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Role of leaders

People’s opportunities to participate, volunteer, enjoy and work in the sector can be unfairly affected by lots of different structural, systemic and socio-economic factors.

As passionate sector leaders, we all want to change this. But the scale and complexity of the challenge means we can’t succeed if we try and do this alone.

“Tackling inequalities is a multi-agency effort. It cannot be achieved by one part of the system acting alone.” 

The Kings Fund, 2022

By working together, towards mutual goals, leaders can stand united in their efforts, share insight, ideas and learning, pool capacity and resources and benefit from different strengths, lived experiences and perspectives. 

Leaders may be laser focused on their internal goals, strategies or teams. By taking a step back from day-to-day operations, leaders have an exciting opportunity to use their role and influence to create dynamic partnerships and work collaboratively across and beyond organisational and sector boundaries to help tackle inequalities. 

Partnerships can be internal and external. They might include colleagues and partners from other organisations and sectors that can influence people’s activity levels, like councils, health, education, social services, planning and housing providers.

Leaders also have a pivotal role to play in ensuring better connections with the people and communities that are currently underserved by sport and physical activity and their trusted networks. Tacking inequalities and partnership working go hand in hand.

Benefits and opportunities

Wherever a leader is in their journey, adopting a collaborative approach will be of lasting and significant benefit to their work and its impact.  

Working internally

Working with internal colleagues, across different departments, and with board and committee members, can help ensure mutual understanding, buy-in and more diverse contributions to strategic and daily operations. 

By encouraging cross team or inter-departmental working leaders can benefit from:

  • A diverse range of experiences, fresh perspectives and new ideas.
  • Less siloed working.
  • Improved efficiency, productivity and visibility.
  • Developing skills and practices within their workforce. 
  • More coherent decision making and stronger business cases.
  • Greater buy-in from across their organisation which can help alleviate the battle of persuasion and gain decisive support for action.
  • Improved reputation, financial viability and organisational resilience.   

Working externally

By developing partnerships and working collaboratively with external partners, including the communities and networks they’re looking to support, leaders can benefit from:

  • An enhanced awareness of local landscapes, assets and gaps in provision.
  • A clearer understanding of the inequalities and barriers faced by underserved communities and under-represented groups.
  • The opportunity to work together, speak and act with a louder, united voice, to advocate for change at a systemic level.
  • The ability to attract, pool and share resources to generate efficiencies and avoid duplication of effort.
  • The chance to engage and work directly with communities to co-design effective solutions to existing challenges.
  • Being able to draw on the skills, knowledge, influence and power of other leaders and organisations to maximise reach and impact.  
  • Greater opportunity to forge relationships with other leaders and networks enabling them to support, develop and learn from each other.
  • Positively affecting change within organisations, communities, policies and systems.
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Leadership traits

Leaders who are successful at developing meaningful partnerships often exhibit similar traits. Being a confident and effective communicator, having the ability to identify opportunities and work in a flexible way are also highly beneficial. More information can be found in our ‘leadership fundamentals’ page.  

Areas for action

While many leaders have partnership working engrained in their day-to-day, some need more support on how to get started.

Areas for action will differ depending on their current ways of working, the contexts they’re working in and whether they’re developing internal or external partnerships. 

When working internally, it’s important for leaders to:  

  • Create a collaborative environment and make space for partnership working in internal planning and decision-making processes, policies and budgets.
  • Promote a culture where people are listened to and valued.
  • Involve the voices of everyone in a team to shape how an organisation operates to tackle inequalities.
  • Remind everyone that they have an important role to play in tackling inequalities.

When working externally, there are often more complexities, but there are some overlapping principles to pay particular attention to. 

“Any kind of partnership working needs to begin with listening, understanding and sharing. People may not have the same starting point, have a different set of priorities, or see a problem in a different way. They may also have different understandings… Or they may use different language to talk about the same problem. All of this demonstrates the value of taking time to really listen to people and understand their perspective, values and priorities while also sharing your own. This approach provides an effective baseline from which to explore shared ways of working and potential partnerships.”

New Local Government Network, 2020

What can you do?

When thinking about working in partnership, it can be beneficial to:

 

Be clear about your goals 

Avoid building partnerships for the sake of it, work out what you want to achieve by working in partnership.  

Work with teams or organisations to build shared goals

Work to find partners with shared values who can and want to tackle inequalities. The right partners can give you relevant insight and help you access the communities and networks you’re aiming to work with. Be open to new opportunities - sometimes shared goals aren’t immediately obvious, taking the time to network to explore commonalities and build understanding and trust can be very beneficial.

Keep people at the heart of everything you do

Tackling inequalities is about meeting the needs of people, in particular underserved communities, and removing the barriers they face to being active. Support and engage them wherever you can and keep them at the heart of everything you do whilst avoiding assumptions 

Focus on building relationships and be patient

Some partnerships take time to form, be patient and commit time to understanding each other. Formalities can be a blocker, so be comfortable with developing strong relationships instead of achieving immediate solutions. Remember partnership working is critical for leaders at all levels – people in front facing roles, often hold incredibly valuable existing relationships and insights. 

Identify the mutual benefits and find common ground

The most productive partnerships are two-way and offer tangible benefits to everyone involved. Be clear about why you’d like to work with each partner, the value you can add and how it can benefit them. It’s important to focus on commonalities, rather than your own goals, so try to look ahead and create a shared purpose or mission. 

Agree how and what you can best work on together

Work together to determine the best way to achieve your mutual goals and the resources you can each bring to the partnership. Be prepared to navigate differences in your cultures, working practices, procedures, resources and timelines. Some partners prefer to work informally, whereas others may want to put in place a formal agreement like a memorandum of understanding, partnership agreement or outcomes framework to guide your work together. If you’re looking to agree something formal, don’t jump in too soon, be sure to do this at the right time. 

Agree what success looks like

It’s important to know what you’re aiming for, so it’s useful for all partners to determine what success looks and feels like to them. This is likely to vary – for some it might be simply about forging new alliances or sharing insight and learning, for others shared metrics or performance indicators might be preferable. Having a mix of both can be helpful.

Communicate clearly, openly and regularly

Be clear and confident in your two-way communication. Invest in the full partnership, not just your own role in it. Actively listen and share with each other. Be prepared to negotiate and compromise and willing to learn and change. Be considered about how you say things, do your best to avoid jargon or divisive language. Gather and maintain momentum by having regular meetings or informal catchups to share your experiences, challenges and successes. 

Work with humility

Be open to and welcoming of feedback, new ideas, constructive challenge and opinions. Be willing to ask others for help, listen to their advice and ask probing questions. Be open to recognising your strengths and areas for improvement. Leave your title and status at the door and work at a level that everyone can understand and benefit from. Diversity of thought and experience can benefit leaders by improving their current, or develop new, approaches to existing problems.

Celebrate together and share your successes!

Our networks

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Leading the Movement is committed to connecting leaders who are working to tackle inequalities. Our ‘About us’ page shares more details of how we intend to do this. 

We know we don’t have all the answers, so we’re working in partnership with fantastic groups of leaders from organisations and networks that are keen to be part of your leadership journey and offer support too. 

Our networks

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Working to tackle inequalities requires real change. It takes strong leadership and often needs a deliberate shift in the way we do things and who we do them with. 

We can’t achieve this change alone. We’re stronger when we join forces and work collaboratively to achieve shared goals. 

By identifying and working with the right partners, in the right way, leaders can reap the benefits and build formidable networks and opportunities that support the change we all want to see.