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Develop Your Collaborative Leadership & Governance Approach

Collaboration is at the core of Tamarack’s approach to community change. From our inception as an organization, our community-based partners were encouraged to build their change efforts to include multi-sector partners, collaborating across traditional and non-traditional leaders in the community. 

To help equip you in your own leadership journey, Co-CEO Liz Weaver is launching the Collaborative Leadership & Governance series. This collection of articles and papers will help inform both the process and people aspects of effective collaboration, and provide you with a wide range of practical ideas and resources for pushing your own work forward. We'll be releasing over 20 short papers over the next six to eight months as part of our effort to equip changemakers to make their collaborative work more inclusive.

Sign up below to receive email updates when new resources are launched as part of the 2022 Collaborative Leadership & Governance Resource Series. 

Join us, and be one of the first to explore this new resource.

The 2022 Collaborative Leadership & Governance Series

Access all released papers and articles below. We'll include previews for upcoming resources as they become available. Be sure to sign-up for first access of all of our new series resources!

1. Collaboration: A Spectrum of Approaches
By Liz Weaver

Collaboration is seen as imperative when communities and groups are seeking to tackle complex challenges or move from idea to impact. Having clarity about the nature of the collaborative effort is an important first step in this process. This paper by Liz Weaver examines the various kinds of agreements necessary for collaboration, how to use the Collaboration Spectrum tool to establish what kind of relationships they are hoping to build, and how that will impact their approach to working well with others.

Read Collaboration: A Spectrum of Approaches

2. Collaboration: Beginnings & Endings

By Liz Weaver

With the pressure to meet multiple demands on our time, we often rush into collaboration and think less about launching well, and even less about ending well. Instead, many collaborative efforts focus on ‘the what’: the end goal of the collaborative rather than ensuring that the individuals around the collaborative table are connected, engaged and prepared to successfully achieve the shared purpose or goal of the collaborative process.

This paper will address two critical parts of the collaborative process: the beginning and the ending. Both are integral. A good beginning sets the foundations for an effective collaborative experience. A strong ending creates the opportunity for reflection and learning. A strong ending also creates the conditions for future collaboratives to be successful.

Read Collaboration: Beginnings and Endings

3. Collaboration: The Act of Building Trust

By Liz Weaver

Trust is a key aspect of collaborative work, but we often dive into collaboration without truly understanding or embracing the human side of this work. As we work to tackle complex problems, we know that we must bring different voices and experiences to the table. How can we do this effectively when we don’t build practices which engage others and build trust?

This paper will address the act of building trust in a collaborative setting, the importance of an equity lens, and how engagement can build trust.

Read Collaboration: The Act of Building Trust

4. Collaboration: The Role of the Convener

By Liz Weaver

The role of a convener of a collaboration is critical to the overall success and impact of the shared effort. A convener is an individual or group of individuals who take the lead responsibility for initiating the collaborative effort. This person or group is critical in the early stages of the collaboration and are responsible for initiating the collaborative idea and seeking to move forward the opportunity.

This paper explores the various aspect of the convenor role - roles, characteristics, and key competencies.

Read Collaboration: The Role of the Convener

5. Collaboration: What Problem are You trying to Solve?

By Liz Weaver & Sylvia Cheuy 

One of the most challenging aspects of working collaboratively – particularly when there are different perspectives about the issue being addressed – is to reach a shared understanding of that issue and how best to address it. There are two dimensions that partners must agree on regarding the issue they are hoping to solve before beginning to work together to discover promising solutions.

This paper explores these two dimensions- Confirming what type of problem you are trying to solve, and defining the goal(s) of the hoped-for solution.

Read Collaboration: What Problem Are You Trying to Solve?

6. Collaboration: The Skillsets and Mindsets of Collaborative Leaders

By Liz Weaver
 

Both our collaborative mindsets and skillsets are decisions we make about how we want to participate. Sometimes these are conscious decisions that we make and commit to, and sometimes they are less obvious.

This paper explores how to be an effective and impactful leader, considering both your mindset about collaboration and the skills you have to offer your collaborative partners can influence the success of the experience.

ABOUT

Tamarack: A Connected Force for Community Change

Tamarack was founded in 2001 by Alan Broadbent of the Avana Capital Corporation and Maytree (Foundation) and Paul Born, Co CEO of Tamarack. Their hope was to create an institute that would deeply understand how community change can happen and would help organizations and citizens work better together for a collective impact.

As a small organization, Tamarack had two big goals. The first was to establish a learning centre that would provide research and document real stories, exemplary practice and effective applications for community change. We now disseminate the lessons learned with a growing network of 35,000 changemakers in Canada, the US and around the world. The second was to apply what we learned to end poverty. Since 2001, we have effectively helped more than one million households rise out of poverty and have engaged more than 350 municipalities represented in 83 regions as we continue pressing toward our goal of ending poverty in Canada.

Tamarack 2030 represents our emerging vision for the future. Over the last 20 years, we have learned that community change happens when individuals and networks have the skills, knowledge and intention to work collectively around a community goal and focus on impact. Tamarack brings a unique perspective weaving together a broad, diverse and connected membership. These members invest in their shared future. But most importantly, they are having an impact.

View Our 20 Year Timeline