Practically speaking, there is always an “I” present. Every person has self-interest to protect. Teams or partnerships are no guarantee that a person’s safety, security, or success will be protected. To an extent, each person has to take responsibility for his/her welfare.

Each person also has to keep an eye out for partnership breakdowns to make sure he will speak up when things are not working out. That being said, a partnership based on trust, integrity, resiliency, competence, giving or taking feedback, and mutual caring can go a long way to bringing about mutual success.

The dilemma: how to harness the collective power of self-interest and partnership? How to walk and chew gum at the same time? How to keep focus on two targets at the same time?

Bottom Line

• You are responsible for yourself.
• You are also responsible for your partnership.
• Realize that your partnership serves your self-interest.
• Realize that your partnership serves your partner’s self-interest. •
• There is nothing wrong with self-interest.
• Talk with your partner about what is important to each of you.
• Sometimes it is more blessed to give than to receive.
• Other times it is more satisfying to get what you want.
• Design work, roles, compensation, and risk so that both self-interests can be satisfied.

Partners can get caught up in this either/or stage particularly when they talk too much or listen too little. Many meetings are characterized by a lot of talking, advocating, or challenging and little listening, healthy challenging, and checking things out. The result: no agreement, frustration, and lack of clear direction. Skillful discussion is a discussion method that helps partners reach a shared understanding, make a decision, reach agreements, and set goals.

There is an intention to use discussion and meetings to improve the quality of the partners’ thinking processes. These discussions involve five key processes:

1. Clarity about intentions. “What do I want from this conversation?”
2. Balance talking with listening. “Here’s how I see it, what’s your view?”
3. Build shared meaning. “What are we really talking about?”
4. Use self-awareness. “What am I thinking or feeling?”
5. Explore holdups. “Where are we getting stuck?”

Bottom Line

• Clarify your intentions.
• Work to mutually explore an issue.
• Use a combination of advocacy and inquiry to enhance understanding.
• Stay focused on the agenda.

In your organizations there are few secrets that are successfully kept by partners from the whole organization. When partners argue, are upset, or are at odds with each other, employees quickly pick up the negative energy. They may not know the facts or details but they hear and see enough to give them cause for concern.

As partners, you have two viable choices. Sometimes you may want to take your partnership upsets offsite and discuss them in a private or confidential area; or you may decide to deal with your issues at the office and then discuss together what you should tell the management team and how these issues might impact the employees.

You may not want to share any information with your staff but there is a potential consequence to consider. Whenever employees or others are aware of a partner’s upset, they instantly want to know what’s going on; It’s only human nature.

If they don’t have enough information to understand the situation, they will probably make it up in the form of gossip or rumors. They then believe what they make up is real. The office can becomes a “pony express” for distortion and inappropriate interpretation.

Bottom Line

• Take emotional issues and big upsets out of the office.
• Work out these issues and communicate to your team any discussions that impact the organization.
• At times it may be best to let others know that there is an issue but you and your partner are working together to find a solution.

To be effective in dealing with negative circumstances, partners need to figure out the answer to two questions:

1. How do they talk about it?
2. When to actually have the conversation.

I’ve already touched on the how question: talk straight, listen and acknowledge, seek to understand, share perspectives, determine root cause, problem solve, and learn from the experience. Be hard on the problem and do what’s in the best interest of the partnership.

So what about the timing question? The best time to talk can be:

• Before: anticipate, prepare, think about options, rules, and benefits.
• During: crisis management, manage emotions, acknowledge upsets, call a time out, don’t let emotions rule the day.
• After: debrief, analyze what happened, assess the costs and consequences, learn something, plan for the future.

Bottom Line

• Partners need to develop the skill to anticipate, manage the crisis, and learn from experience.
• Poor or victim partnerships attack and blame. They don’t learn much for the better.
• Good or navigating partnerships know some conversations may be difficult but they choose to engage, talk it out, problem solve, and get stronger in the process.

Be listening in as Ken and Moss discuss partnerships, family businesses, trust, cooperation, and loyalty.

This is going to be a great show – and we look forward to your calls.

There are four specific skills to be an emotionally intelligent person:

1. Self-Awareness: knowing how you are thinking and feeling. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses.
2. Emotional Control: managing your feelings, especially anger and fear.
3. Perspective: understanding and appreciating another person, point of view, and being empathetic.
4. Problem Solving: searching out solution and executing them properly.

The more emotionally intelligent people are, the less they will find themselves in complaints, frustration, anger, and distrust. They have a more useful and powerful road map to use when upsets and problems emerge. They becomes effective in seeing things the way they really are instead of only in their imagination and limited point of view.

Business or personal partners can focus their energies on finding creative and profitable solutions instead of staying stuck in irrelevant questions such as, “who’s wrong?”

Bottom Line

• Learn to recognize your strengths and weaknesses, along with how you’re thinking or feeling about an issue. Be transparent and tell your partner.
• Learn to control your anger and fear. Don’t take things so personally.
• Find a way to calm yourself down before you speak.
• Get some perspective. See the situation from your partner’s perspective. Be more open-minded.

I worked with the two complainers over the course of two years. Although they recognized the faults of complaining, they kept pointing fingers at each other. I was ready to throw in the towel a number of times. I struggled to get some traction but it was difficult.

One strategy did work. We used the complaint as a starting point and then probed to discover what the real issue was. For example, there was a complaint about how much time one brother took for lunch, one hour compared to the other brothers half hour lunch. Under this complaint, the brother was able to say how upsetting and frustrating he felt. Instead of complaining, “you’re irresponsible and don’t care about the business,” he leaned to say, “I get really upset when I’m working the store and you’re not available”

He began to move away from complaints to stating an underlying upset or distress. We talked for a while about why this bothered him so much. He then got to he real issue, what he really wanted. Under the upset and frustration he had an unmet need or desire. He wanted to be appreciated and valued by his older brother for how hard he was working. For the first time his brother listened. They were no longer in the world of complaints. They were in the land of understanding a core desire.

Bottom Line

• Complaints are distractions; they stop partners from finding productive solutions to problems.
• Complaints can be personal and cause a rash of counter-complaints.
• Under every complaint is an upset or frustration.
• Under every upset and frustration is an unmet need, wish, or desire.
• Surface the core unmet wish.
• Problem solve and execute

Our research suggests most people don’t clearly understand what another person is intending to communicate. Perhaps 60% is understood. Within 24 hours, most of the conversation is forgotten, misinterpreted or distorted. What you don’t accurately remember, you’ll probably fill in the blanks with information that supports your beliefs and opinions.

A key to clear communication is clarifying what conversation a partner is having. Given the rush of everyday events, responding to challenges and demands of others, and managing a business, it is common for partners to say something on the run, leave a sparse voicemail or e-message and assume clear and focused communication has occurred.

Think before you open your mouth. Give your partner a fair chance of understanding your intent. Be clear about what conversation you are having:

• Are you expressing an opinion?
• Are you making a request?
• Are you simply venting an upset and expecting nothing back?
• Are you lodging a complaint?
• Are you brainstorming and throwing out another idea?

Bottom Line

1. Determine what you want to accomplish, think about your intention and choose a conversation that makes sense, not necessarily to you, but to your partner.
2. Work to improve your partner’s level of understanding. Be focused, be clear, and be simple!