Navigating Tricky Partnership Problems (Listener Q&A)

How do you build community connections that actually work?

Have you ever gotten stuck as you try to build community partnerships? 

In this month’s Listener Q&A, Erin and Jessica answer questions about classic partnership problems: 

• What do you do if you can’t find time to build connections during work time
• How do you navigate miscommunication years into a partnership? 
• If I can only do one thing, what should I focus on? 

Links and resources from this episode:

• Sign up for our monthly newsletter: https://oneop.aweb.page/practicing-connection-newsletter
• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/ 
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org 

Transcript

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I'm Erin. My co-host, Jessica, is here as well. Today, we'll be answering listener questions about partnerships. Hi, Jessica. How are you feeling about today's questions?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: They're all terrible.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yikes.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: No, of course I them. I love any questions that get you and I talking and commiserating on solutions. I'm excited to get to it.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, me too. We had several that I've kind of saved up over time that are specifically about partnership building that I think are, like, complimentary with each other. So I'm excited to dig into that today.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I love that that was an intentional theming on your part.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Are you ready for our first question?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Absolutely.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: All right, here we go. [00:01:00] 

“Hi. I've been listening to a lot of your interviews about partnerships. I work one-on-one with military spouses. I know that building community connections or maybe even strategic partnerships would help me do a better job of supporting them, but I am booked all day with client meetings and my performance is measured by how quickly I can help my clients go through our program. How do I make time for community outreach when it isn't supported by the way my job is set up. I don't want to have to use all of my personal time to do it, but I'm starting to think it isn't possible any other way with my workload. Should I just ignore my work-life boundaries and do outreach on my personal time?”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: No, full stop. That is, well, it's no - and absolutely not. I mean, it is really important to you know, maintain some separation, right, in your life. I remember a long time ago, way back when I was a city planner, I was really interested - I was a [00:02:00] city planner in another city from the one that I lived in, and I was really interested in being on the planning commission at the city that I was living in.

And through a series of circumstances that got put on pause and frankly, the more and more I thought about it, when the mayor of the city I live in reached out to me and said, "Hey, I'd encourage you to, you know, apply to be on our plan commission," I was like, "Wait, I'm going to go to work all day and do city planning stuff, and then I'm going to come home and do city planning stuff: I might want to rethink this. There are other ways to give back to my community." 

And so, it is really important to kind of maintain some sort of boundary between your work and your personal time. My suggestions in this situation, I can not only relate to it, but understand the difficulties, especially when I think in this case you said that performance is measured [00:03:00] by how quickly you can kind of get the clients through.

I would actually start maybe with your supervisor and, you know, sharing a little bit that you have a goal to connect with other people in the community who are working on issues of importance to your clients, so that you can actually serve your clients better. They may be able to then support you in finding some relief somehow in your schedule and maybe not.

And if there's no way to fold this kind of partnership work into work hours, maybe there's a way to make it kind of fun and pleasurable related to, you know, your personal time. So maybe there's a coalition that you're really interested in connecting with people on but you just don't have the space to go to their meetings and to support them in any other way.

Maybe they're having a fundraiser and you can just show up at that fundraiser and just contribute to it somehow or, you [00:04:00] can just kind of be part of the fun parts of it. That might be one thing you can do, and then you're not giving all of your personal time away to that, right?

An example I have is I know someone who their thing is throwing darts. Like they compete in dart tournaments all the time, and they're putting together a charity dart tournament for a charity that they support. And so perhaps there are things like that. If your thing is, fill in the blank, you know, then maybe that's something that you could kind of combine it into something pleasurable.

But I would start with your supervisor and make the case that this is something that could actually help you move your clients through the process. Or it could help you with your client work and perhaps there can be some relief there. 

Erin, what do you think?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. I think you made a lot of good points. I don't have a hard no, which is shocking to me. I'm like somewhat [00:05:00] notorious in my workplace for being like, "Do you need help with boundaries? Go talk to Erin. She's got the best ones." And I was like, "Wow, that's so nice of you to say. I've worked hard on them."

I think specifically to the question about, “Should I ignore my work-life boundaries and do outreach on my personal time?” My answer is, you shouldn't ignore your boundaries, but if after you've talked to your supervisor, it's clear you won't be able to get work time to do it, can you shift them? Like, don't throw your boundaries completely out the window.

You're like, "Okay, I don't like it, but the reality is I will not be able to do this during my work time, and I can't use my breaks or my lunch to do it because I need those for my brain." 

Especially if you're in client meetings all day long, do not use your breaks to have more meetings. Go rest your brain.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: So glad you brought that up, Erin. That was on my mind too. It's like, don't use your breaks to do that.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Like, maybe if you're extroverted and it's refreshing to talk casually with a person, you [00:06:00] could have a lunch with someone, maybe, but genuinely don't try to shove this into your breaks because it's not enough time, you'll be stressed out and you won't get the brain break that you need to not completely burn yourself out.

But if you are going to do it after work, I think it's really helpful to kind of pause and ask yourself, “What limits am I going to put on the time and money and energy that I'm going to expend on this?” And so I think it's really helpful, if you have to use your personal time, be the most strategic you've ever been.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Think about, okay, what connections are going to most serve me, and how do I build those?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That's one option. The other option is be very unstrategic and go for what is going to be the most fun thing, because genuinely some of the most interesting networking that I have done is when I've just gone to do something fun that I wanted to [00:07:00] do, and I was like, "Okay, I'm networking with people in my community by going to this free salsa class."

And then I met people and had these really interesting conversations about the work that I was doing and the work they were doing. And, you know, obviously, we make a podcast for our job that's not everybody's life, but I think sometimes, especially if you're just trying to get to know people in your community, you can go to a community event that is going to be fun.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Go have fun and just talk to people and intentionally make friendships with people who you don't know.

So if you're going to go do a fun thing, don't just go with your best friend who you've already met and don't talk to anybody else. Go and talk to other people.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I would say things like chambers of commerce and Rotary clubs. I know a lot of people think, I mean, yes, they're focused on business for sure, but there's a lot of nonprofits that belong to them as well, certainly they're a more formalized sort of way, but they're always having events.

I've [00:08:00] heard really great things about Rotary clubs in particular, and I used to work for a Chamber of Commerce, so I know what those events are like and they can be a whole lot of fun.

A lot of people don't like them because of the networking aspect and, you know, we talk a lot about how to have those conversations and how to talk with people, how to start relationships with people through conversations,

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. I will also add one last thing, which is one of the things I've really learned about work-life balance is that in order to have balance, when you leave work, you can't just do nothing. Find a way to do something in your off time. I think that may also help it feel less like it's stealing from you to do this in your off work time, if you also make time when you're out of work to do something you care about.

And, like, obviously capacity is a real [00:09:00] issue. I'm not saying burn yourself out. I'm not saying hurt yourself or stop sleeping. I've seen people really burn themselves out by like going really hard on networking, and going really hard on everything and then never sleeping. And I would never say do that because that's miserable.

Like, long-term, it's very miserable. But I do think if you are spending, say you're committing to a half an hour a week of non-work time doing intentional networking - that's just a really arbitrary number. Also commit 30 minutes of time to doing something that you absolutely love doing, not chores not taking -

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Not games on your phone, unless you truly enjoy that, I guess.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I, you know, save games on your phone for your 15-minute break in between client meetings and your lunch. Like, that's when your brain needs a break, and you need to just play those games on your phone. Because I have found it's so much easier to not resent the amount of time I'm networking outside of work [00:10:00] if I'm also doing fun stuff outside of work.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: That's great. Let's go to the next question. Okay, so I've got this one:

‘“What do you do when you're already into a partnership and you realize you aren't aligned on core values like you thought? My team recently started having conflict with a partner org we've had for two years, when we realized we've been using the same words to mean different things. Now things are tense as we started having convos about it, conversations, and we can see the partner org withdrawing and thinking of us more and more as outsiders, to save face with than collaborators. Is this a trust thing? Is this something else? How do we tell if we should push through or let the partnership die?”

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wow. Okay. A lot to unpack there.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Is it a trust thing? I mean, probably a little bit if they're drawing away. [00:11:00] If you can tell that they're starting to treat you as outsiders, something is hard there. 

I think it's possible it might also be a process thing. I find in partnerships it's rarely just one thing that makes it hard especially, you know, you didn't say what words you have different definitions for.

So I feel a little bad because I don't have specifics to get into, but I think often what I see in collaborations is there's different communication norms, or there's different decision making norms and then you think you're going along together, but then suddenly there's tension.

Yeah, wow. Okay. I think you might have more advice on that, so I'm gonna let you dig into those things.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I appreciate what you were saying though, because this is the stuff that, these norms and coming to like a shared purpose, some shared values, these are the [00:12:00] things that consistently I've seen groups want to skip. They're like, "Hey, we're adults. We can handle this." And even if they do, even if you've got - I saw a reaction. Did you want to react? Did you want to share something about that?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. I just ... Yes, you're totally right. People want to skip the, like, “What is our purpose? What are our norms? How do we collaborate with each other?” 

Nobody ever wants to have the, “How do we have conflict” conversation at the beginning of the relationship. Both personal relationships and professional relationships. And then, people have breakdowns of communication and then they fight and they don't have an understanding of, "Okay, how are we going to do this though?"

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So that was my reaction. I was just like, "Oh man, you're so right. People don't think about how to fight before they have fights."

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. I mean, look, even if you went through the work, and I've seen a lot of groups, they're willing to go through the work of talking [00:13:00] about, “What's our shared purpose going to be? What's our shared goals, our even values?” Like some of them are willing to have those conversations, but they don't often get into the weeds of defining them.

They'll be like, "Okay, you know, our values are ... " And they'll kind of have, you know, three words separated by periods, right? Like it'll be almost more like a tagline, right? You know, trust -

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Confidentiality.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right? “These are our values.” And then there's no like definition, a clear cut definition of like, I mean, team values are literally how internally you are going to act so that you are living your values and moving toward your purpose.

So not only are they internally how you're going to act with each other, but they're also values that can be acted upon in a way that the external world can see that you're living your values, that [00:14:00] you're working toward a shared purpose.

And so my advice is to at the outset, right from the beginning, define, define, define. Define shared definition, shared agreement on what the definitions are, define what the words mean and what they don't mean, right? Not just, “This is what it means,” but also, “Here's what we're leaving out.”

Like, “These are the things that we don't mean by this term or by this word,” right? What's included? What's not included? This is really a classic issue, and so I said define this at the outset. That is the ideal, of course and not only define it at the outset, but also keep revisiting, like, “Do we still mean this? Does this still match what we mean?” 

And at the beginning, it can feel a little repetitive and weird to keep revisiting it, but it is still important, and at some point a new person [00:15:00] is going to join. They're going to be like, "Whoa, wait a second, that's not how I would think of that term." And so then you can invite conversation about, "Okay, is this still what we mean?"

So, defining at the outset, that's ideal. I think it is never too late though to redefine your group principles, or to define, to say, "Hey, wait a second, we're having some problems here. Maybe we need to actually come up with a set of principles." 

And in fact, I would say that you should, if you've got group principles, you should review them regularly together. If you don't have them, you can define it now. Unless things have gotten toxic in your relationship with this other organization, right?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Okay. So I think you raised some really good points, and just this question was a great question, and also there were, like, four questions in it. 

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I know.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So I kind of talked about, like, realizing your values don't align, and [00:16:00] reopening the conversation, and I would encourage in most cases to be more direct in your communication than you would maybe be comfortable with.

Of course, that is not appropriate in all contexts. Your mileage may vary if you're from - I have heard that if you're from the South, sometimes really direct communication is not responded too well. I've found sometimes in the Midwest, really direct communication has not responded too well. My family was not from the Midwest, we moved here, we learned the hard way.

And also I have found sometimes that in this situation where it's clear that there's tension, being the person who's willing to take on, like, the shame of naming the tension and just being like, "Hey, I'm noticing we're having tension around this. I think we need to have a conversation. I know it's probably gonna be a little uncomfortable, but I think it's going to be easier to tell how to move forward if we actually talk about it. " 

And then actually talk about it and don't dance around it and just say, [00:17:00] "Hey, we think this word means this. It seems to us like you mean this. Are we correct in that? Are we getting it right?" And then give them space to communicate what's happening with them.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Even say it, like, “Here's how we look at this word or this term, and you find out how they're looking at it now the conversation,” I think can become, in the context of us working together, “Are these at all compatible and how can we define this together?”

Like, “How can we come to a shared understanding of what this means?”

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. I think especially in the question they said something about like, “Viewing us as outsiders to save face with.” 

So that tells me they feel like they need to perform a kind of way or like they can't be imperfect.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hmm. Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And so I think that's part of why that direct conversation will really help, because [00:18:00] then you say, "Okay let's just figure it out, because there's no shame if we need to pivot how we're working together, or if we want to change what our collaboration looks like. We just want us to be on the same page." 

And so I want to quickly just address the very last question, “How do we tell if we should push through or let the partnership die?” And I think for me, the answer to that is there's no one single thing that's going to automatically tell you.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: If you haven't directly addressed, "Hey, I'm noticing a conflict, can we talk about it?” try that first, you know? 

Like don't just let a partnership die or ghost on a partnership before you have the challenging, slightly uncomfortable, direct conversation about, "Hey, it seems like we're miscommunicating. It seems like maybe we need to renegotiate how we want to collaborate with each other. Are you open to having that conversation with us? The work that we do is important and making sure that [00:19:00] our partnership is working for both of us is also important to us.” 

And I think being willing to have that conversation should be your first approach. And then if in that conversation you're realizing, "Oh, we aren't compatible,” is there a way you can coordinate with each other if you're not collaborating? Is there a way you can stay in contact and like, do parallel work, maybe not collaborating on things but referring people to each other?" 

There are ways you can work with people that aren't directly collaborating on projects, and maybe that's a better fit for your organizational structures and your values and how you have to use money. 

And we work at Extension, which is like this really interesting combination of university bureaucracy and county government system. We work with nonprofits and we work with businesses

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Local governments too.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Everybody has different timelines. Everybody has different ways of dealing with money, and sometimes it's just not super [00:20:00] compatible. And that doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means that you have to maybe pivot how you're working with each other.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. For someone who thought that you weren't going to have as much to say on this, I think you contributed such a rich answer.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay, great. Final question:

“If I only have time to do one thing to upskill my collaboration, what should I focus on?”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I think the single best thing that we can do is sort of, like, step zero instead of, like, step one, which is knowing yourself about as well as you can. Because you're always changing. 

So that means continually learning about yourself. Like, for example, what from your past or your present influences how you think and act? What are your preferences? What are your triggers? How do you trust? Do you trust immediately until someone has broken that trust, or do you trust not at [00:21:00] all until someone has earned it? Right.

What are your boundaries? Learn them and communicate them when necessary. I think that if you only have time to do that, get to know yourself: make it a thing that you do, continually be curious about yourself.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Well, that's a good answer.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Like, “This person said this and it made me feel something.” Well, what did it make you feel? Why do you think it made you feel that way? Really think about that. 

The more you do that, the faster that thinking about yourself happens, the faster your kind of reflections happen, and yeah, that's my answer.

What do you think?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Oh, I have two that are tied and I'm having a hard time picking which one is the one you should really do. I think I'm going to cheat and say that they're combined. 

Okay. So I think, and I'm very biased, but I think the most important thing you can do is practice communication skills, [00:22:00] specifically how to be direct and kind. I think there is so much room for miscommunication, especially if you're collaborating with people who are different than you, and learning to express yourself clearly. 

And especially, expressing complex ideas simply and directly can go such a huge way. It can take you so far in terms of being able to collaborate with different kinds of people, people who don't already know your field and the jargon of your field.

And I think if you're like, “Communication skills are just so broad, that's too broad of a category, Erin. Narrow it down for me.” I specifically want you to think about power dynamics and how you communicate across them. So what power do you have, are you wielding it on purpose and how do you communicate?

And that means sometimes you need to pause [00:23:00] before you talk in this space, because you have a lot of power and you'll shut down the conversation if you jump in too soon. 

JESSICA BECKENDORF: And in those situations, Erin, I just want to quickly add, because I've been in a room before and I've talked about this here, where a question was asked and everybody in the room looked to this one person who didn't have any positional power in the room but had, like, monetary and political capital in that community. And everyone wanted that person to answer. 

They were afraid to say anything until that person answered, not because this person was particularly threatening or anything. And as that person, not just holding back but maybe inviting and saying, like, "I would love to hear from a couple of other folks on this. I appreciate everything you bring as well."

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That's a great example.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Holding back and/or inviting, yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I think too, it's really easy to feel in some situations that you don't have power. But if you're in a collaboration with other [00:24:00] people and you're serving the same clients, that's a weird term for it, maybe not everybody uses the word clients, but we'll use that one because it's pretty clear.

So if you're trying to collaborate, to offer services to the same group of people, you also have power in that situation because you know that audience, you work with that audience, you can't speak fully to their experience because you maybe are not a part of that audience. But I think it's important to know that if you are going to collaborate with someone, you will be bringing something to the collaboration and with that comes power.

And so noticing, “How do people respond to me when I'm in a room? How do I make sure I'm both participating and leaving space for others to participate?” 

I personally get a lot of feedback that I'm intimidating. Because I'm very confident and I'm very comfortable saying what I think. So when I am walking into a room, I'm thinking a lot about, “Am I leaving space for other people? Am [00:25:00] I  leaving space for people to disagree with me, without being afraid?” 

Which feels like, I mean, I think I'm a really cheerful, jolly person. And so I don't think of myself as being intimidating. People are like, "Well, Erin, you're just so confident and you aren't afraid to be called out. You're not afraid to publicly change your mind if someone brings up a good point." 

And I was like, "Oh, okay. That's intimida-" like it wouldn't have occurred to me that that was intimidating.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: That's really interesting. I've not had that feedback, but I've never been the one in the room who - I've never been afraid. I'm not necessarily confident, I don't come off as confident, but I'm not afraid to ask questions or to say, "Well, what if this, or what if that?”

And the thing is, in the moment, I think I often have seen the feedback has been a lot of silence, or maybe it's like, "Well, we'll get to that later, whatever." But then after the meeting is when I have people reaching out to me and thanking me for, like, [00:26:00] saying what I said, for naming whatever it was that I was noticing.

The thing is, I'm doing it in a way where that's just part of what I feel I think I need to do in the moment, but I'm not, like, super confident when I do it. But what I'm trying to say here is that those skills maybe will look little bit different to other people, or people will see them differently, or receive them differently.

I am someone who learning to be more direct is a challenge for me, and it's one that I'm interested in learning more about. So I'm glad that we are partnered up, Erin, because I can learn a lot from you!

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wonderful. All right. Any other thoughts before I - we've had a good convo, so I don't want to -

JESSICA BECKENDORF: This is great. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me, and for putting the questions together in such a great themed way. I appreciate it.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. Thank you for joining us. 

If you have a question or a hot take, or you disagree [00:27:00] with any of our advice, we'd love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts. 

You can email us at practicingconnection@onop.org. We would love to hear from you. We see and respond to every message, and we promise not to share anything without your permission.

We'll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing.

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.