Collaborating Well
With more than 150 years of collective experience between them across academia, land stewardship, social-impact network management, nonprofits, and public agencies, Collaborating Well is a group that believes deeply in collaboration as a way to create meaningful change and lasting impact.
Our Objectives
- To enhance the efficacy of collaborative efforts tackling today’s most complex issues
- Prepare individuals to practice collaborative leadership effectively
- Build organizations and communities with a collaborative worldview and inclusive mindset
- Advance and promote collaboration as a vehicle for change
Latest publication:
The Four Dimensions of Collaborative Leadership
Collaboration is one of the most effective approaches to addressing today’s complex issues, yet people are not always adequately prepared to work this way. In this paper, we introduce the Four Dimensions of Collaborative Leadership—developing an interconnected worldview, enhancing interpersonal skills and capacities, creating a sense of belonging, and managing the collaborative process—as a framework for building individual readiness. Because collaboration depends on people working well together, we propose incorporating these into individual professional development opportunities to enable more effective partnerships.
Other Resources Currently Available
Together, we’ll go further: The opportunity of collaborative leadership
Collaboration is one of the most effective approaches to addressing today’s complex issues, yet people are not always adequately prepared to work this way. In this paper, we introduce the Four Dimensions of Collaborative Leadership—developing an interconnected worldview, enhancing interpersonal skills and capacities, creating a sense of belonging, and managing the collaborative process—as a framework for building individual readiness. Because collaboration depends on people working well together, we propose incorporating these into individual professional development opportunities to enable more effective partnerships.
Practicing collaborative leadership: Demonstrating value through evidence of partnership impact
The 21st century’s dynamic natural and social landscapes include increased wildfire fire intensity, unpredictable weather patterns, and demands for equity and justice. The very scale of these challenges requires new and creative approaches to land protection and stewardship; therefore, many conservation leaders and practitioners are exploring new ways to restore and care for the environment as integrated and interconnected landscapes. Landscape stewardship partnerships and networks have significantly grown over the past two decades to collaborate, innovate, and undertake collective action at varying scales. These adaptive cross-boundary partnerships and networks connect local communities, land- and water-managing agencies, private landowners, scientists, tribes, the non-profit sector, and many others to tackle the challenges we face. Because collaboration requires considerable trust and investment, stakeholders are seeking tools to understand its value and methods for measuring and monitoring its impact. However, there is a shortage of research-based frameworks to evaluate the impact of landscape stewardship partnerships practicing collaborative leadership. In this article, the Partnership Impact Model (a trademark of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy) is introduced as a promising impact assessment framework, with highlights from partnerships and networks that have used it. Readers are encouraged to consider this model to both monitor partnership health and to demonstrate its impact.
Putting collaborative leadership into practice: The role of peer learning
Learning and exchange among peers (“peer learning”) is an important process shaping and enabling landscape conservation and stewardship. As a practice that connects practitioners working at the landscape scale within and across regions—and that dedicates time and resources to supporting meaningful exchange—peer learning builds and strengthens the relationships at the core of the collaboration and partnership that are central to meeting shared goals and needs. This article explores peer learning and its role in learning, demonstrating, and building collaborative leadership. It also offers two examples of peer learning initiatives and their on-the-ground outcomes: the Large Landscape Peer Learning Initiative, a program coordinated by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to bring together an international group of landscape conservation practitioners for shared problem-solving; and the Landscape Conservation Catalyst Fund Program, an initiative of the Network for Landscape Conservation to create a learning-exchange community among grantees to support the development of place-based partnerships.
Collaborative Connections: Building Meaningful Relationships
From TSN Conference 2021
featuring Amy Mickel (Sacramento State), Chandni Navalkha (The Lincoln Institute), Sharon Farrell (Golden Gate Parks Conservancy)
Our Authors
Travis Anklam
Travis is the Collaborative Learning Program Director at the University of Montana’s Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy. He leads and supports the Center’s trainings and learning-centered projects while serving as Co-Chair of the University’s graduate certificate program in Natural Resources Conflict Resolution. He enjoys equipping people with skills and resources to bridge differences, learn together, and address challenges facing the landscapes and communities they call home. This includes work with state and federal agencies, Tribal governments and communities, community-based groups, and a range of interests shaping natural resource decisions. Travis has a background in environmental science, education, and facilitation, and has worked at learning centers in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest.
Lisa Brush
Lisa Brush has been leading collaborative conservation initiatives in the environmental sector for more than 25 years. In her role as CEO and Founder of The Stewardship Network, she has engaged thousands of professionals and volunteers in identifying community and stewardship needs of the 21st century. She has facilitated the initiation, growth, and ongoing support of networks and collaborations at all scales across the country. Lisa has worked with all volunteer nonprofits to global NGOs; municipal, state, federal and tribal governments; consultants and contractors; students and researchers; private property owners and more. She has facilitated strategic planning sessions, focus groups, citizen task forces, community visioning sessions, and public involvement and feedback meetings with groups ranging in size from four to four hundred. Lisa believes deeply in the power of people to create positive community change and works to support people and institutions in this endeavor.
She has been involved in all aspects of organizational management including: foundation/agency relationships; grant based project funding; budget tracking; contract negotiation, implementation, accountability; staff and board development.
Lisa serves on numerous boards of directors, has a BA in Science in Society from Wesleyan University, an MS from University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, and is a graduate of Michigan State University’s Great Lakes Leadership Academy.
Sharon Farrell
Sharon Farrell was most recently Executive Vice President of Projects, Stewardship & Science at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. Sharon and her team lead the organization’s project design and delivery, conservation initiatives, community science, restoration, and stewardship programs. She also worked closely with agency partners to oversee the One Tam Initiative, a community initiative to help ensure a healthy future for Mt. Tamalpais.
Prior to joining the Parks Conservancy in 2004, Sharon was the Executive Director of the Watershed Project. Her work included capacity building for “Friends” groups, with a focus on partnership and fund development with municipalities and local governments. Sharon developed training and grants programs to support this work, and forged regional partnerships with other Bay Area non-profit organizations to support community-based stakeholder groups.
Sharon holds a MS in Park Management with emphasis on Ecological Restoration and Community Stewardship, and a BS in Chemistry. Originally from the United Kingdom, she now lives in the East Bay with her wife Sue, their two children, and their dog, Marco.
Shawn Johnson
Shawn Johnson is Director of the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at the University of Montana and co-director of the Center’s graduate certificate program in Natural Resources Conflict Resolution. Shawn organizes and leads strategic planning and capacity building workshops for a wide variety of organizations focused on natural resource policy and management and has served as a facilitator and mediator on issues ranging from land use planning and forest management to conservation priority setting and regional collaboration. For the past ten years, he has helped advance a joint effort between the Center and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy on regional collaboration and large landscape conservation. The joint effort explores questions of policy, leadership, and governance at regional or landscape scales, where there is often a mismatch between the scale of an existing challenge or opportunity and that of existing organizations and jurisdictions. In May 2011, Shawn helped organize and convene a group of large landscape conservation practitioners that led to a new network of practitioners throughout North America who are working to improve community and conservation outcomes at the large landscape scale — the Practitioners’ Network for Large Landscape Conservation. Shawn is co-author, with Matthew McKinney, of Working Across Boundaries: People, Nature, and Regions (Lincoln Institute, 2009). He also contributed to Large Landscape Conservation, A Strategic Framework for Policy and Action (Lincoln Institute, 2010) and Remarkable Beyond Borders: People and Landscapes in the Crown of the Continent (Sonoran Institute, 2010). Prior to his work at the Center, Shawn earned a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and spent three years as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Max Baucus.
Devin Landry
Devin Landry serves as coordinator of the California Landscape Stewardship Network. In this role, he supports the CLSN’s mission of advancing cross-boundary, landscape-scale stewardship through tracking various initiatives, drafting network-wide communications, and event planning. Devin also provides facilitative support to the Network for Landscape Conservation’s Catalyst Fund Peer Learning Cohort, as well as to the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at the University of Montana.
Prior to working in landscape conservation and stewardship, Devin conducted wildlife research across the U.S. Northern Rockies. Whether it’s his background in research, policy, or connecting the two through practice, he maintains a passion for understanding how people connect with nature and place to care for the land and their communities.
Devin holds a B.A. in English and Religious Studies from Skidmore College and a M.S. in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana, where he also gained certification in the Natural Resources Conflict Resolution Program.
Amy Mickel
Dr. Amy Mickel earned her doctorate from University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. She has been a full-time faculty member at Sacramento State since 2000. She has taught in MBA programs domestically and overseas and in the inaugural CA Parks Leadership Development Program. Her research is published in prestigious and international journals such as Academy of Management Review, Human Relations, Journal of Management Education, and Journal of Management Inquiry.
Dr. Mickel has also served the State of California and other organizations as a principal research investigator and consultant, including California Department of Parks and Recreation (Division of Boating &Waterways and OHMVR Division), Delta Protection Commission, and One Tam (Marin, CA). The most recent projects she has completed include: (a) 2018 California Boating Facilities Needs Assessment (Ten Volumes), (b) Recreation & Tourism in the Delta (2019) for Delta Protection Commission, and (c) Generating, Scaling Up, and Sustaining Partnership Impact: One Tam’s First Four Years (2018) and Partnership Impact Evaluation Guide (2019) for One Tam and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.
Chandni Navalkha
Chandni Navalkha is the Program Manager for Land Conservation Programs within the Department of Planning and Urban Form, where she works on projects to advance and accelerate the enduring protection of land and water resources worldwide. Prior to joining the Lincoln Institute, Chandni was a fellow with the Sri Lanka Program for Forest Conservation, conducting research on the impacts of conservation on local livelihoods near the Sinharaja World Heritage Site. Chandni has worked for organizations in North America, Latin America, and South Asia supporting urban, peri-urban, and rural communities involved in voluntary land and resource conservation, and earlier in her career worked in change management for private and public sector organizations as a consultant with Accenture. She holds a Master’s in Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a dual Bachelor of Arts in English and Economics from Cornell University.
Yakuta Poonawalla
Yakuta was born and raised in India, and her love affair with nature began during her first trek to the Indian Himalayas at the age of fifteen. Since that initiation, she has continued to develop her relationship with the natural world, and has worked with various non-profit organizations in India and the US to educate, inspire, and cultivate love and respect for the environment.
She studied Communications and Media with a focus on social issues at Sophia College in Mumbai, India which fueled her passion for women’s rights, and environmental, racial and social justice, and gave her the confidence to pursue a life of intention. Yakuta currently works for the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy where she leads the San Francisco Park Stewardship Program and is developing creative programs that focus on inclusion, cultural relevance, mindfulness and healing. She is a member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee at the Parks Conservancy, and is deeply involved in various initiatives across the park.
When she is not working, you will find her on a trail – either examining a wildflower or in awe of a mountain.
Armando Quintero
Armando Quintero, of San Rafael is the Chair of the California Water Commission and serves as the Executive Director of the University of California, Merced Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He was an independent environmental educator and outdoor trip leader from 1998 to 2008 and held multiple positions with the U.S. National Park Service from 1977 to 1998, including ranger-naturalist, personnelist, district ranger and chief of the special park uses group at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. As an elected Board Member of the Marin Municipal Water District Board of Directors, Mr. Quintero was very involved with the creation of the One Tam Partnership.
Dylan Skybrook
Dylan Skybrook is the Manager of the Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network. Previously, Skybrook was a systems leadership consultant who has worked with United Way, Arts Midwest, Impact Hub Minneapolis/Saint Paul, the Minnesota Social Innovation Lab and many others. Skybrook designed online learning modules on systems thinking and complexity at the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota as well as guest lecturing on the topic at Kaos Pilots in Aarhus, Denmark and the Masters in Strategic Leadership toward Sustainability program at Blekinge Tekniska Hogskola in Karlskrona, Sweden.
Kevin Wright
Kevin Wright is the Government Affairs Manager for Marin County Parks and Member of the Policy Committee and Steering Committee of the California Landscape Stewardship Network. Mr. Wright has a background in forestry and redwood ecology, active transportation planning, and partnership development. He is a Cultural Intelligence trainer at the County of Marin and participates on a Collaborating Well team focused on curriculum development for effective collaboration. His latest paper, Advancing Collaboration In California, describes aspects of California’s policy environment that support collaboration and makes recommendations for furthering regional stewardship approaches. Mr. Wright plays three prominent support roles in team settings: He helps to activate the ideas of others, brings humor and hard work, and challenges himself and team members to reconsider current ways of thinking and doing.