Micro bite-size piece.

Mutual trust is founded upon each partner's ability to predict accurately what their collaborators will say and do (rather than predict these things inaccurately based upon stereotypical views and misunderstandings).

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Bite-size piece: create a shared history and an associated healthily rated "personal credit history" of collaboration

The close personal and professional interactions intrinsic to meta-relationships build a unique and mutually valued shared history between partners that, together with the previously mentioned enhanced empathy and trust, creates a healthily rated "personal credit history" of collaboration for each partner: each partner is perceived as a "safe bet" for any loan of resources or other support; it is believed that the partner making the loan and/or the collaboration overall will, sooner or later, realise a healthy return on any investment made.

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Bite-size piece: be challenging

The deep mutual understanding and trust achieved through meta-relationships provides partners with the confidence to challenge each other's opinions, beliefs and actions. The personal commitment they demonstrate towards each other encourages partners to be tolerant of challenges they make to each other's long held-assumptions and preferred ways of doing things. Additionally, and crucially, the knowledge partners have shared and the insights they have gained about each other enable challenges to be based upon firm foundations of understanding rather than fragile flimsies of assumption. This mutual challenging tests and enhances the efficacy of the decision-making and intended actions of a collaboration and helps define the best path towards success.

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Bite-size piece: share rather than pass

Meta-relationships' emphasis upon personal attention and face-to-face interaction (whether this be physical or virtual), helps partners develop sufficient confidence in one another to share and explore key information with each other rather than simply pass key information to each other (for it to be interpreted and acted upon as the receiver sees fit). This enhances the quality of collaborative decision-making and the effectiveness of subsequent joint action.

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Bite-size piece: be inclusive rather than exclusive

Meta-relationships grow and expand; the act of creating, maintaining and developing multi-faceted holistic relationships becomes a habit of interaction. Partners who have experienced the benefits of meta-relationships within a collaboration will seek to share similar benefits with those on the periphery of or outside a collaboration (e.g., potential and future partners, partial partners, dormant partners, beneficiaries of a collaboration's work, other interested or influential stakeholders). This ubiquitous development of meta-relationships often leads to the rapid formation of influential webs of support that weave into, around and out of a collaboration. These webs increase the sustainability of a collaboration and significantly enhance its ability to make progress towards achieving its goals. 



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Bite-size piece: act upon what partners not only make explicit but also imply

Meta-relationships' emphasis upon empathy, mutual understanding, physical attention and face-to-face interaction super-sensitises partners' awareness of each other. This enables partners to not only clearly understand each other's explicit words and actions but also accurately interpret what lies between, within and around these words and actions. This advanced empathy lessens the likelihood that a collaboration's decisions and actions will be undermined by unforeseen reactions and resistance from partners.

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Bite-size piece: be realistic not idealistic

Knowing rather than assuming partners' views, feelings, preferences, strengths and weaknesses, etc., encourages decision-making based upon specific realism rather than generalised idealism. This knowledge-based realism helps collaborations adapt to the changeable context within which they exist and ensure their continued progress.

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