Businesses form partnerships for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, developing capabilities internally doesn’t make sense in the long run for the short-term needs of a particular opportunity, and sometimes, the needs are immediate, making developing those capabilities impractical. 
Some experts say that as leaders develop in their careers, they need to be able to think strategically and highly engage with leaders of other companies.
1. Find an ‘Energetic Fit’
It’s hard to have an effective partnership if both sides have different levels of speed and engagement with the goal. Even a company with relatively fewer partnership benefits on paper might be a better fit if it has more motivation.
2. Complement Strengths
One of the primary objectives of any partnership is for one company to fill gaps in the other’s capabilities and vice versa.
For example, maybe you have a great product nobody else on the market is offering but you lack a distribution chain; your partner might have a great distribution chain but few attractive products to sell—this could be a match made in heaven!
3. Keep Communicating, and Let the Partnership Evolve
Most partnerships will have their ups and downs. One factor that can lead to conflict is when the level of transparency between separate companies is different from the transparency between various departments within a single company, for example. Businesses may not be able to share all information, but there’s always room to work on closer communication.
4. Learn from Each Other
As business partnerships grow and evolve, there will be many opportunities to learn from one another’s best practices—one of the key benefits of collaboration. Identifying and sharing core competencies can benefit all partners.
5. Interact as Human Beings
Even though a formal partnership may be between Company A and Company B, the actual interactions that take place occur between individual people. Building personal relationships can help make things move forward smoothly in any partnership situation.
While some leaders may have built careers around the internal partnerships they’ve cultivated with individual colleagues, it can be very different doing so with external organizations.
Cultivating these external relationships can help leaders really stand out and move even farther up the corporate ladder.