A core role of the IMO is to help develop and harbour an effective working relationship with the partners. This requires a mixture of soft and hard skills and must be framed within the context of the response. 

As IMO your responsibility for ensuring a holistic and complete picture requires fully understanding the respective partners, their mandates, projects, and activities, and maintaining close working relations with the respective focal points who have information at hand (this will enable you to respond effectively to any ad-hoc requests from donors, gFSC, CLAs etc that require quick and reliable information that may not be immediately available from the 5Ws etc). 

The following section will detail core aspects of developing and harbouring effective relations with the partners from an IM perspective.