Leaders and managers of health partnerships face unique and daunting challenges. They need to engage a heterogeneous group of partners over whom they have little or no authority. Moreover, to achieve the full potential of collaboration, they need to be able to leverage the perspectives, resources, and skills of diverse partners to accomplish health objectives that no single partner could bring about alone. In spite of these challenges and the fact that many health partnerships fail to thrive, little is known about the effectiveness of leadership and management in health partnerships or the particular kinds of leadership and management capacities that need to be strengthened. This presentation will report results from a national, cross-sectional study that used valid and reliable measures to collect information from 815 individuals in 63 health partnerships. The study documented that the effectiveness of both leadership and management are strongly related to levels of partnership synergy (i.e., the extent to which the perspectives, resources, and skills of partners strengthens the thinking and actions of the group) and partner satisfaction, which has implications for partner commitment and involvement. Additionally, partners' ratings indicated that the effectiveness of leadership and management in their partnerships was far from optimal. The authors will describe the specific leadership and management capacities measured in the study, highlighting those most in need of improvement. They will also discuss how the findings of the study are being used to develop evaluation tools and training programs for leaders and managers of health partnerships. See www.cacsh.org
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to: (1) articulate the unique challenges that leaders and managers of partnerships face; (2) identify leadership and management capacities that are critical in realizing the full potential of collaboration.www.cacsh.
Keywords: Leadership, Collaboration
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
Disclosure not received
Relationship: Not Received.