Skills and Techniques for Successful Collaboration: What Works and What Doesn’t?

Chuck Lanigan

BikeBike Annual Conference, August 11^th 2007

Does your group partner or collaborate with other organizations? Would you like to or like to do it better? The goal of this workshop is to establish practical guidelines for setting up and maintaining successful collaborations with other groups and individuals to promote bicycle advocacy and sustainable development. We will explore the following through presentation of concepts and sharing of attendees' own experience:

• Finding opportunities for outreach and collaboration

• Assessing needs, cost/benefit and complementary capabilities among groups

• Establishing working guidelines, degree of alignment and common goals

• Dealing with different organizational styles, cultural identities and ideologies: making the whole greater than the sum of the parts

• Using technology such as e-mail, discussion boards and Wikis mindfully to facilitate collaboration

• Reaching consensus and resolving conflict

• Practicing communication, decision-making, emotional IQ and other skills that help ensure effective collaborations and partnerships

• Keeping members engaged across groups with meaningful activities and dialogue

• Understanding the collaborative life cycle and dynamics, including when and how to end a collaborative relationship

Related Workshops Offered:

• Collectivity, Decision Making Process, and Power Dynamics

• Ally-building: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality in the Biking Community

• University/Bike Coop Collaborations

• Bicycle Collective Network (BCN) Workshop

About the Presenter:

Chuck Lanigan teaches and consults on collaboration and knowledge-sharing for industry and nonprofits and has volunteered at FreeRide in Pittsburgh. He has written for CIO Magazine and other publications and taught at Katz Center for Executive Education (CEE) and Penn State Outreach.

His recent bike and related outdoor adventures include a 240-mile cycling round trip on the Great Allegheny Passage in Pennsylvania on a bike he built and backpacking up Mount Washington, NH. For more information please see his web site at http://waysofknowing.home.comcast.net