A partnership is a lot like marriage: the reasons two people stay together are usually not the reasons they got together in the first place. As life progresses, each person evolves and changes. Unless individuals adapt to the other person’s personal growth and development, the relationship can stagnate or even become antagonistic.

Personal growth and development occur at several levels. On the individual level, a person may experience changes in attitude, interest, abilities, and goals over time. What might be personally intriguing at age 30 may be less motivating at age 50.

A competitive basketball game may be replaced by a doze at the beach. Similarly, being the biggest sales person may be exciting when you’re younger while training and mentoring others to succeed may be more rewarding later in your career. In a successful partnership, each individual is attuned to the evolving interests, needs and competencies of the other. Within a partnership, partners must also change as the needs of the business change. For example, making an enterprise work when it’s in an early entrepreneurial state of development requires skills and competences that are different from a partnership that has weathered the obstacles of a start-up and has grown into a more professional entity.

Partners may find themselves evolving from a “fighting for our lives” kind of company, driven by constant sales, 60 hour work weeks, multitasking and a sparse personal life to a company characterized by excellent customer service, a more concentrated work focus, a shorter work week, and a focus on nurturing relationships.

As partnerships evolve, partners may learn to empower and mentor others, hone their negotiating skills and exercise better judgment. They learn to better harness their energy, impulses, and competitiveness. Empathy, generosity, and compromise become the standards for engagement.

Bottom Line

• As needs and motivations evolve, partners grow and change over time.
• Different skills and talents are required at different times in the life of a partnership.
• Successful partners appreciate the changing currents of life, adapt to each other over time, and develop compassion in the process.

• Where are we going?
• Why are we going there?
• Why can you count on me to get us there?
• What can I expect from you?
• How can we harness and enhance out combined talents, passions, and skills?
• What’s our plan of action?
• What resources do we need?
• How will we handle conflict and differences of opinion?
• Where can we take charge, make things happen, and self-initiate?

For Navigators, “the buck stops here” and “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” Navigators don’t get caught in the blame game: “We got screwed,” and “It’s not our fault.”

Navigators examine what happened, critically analyze root causes, are hard on problem, and make corrective actions.
Navigators don’t lament and wait to be emotionally devastated. They know that action is the best antidote to anxiety and uncertainty. Navigators take actions, learn from their mistakes and never give up. They may call a “time out,” take a pause, and reflect. But it isn’t to lick their wounds. It’s to re-energize, re-focus, re-execute, and move forward.

As Wayne Gretsky once responded when asked what made him such a great hockey scorer, he said “I never skate to where the puck is. I skate to where it is going.”

Bottom Line

• Create a shared vision.
• Commit to shared personal responsibility.
• Learn from your mistakes.
• Give up blaming (especially each other).
• Success is the best revenge.
• Keep moving to your future.
• Get a backbone.
• Doing something is better than doing nothing.

What’a Victim Partnership? About 20-25% of Partnerships fit the description of Victim Partnerships. The Victim Partnership Beliefs:

• We’re screwed.
• We can’t fight City Hall.
• The competition got there before we did.
• We didn’t catch a break.
• It wasn’t our fault.
• Luck wasn’t on our side.

The Key Point: Victims give away power. Something happened to them, causing the upset and failure. They think “We don’t have control; We never really did.”

What’s the Payoff? If it’s someone else’s or something else’s fault, we aren’t responsible for what’s happening. Victims rarely examine their own behavior, take personal responsibility for their choices, or stop justifying their predicament.

Victim Partnerships aren’t aware that they are always responsible for what happens, that they are always in charge of their choices and actions, and that they always have total power over their lives. They may not have control over the result but they do have control with every step leading up to the result.

Bottom Line

• Victims tend to find each other out—The needy partner finds a controlling partner, a scared partner finds an acting out and risk taking partner.
• Their common denominator is:

I’m not responsible.
It’s not my fault.
Other’s did us in.

• So qualify your potential partners and find out if he/she takes personal responsibility for their results. •
• If he has a history of blaming other or justifying why things haven’t turned out successfully, cut the conversation off, get out, and find someone else who is personally accountable.
• Watch out for the resentful and angry person. They may be victims waiting for their next failure.

]]> http://navigatingforsuccess.com/blog/business/navigating-partnerships/the-victim-partnership/feed/ 0 http://navigatingforsuccess.com/blog/business/navigating-partnerships/fear-and-business-partnerships/ http://navigatingforsuccess.com/blog/business/navigating-partnerships/fear-and-business-partnerships/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:00:57 +0000 Moss http://navigatingforsuccess.com/blog/?p=199 In an ideal partnership, trust and safety exists. Partners talk straight and confide in each other. Although some partnerships can create personal discomfort especially about accountability and results, partners strive to be hard on the problem not on each other. Common goals and shared values help partners to stay aligned and respectful toward each other.

Over time, life’s events and circumstances can throw partnerships off track: lost customers, poor sales, reduced market share, internal strife, and key people jumping ship can wear a partnership down. Short tempers, blaming, and disappointments result. Partners may become fearful of messing up and failing to meet expectations.

Fear and suspicion replace safety and respect. Partners then avoid or criticize each other, second guess decisions, make assumptions, create faulty conclusions, and become obsessed with the many “What if’s.” What if he doesn’t follow through this time? What if he lets his ego get in the way? What if he yells at me? What if I don’t do it right? Self-fulfilling prophecies can take over: your partner does get angry toward you, in part, because of your own victim and annoying behaviors. If you’ve been avoidant, indecisive, competitive, withholding, etc, you are creating distrust or even fear in your partner.

Bottom Line

• Life’s circumstances can throw partners into mutual frustration, anger, and fear.
• If you keep your feelings to yourself and create bad consequences in your mind, your partnership will weaken.
• Do some self-examination and ask yourself if you’re sabotaging your partnership.
• Be hard on your fear: don’t let it get too strong.
• Fear: False Expectations Appearing Real

As you go through the day, pay attention to your state of mind and how you are feeling. Everyone once in a while stop for a moment and ask yourself, “How am I doing here? Is there anything I need to get off my chest? Am I avoiding a particular conversation with someone? How do I want to come across?”

Whether or not you are speaking or interacting with your partner and others, you are impacting them. You are influencing the “emotional climate” and productivity of those around you. You are not an island separated from others. Like the water and wind between islands touch each island shore, your presence influences everyone in your company.

Bottom Line

• Effective people pay attention to themselves
• Ask your partner for feedback about your perceived attitude or behavior.
• Ask yourself if your current state of mind and behavior are getting you where you want to go. If the answer is “no” then change how you are thinking or behaving.

It’s great when you go through the day as if you’re sprayed with an invisible shield of Teflon. Situational upsets and frustrations stay at a low impact level and you don’t take anything personally. Then there are those days where the Teflon disappears and the “slings and arrows” of everyday life hit deep and you get “triggered.”

Your partner can say something that not only annoys you, but also triggers an intense emotional reaction. These reactions usually center around emotional wounds like feeling neglected, devalued, betrayed, abandoned, and endangered. These feelings can lie deep within a person for years if not a lifetime. It does not matter that your partner didn’t intend to trigger such an intense reaction. You’ve been triggered and the emotional pain you’re feeling can be overwhelming. You can become emotionally flooded.

Successful partnerships know their triggers. Partners work hard to not let these strong emotional reactors invade and destroy their current relationship. They know it’s an overreaction and they choose to avoid reacting in a retaliatory style.

Bottom Line

• A trigger is a powerful action that unleashes an emotional overreaction.
• This overreaction involves deeper emotional wounds that occurred long before your partnership.
• Don’t punish your partner for something someone else did to you.
• Ask yourself, “where is this pain really coming from?”

Disagreements, squabbles, debates, and arguments can create difficult discussions for partners.

1. Are both partners following the business plan?
2. Are they sharing resources?
3. Are they upset over differential earnings?
4. Are they both getting results?
5. Is one partner out of the office a lot, i.e. doing network marketing at the golf course while the other partner handles the operational side on a daily basis?

There are many sources of upset or annoyance. What should partners focus on and battle about?

Bottom Line

• Choose your battles wisely.
• Think about what the upset is really about and deal with the root cause, not the symptomatic complaint.
• Speak responsibly; “I have a concern about …” Open up a useful discussion. Starting a conversation with “you always” or “you should” just will make the other person defensive.
• Ask yourself: “what’s my real issue here? Is this a substantial issue about business or am I upset about something more personal?”

So what does poker have to do with partnerships? Partnerships require control to succeed. Control creates a sense of order instead of chaos or confusion. Setting objections and goals can provide such control. Likewise, if the partners have a process for acquiring and sharing information with each other, decision-making and problem solving will proceed in a more orderly manner.

Control is also provided when partners are clear about their respective roles and responsibilities. Overall, the more partners are on the same page with regard to these and other business-related issues, the greater the likelihood that a sense of control and order with be present.

There is an area that often creates a sense of confusion. When different behavioral styles are present, control can be threatened. For example, one partner may be comfortable with change and a fast paced environment white the other needs stability and a slower moving work environment. An understanding of each other’s behavioral style can lead to a more practical discussion on how to best proceed.

Bottom Line

• Don’t rely solely upon the business plan, goals, and roles to create a sense of control or order.
• Pay attention to differences between partners in the personal areas of risk taking, emotional decision-making, change tolerance, and how tiles are/aren’t followed.
• Try to understand these individual differences and be open to work out ways to co-manage together.

Breakdowns are inevitable in a partnership, especially if there are big dreams, goals, and risks. In strong partnerships, partners may get upset, frustrated, or angry but they don’t succumb to negative thinking and pessimism. They don’t bring up the past; they learn to move on. They use life’s challenges as opportunities for learning, breakthrough, and recommittment to action.

Resilient partners learn to “right themselves and regain their footing.” Similar to the experience in piloting a small sailboat where capsizing is a constant companion, resilient partners simply figure out what to do to get the operation back in position after a project “capsizes.”

Wipeouts are inevitable. In victim partnerships, there is a focus on complaining, blaming, making excuses, or defending. Resilient partners, on the other hand, face the obstacle, clean up the mess, learn from their mistakes, are hard on the problem not each other, and then get back to what is important to them, They bounce back like super balls; They don’t stay down.

Bottom Line

• Learn to take disappointments in stride.
• Learn from your mistakes.
• Stay focused on your goals.
• Let adversity make your tougher.
• Bounce back, never give up.

As high performing partners, keep navigating toward you goals. When something throws action off track, especially in your partner’s area of responsibility, get involved and discuss how you might help to solve the problem.

Everyone makes mistakes, screws up, acts badly, or fails from time to time. When your partner does it, chances are he’ll feel upset, frustrated, and disappointed. He can easily react with defensiveness, excuses, or even blame.

Avoid the temptation to give him criticism. You can always express criticism or feedback later, after the problem has been handled and emotions are settled down. Be a situational leader, speak up, or influence a useful action. First, acknowledge your partner’s upset and then shift the focus to a solution-finding conversation.

Bottom Line

• Be a solution finder.
• Make a positive contribution.
• Keep your judgment to yourself.Be empathetic.
• Be constructive. Later on, conduct a root cause analysis or give feedback.
• Remember, sooner or later, you’ll get back what you give out.