Collaborative Competencies

<p></p> <p>Rick Morse is a School of Government faculty member.</p> <p>Collaborative governance in its many forms, from intergovernmental and public-private partnerships to stakeholder consensus building processes, is becoming more and more common across the U.S. and will continue to be so due to the highly interconnected nature of public problems. The realm of community economic development in particular exemplifies the need for and value of partnerships across traditional boundaries, as the example of the Wayne County Development Alliance demonstrates. But collaboration is inherently difficult, and it “requires people to develop and put to use collaborative behaviors, skills, and tools in order for it to be most effective.” Thus it is critically important for public and nonprofit development agencies to develop and nurture collaborative competencies. The University Network for Collaborative Governance (UNCG), in partnership with the Policy Consensus Initiative, recently published a Guide to Collaborative Competencies. The rest of this post will summarize and review this important new resource and offer suggestions on how it might be utilized in community and economic development (as well as other public service) organizations.</p> <p>The Guide to Collaborative Competencies is a 28 page  monograph that pulls together identified collaborative competencies from a variety of sources, including U.S. OPM, ICMA, and Cooperative Extension. The term competency is used here to imply mastery of various skill sets (knowledge, tools, and techniques). A working group of the UNCG reviewed the variety of sources and synthesized them into five broad competency groupings that encompass ten specific skill sets. They also refined their work based on feedback [...]</p>