More than words: the role of shared language in cross-sector partnership success

Learning a new language – especially as an adult – can be difficult. Not only are you learning the language, you’re also learning to understand it within the specific socio-cultural context in which that language operates. Cross-sector partnerships face similar complexities, as they bring together individuals from different sectors with varying priorities and organisational cultures – with language being a significant component of the culture. To create a successful partnership, the organisations have to work together and create a new shared language that is meaningful to all partners – one that helps them describe who they are as a group and what they are looking to achieve in a new context. 

The Healthy Communities Together (HCT) programme, a partnership between The King’s Fund and The National Lottery Community Fund, was set up to understand and address some of the intractable barriers to partnership working that have been identified between voluntary and statutory organisations. The aim was to share learning and offer insights to enable local and national initiatives to develop and support partnership working. 

Language can hinder or strengthen partnership working 

Over the past three years of working on the HCT programme, what has struck me is how language has the power to help or hinder partnership working. On the one hand, the use of sector-specific language can be a barrier to effective partnership working. For example, a common complaint we heard from members of the partnerships was about the use of language and jargon that was exclusionary to others and created power imbalances between organisations and communities – often between statutory and VCSE (voluntary, community and social enterprise) organisations. (We discuss how power is created and maintained between different groups in cross-sector working in our long read, Transforming power relationships in partnership working.) 

The use of language and its role in hindering successful partnership was clearly exemplified by one of the partnerships who used adaptive action as a framework to bring together services/statutory partners with communities to co-create solutions to health inequalities. (Adaptive action is a way of working in uncertain environments that helps partners be reflective and direct actions.) Part of doing that was to ensure that the language used by professionals to describe service users from marginalised groups did not reinforce negative assumptions or beliefs about their communities.  

On the other hand, when it is co-created by all partners, language has the power to strengthen partnerships. A shared language emerges out of relationships based on trust and a willingness to learn and unlearn. Another member highlighted the importance of ‘creating that space, having that shared language and really appreciating how different we are as a group and what it takes to build that trust to effect change.’ The process of working together and taking time to learn about each other forced the partnerships to grapple with their preconceived beliefs about each other’s sector, as well as existing power imbalances and differences in ways of working. One member noted how happy she was that statutory partners were recognising that ‘language has such an impact on training, delivery and how people engage and respond’. The partnerships learnt new ways of communicating that enabled mutual understanding and articulation of a unified vision and goals.  

Language creates opportunities for innovation and creativity 

Language is not just a tool for communication; it also helps people create their social reality. For the HCT partnerships, building relationships was not a means to an end, but the work itself. As a result, they had to think about what success and failure looked like for them, and about the language they would use to describe their work and progress so that funders and system leaders could understand.  

All the partnerships were clear about the system change they wanted to see. Some of them were keen to shift away from what they saw as traditional ways of working and related language that they felt was limiting and exclusionary. Traditional ways of working were associated with perceived rigid structures and prioritising task delivery, KPIs and quantitative output measures. The exploratory nature of the programme meant that the partnerships then had to think about and answer some key questions – what does success look like for us? How are we going to measure and describe that success to others?  

To answer these questions, the partnerships explored concepts that enabled them to test and explore new ideas. Some partnerships were inspired by academic theories and approaches such as human learning systems, which gave them a shared language with which to think through ideas and consider how they would define their outcomes.  (Human learning systems approach is about centring people’s needs, collaborative working to solve problems, and an emphasis on learning and adaptation.) Finding the right approaches to demonstrate the impact of their work was a continual challenge for the partnerships. 

Finally, the more you practise a new language, the more you build confidence. You may not always get it right, but it’s important to be patient and consistent. Similarly, for partners looking to work together differently, it’s important to be patient with each other and create time to regularly review and refine the shared language as the project progresses.