John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Effective Leadership

Idea 78: Building partnerships

When spiders' webs unite, they can tie up a lion

Ethiopian proverb

Among the transferable skills of a strategic leader that Socrates identified is attracting allies and helpers. Here I shall call it building partnerships – the fifth generic function of strategic leadership.

The principal necessary condition for a successful alliance or partnership, then, is a shared common aim. The attainment of the end in view, of course, needs to be strongly in the interests of both parties, however they define their interests. If the potential contributions of the partners to the common end are complementary, like those of team members in a real team, so much the better.

Whenever you enter into a partnership or work in a mixed ...