A partnership is an association of two or more people who will conduct business. When we talk with partners, we like to learn how the relationship got started. While it is fun for to reminisce about the good ole’ days of like minded and hard working professionals who shared a commitment to succeed, we also learn about hard times that are sometimes detrimental to the partnership and the company. Working with business partners to realign their expectations and re-energize their roles prevents partnership strain and tension from becoming toxic to the whole team. With targeted awareness we can avoid frustration and preserve a lasting bond.
 
Starting with Like
 
You started with mutual appreciation for another person or persons. As professional colleagues, you like one another’s personality and relational demeanor. Sharing opinions and personal attitudes over time, about industry status and change, ethics and professional life, has cultivated long standing relationships. A business opportunity brings you together to consider a working relationship. Since there is already mutual “like” between members and positive reputations in your respective industries, you proceed to discussions of a new business structure.
 
Consider the difference between like, and respect, and work to achieve both, so you can avoid partnership troubles! You spend time with colleagues when you feel a personal connection, in a shared industry or other community, and the feelings of ‘like’ have are established. As partners you want to start here, with positive feelings about the personal character of the people with whom you will collaborate every day. Now think about what makes you respect someone.
 
Respecting personal methods
 
To make a partnership work over the long term, you must also have respect for one another; for the way in which someone gets things done, how they act on challenge to achieve a goal. Partners will approach the challenges of executing their roles and developing business growth in a variety of methods. These methods can be validated and utilized to avoid problems. To ensure proper alignment of problem solving methods with business goals, it is important to understand why you respect a partner or potential partner. You may respect their talent in communicating a clear perspective to their work by connecting the past, present and future. Your may respect the advantages of a partner’s depth of knowledge on products and services. You might respect someone’s knack for bringing focus and closure or their ability to coordinate multiple resources to solve problems and maintain constant performance. You may be inspired by someone’s natural gift to initiate innovation and promote change, or another’s capacity to produce quality solutions and safeguard processes.
 
These are clues that a person will do what they say, in a specific way. You may agree on a common approach to business development, but do you agree on the methods for making it happen?
 
The impact of undiscovered personal execution methods is significant and can be detrimental to your ability to perform consistently. If you are experiencing set-backs in performance, lack of productivity and growing frustration among partners that you have always liked, consider this missing link. Even with a great deal of ‘Like’ among partners, troubles can arise from a lack of knowledge about the natural methods for executing their roles. Respect for one’s method of problem solving can increase like, and save a partnership.
 
Learn the distinct problem solving methods of your partners, so you can avoid the frustration of disconnected approaches, and arrange your time and energy to generate consistent performance.
 
For assistance in firing up your business partnerships, call us at FIREPOWER Teams!