Relationship building is a core aspect of philanthropic practice. Strengthening one’s interpersonal leadership skills will allow for deeper partnerships with community, grantee partners, and other colleagues in support of shared goals.

This includes:

• Developing and understanding of emotional intelligence and how to utilize it in communications with others
• Using person-first and nonviolent communication to understand core needs of communities and grantee partners
• Prioritizing the relational over the transactional to build more mutually fulfilling and long-lasting networks
• Seeking to “do no harm” and being respectful of trauma, inclusive of recognizing one’s own trauma-related responses
• Examining allyship and how to utilize one’s positional privilege to support others

You can also build on your interpersonal leadership by supplementing it with your personal leadership through Self-Advocacy, using it to move things within the sector through Advocacy & Policy, or taking a look at all seven ILF cornerstones here.