In my experience as instructional coach, one of the major ideas that comes up in every training session or in any book on coaching is the idea of partnership. To be effective as a coach, one must partner with those with whom he or she is working.

This is an idea that fits just as well with teachers working with each other, with collaborative teams working together and with administrators working with teachers or teams. To be most effective, we must apply partnership principles to our conversations and collaborations with each other. What are these partnership principles that allow us to be most effective working together? Jim Knight lays out some partnership Principles in his book, Instructional Coaching [Knight, 2005, Chapter 3], that can be applied to all types of collaboration.

First, there must be equality. To work together we must see each other as equals. While we won’t agree on everything, we can agree that each person has equally valid ideas and that these ideas are worth consideration. Through dialogue we seek to understand these ideas and refine them into better ways of reaching our students.

Partners must also have choice. For a partnership to work, all participants must be free to decide if and how they will use the information and ideas gained from the dialogue with partners. If after reflection a partner chooses to not use an idea, that idea is not invalidated but is filed away in a “toolbox” of knowledge for future reference or use as the partner see fit. If a partner chooses to make use of the knowledge gained, they must have the opportunity to put it into practice and determine its effectiveness for themselves.

All partners must have a voice in the process. Each partner must have an opportunity to present his or her ideas and have them considered by others. Part of this involves the skill of listening without interruption to the partner speaking and carefully reflecting on the ideas presented before responding.

A final principle is the principle of reciprocity. In a true partnership one must seek to not only share knowledge but to receive knowledge from a partner. In this concept of equal sharing, all participants are able to grow and build skills that can be applied in the future by all those involved.

The next time you meet as a collaborative team or with a teaching partner, try applying the partnership principles and see if your meeting times become more productive and produce ideas that can be more readily applied by all.