolutely beautifully, including the importance of empathy – being to be able to understand what other organizations are trying to achieve and what their real-life constraints are. I used the word empathy, and that’s important, being able to step into their shoes and see it as they see it because at the end of the day, nobody is intending to come in to be difficult. It’s a great article and worth reading.

Elizabeth McIsaac: A lot of what both of you were saying has so much to do with really reflecting, being mindful, intentional, discerning purpose, and being attentive to that. It’s a relationship, and it’s all the things that make for a good relationship. I want to pick up on a question from Allison Hewitt, who is known to many who work in the collaborative space. She observes that the best collaborations require an abundance mindset – which can be tough in a resource-constrained environment or mindset. Any advice for organizations who want to collaborate, but who are already feeling overwhelmed?

Liz Weaver: I would begin by assessing how many collaborative partnerships you’re in already and what they’re taking from you. Are there some that maybe aren’t as meaningful to you as an organization or purposeful to your organization? This applies to both internal and external collaboration.

Also consider whether the timing is right for your organization. Some organizations are so resource-constrained that they show up at the table without being able to show up authentically — and that hurts everyone else around the table. Could you be on a mailing list? Could you be consulted? You don’t necessarily have to have a seat at every table. There are ways to stay connected without committing fully. Do the organizational assessment, look honestly at your current reality, and ask whether you would be a good collaborative partner given the constraints you’re facing right now.

Linda Mollenhauer: I’ve watched the sector get caught up in a scarcity mindset — seeing others as competitors for resources, with a real fear and intensity around that. An abundance mindset isn’t a soft, nice-to-have philosophy. I think it is going to be essential to organizational survival. If you put purpose first and ask whether you should exist and then recognize that sustainability may require collaboration — whether that’s shared back-office functions, shared programming, or something else — it means giving something up in order to gain something. We need to move from scarcity thinking to abundance thinking. At the end of the day, it may come down to survival.

Elizabeth McIsaac: As this is probably a room full of changemakers situated in different places and organizations – some on boards, some at a high level of leadership in the organization and some from the middle and trying to lead from the middle. You talked at length about culture and the conditions needed to collaborate well.  If you’re trying to move this forward, and you’re trying to lead from the middle, do you have suggestions around how to push that up into the organization? If the organization itself may not have a readiness or an openness or some of those other conditions that you talked about, do you have advice for leading from the middle and really creating that condition from there?

Linda Mollenhauer: That’s a tough situation, especially in a hierarchical organization where the board sits on top. Ideally, an organization is more agile than that, and if that’s the case, then having those conversations is easier to have. I’d start from a shared point of agreement: everybody wants their collaborations to be successful. If you’re sitting at the table, you can make the case that you can’t be successful without organizational support and describe what that support needs to look like. Use the language from our resource to make that case. The intent to succeed at collaboration is there, no matter where you sit in the organization.

Liz Weaver: I agree with that. I think that organizations are not static, they’re fluid. We go through these cycles of change – leadership, priorities, funding. There will be opportunities to seed that conversation from the middle and to say, “If you are assigned to a collaboration by your CEO or executive director or your department lead, that’s a place to start that conversation.” What resources can I expect to support my involvement in this collaboration or even be a bit more proactive and say, “Hey, these are resources that I think I could really use to represent the organization in the best way around this collaborative table.” So, it’s always an opportunity to think about things in the abundance and opportunity mindset, and to move that conversation forward because I agree that if you’ve been assigned something, it’s a window.

Linda Mollenhauer: And maybe our assessment tool can be helpful, too, for them to look at and say, “These are all the things that are going to help us make sure this collaboration is the right collaboration,” and again, use some of that language to communicate up in your organization.

Elizabeth McIsaac: The more we talk about this, the more it feels like relationship counseling. We have a question: what is the best practice to mitigate a fallout when the relationship falls apart – how to protect the vision?

Liz Weaver: From my experience on many collaborations and having experienced some of that relationship fallout is: name it. Be willing to say, “What is happening here, and how do we overcome this or how do we close this collaboration down?” There are different strategies.

I’ve seen a lot of collaborations where they don’t acknowledge it – someone might disrupt the collaboration, someone might move away from the collaboration and people think, “Oh, what happened there?” And nobody acknowledges this is that quietness in the room, and you do have to acknowledge it because collaboration is dynamic. As Linda said, it takes patience. And when you don’t acknowledge it, what happens is that it can seed even more disruption and more people walking away and then the collaboration dies a slow death.

So, you show up, and you had 12 people around the table. The next time, there’s six people, then there’s three people, and then you’re sitting in the room on your own. By not acknowledging when that first person has left or there’s that tense situation around the collaborative table, you do yourself and the collaboration a disservice. A poor collaborative experience will likely lead to mistrust in the future.

Linda Mollenhauer: I’d add that many collaborations have an inspiring vision, perhaps some funding, and a lot of pressure to show results quickly. Hurry to go slow. What you keep hearing from Liz and me is how important these initial conversations are – about shared expectations, culture, why you’re each there, and what constraints are. Have that upfront and take the time, take a deep breath, because it will save you down the road. By the time people are walking around from the table, perhaps you can bring them back and say, “We need to go back to some of these conversations,” or it’s too late and some collaborations aren’t meant to be, but I think it’s that upfront proactive intentional stuff that feels soft, but isn’t.

Elizabeth McIsaac: It’s the condition for success. I want to give you both a chance to respond to this: when are funders a help, and when are they a hindrance to collaboration? And do you have advice to funders on how to be a good partner, how to show up in the right way?

Liz Weaver: Funders can be incredibly powerful partners around a table when they see themselves as valued and contributing partners – not just sources of money. Think about what a funder brings beyond funding: networks, access to thought leaders, knowledge-based resources, and a genuine commitment to outcomes. In the example I gave about the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction and the role of the community foundation in the City of Hamilton, they were both funders of this work, but they were incredibly committed to the outcomes of the work and willing to put the time into sitting around the table and also in the case of the city, brought in municipal elected officials and other team members, and in the case of the community foundation, brought in their board, as did all the other partners. They led by example.

There are also cases though where the funder is asking for collaboration but isn’t supportive of the work of the collaboration. They are hopeful of the outcomes, but not necessarily the infrastructure or the timing or other conditions of the collaboration. A good conversation about that depending on the complexity of the issue. On a complex issue like homelessness, the journey’s going to be longer. Patience, persistence and focusing on the right outcomes at the right stages of this work are critical, and that’s an important conversation to have with a funder around any kind of collaboration.

Elizabeth McIsaac:  You mentioned funders can be powerful at the table. Power can also be a negative in this dynamic. Is there a way of deflating that in some way because that can become a problem?

Liz Weaver: In multi-sector collaboratives – with individuals with lived and living experience, and business, government and nonprofit partners – each group has power in a different way. The key is understanding that each group has a power that they bring to the conversation and deep knowledge and resonance about their own experience, and it’s the leveraging of those that can be helpful to a collaboration where there are diverse partners. In the Hamilton Roundtable experience where we had 10 individuals with lived experience of poverty, they brought deep knowledge of the lived experience of poverty that none of the other partners around the table had, and that was so critical to identifying which strategies would work, which strategies wouldn’t work, how to move forward. We must look at power in a way that really acknowledges that each group has power and how collaborative experience can benefit from the gifts and the power of each of the groups.

Elizabeth McIsaac: Thank you, and Linda, the last word is yours.

Linda Mollenhauer: I really would stress all the things that we’ve talked about – culture, personality attributes. If you bring genuine empathy to the table, you’re going to have a lot more success. And name the power.  Acknowledge it. Talk about it upfront. Don’t be afraid of it. Even if it’s perceived or real, it doesn’t matter. So, anyway, that would be my final comment on that.

Elizabeth McIsaac: It’s a human endeavor. Organizations are full of humans. So, all the great things of humans and all the challenges of humans are right there in collaboration. Thank you.

Liz Weaver: Amen to that.

Elizabeth McIsaac: Thank you, Liz. Thank you, Linda. This has been fabulous.