Maintaining the Value of Teamwork through Effective Partnering

Across the country, team members spend countless hours in mandated and voluntary early-project partnering efforts. As a facilitator for the past 25 years, I have to report honestly that the results of these efforts have been decidedly mixed: some teams reap the benefits of stronger team relationships and the ability to work through inevitable conflict, while others perpetuate negative zero-sum behavior that benefits no one, least of which the project. While certainly the quality of partnering efforts can explain some of the difference in post-partnering behavior and more can be explained by the values/vision of the team members themselves, I believe that the long-term benefits of partnering can be strengthened by teams who take initiative to manage partnering as a core project activity throughout the project’s duration.

Maintaining partnering should be part of the project management plan for any project, with the project manager taking ownership for ongoing team relationship maintenance and facilitation. While larger or more complex projects may require the talents of an outside facilitator to maintain objectivity and focus, most project managers can use their strong talents in communication and leadership to maintain the focus on partnership and teamwork. I recommend two key strategies to maximize the value of partnering: establishing partnering metrics during the partnering session and making partnering a regular agenda item for every OAC (Owner, Architect, Contractor) meeting.


I’ve written about team metrics before, so let me extend that “conversation”. We know from performance management literature that accountability is easier when we set measurable targets; this works for both individual employees and teams. The challenge comes in creating measurable targets in an inherently subjective area such as teamwork. However, when I ask team members to help develop partnership metrics during partnering meetings, I’m seeing remarkable similarities, indicating that team members do indeed know what teamwork looks like and how it influences project outcomes.


At the start of a project partnering session, I ask team members, “As the project progresses, how will we know partnering is working?” As a result of the ensuing discussion, common partnering metrics include the following:

• Speed of decision-making


• Speed of dispute resolution


• Number of disputes requiring escalation


• Perceived effectiveness of communication across team members


• Number of unanticipated changes


• Perception of value of project changes


• Maintenance of user experience/expectations


These are just a few of the items team members have developed across partnering sessions; many more relate specifically to the characteristics of the particular projects. Importantly, for teams that use metrics as part of their overall project management process, these items are measured at regular intervals with data collected from all team members, making them true measures of team performance, not any particular entity. For teams using a longer set of project partnering metrics, I recommend bundling the measures into clearly defined categories such as Communication, Decision-Making, Project Management, Technology, and User Experience to facilitate clearer, more streamlined conversation about performance.

Project managers (or any person in a leadership role) can use the partnering measures to drive conversation about partnering at monthly OAC and regular team meetings. However, to be effective, ground rules for this discussion need to be carefully articulated and enforced by the team. The conversation is about team vs. individual performance, and solutions need to be team-based vs. focused on any individual or entity. If partnering is on the agenda for every meeting, with a standard amount of time allotted to discussion, team members build comfort discussing teamwork and recommendations for improving it throughout the duration of the project. Further, by having a regular conversation about partnering and partnership, team members are more likely to remain vigilant about keeping the partnering agreements they made at the beginning of the project.

At key points in the project’s schedule, the entire team can reconvene to reinvigorate partnership, using the established measures to objectively reassess and then discuss how the team is doing relative to maintaining teamwork. For identified challenge areas, the team can discuss possible changes or interventions. This mid-project focus on partnering has three distinct benefits: it communicates that the leadership team values teamwork; it involves the entire team in the maintenance of teamwork and the use of teaming to resolve issues; and it socializes new team members to the team’s values relative to partnering and teamwork.

Ultimately, while my industry colleagues and I do a good job helping teams start projects off strongly with well-planned and facilitated partnering sessions, this is not enough to help a team maintain partnering behaviors throughout the project’s duration. Project teams – and project managers – who believe in the value of partnering, take ownership for the process, use measurement to drive accountability, and continue the partnering efforts all the way to successful project completion. Project managers who take ownership for partnering communicate to their teams that partnership has value and that the team can – and will – use partnering values to resolve issues and add value to the entire team.