“Everything is in your hands!”, “A person creates his own destiny!”, “You yourself are the creator of your happiness!” This is what all posts and appeals on social networks and popular books on psychology come down to. However, a person is a social being, he lives and develops precisely in communication and the ability to build relationships with other people and life forms.
McKinsey & Company conducted a study according to which by 2025 1/3 of the total global sales will come from ecosystems and partnerships of intersectoral players who work together to create solutions and strengthen each other’s resources.
Already regular and even familiar “black swans” encourage managers and entrepreneurs to go into communication and master the competence of “partnership” more and more actively to resolve emerging difficulties effectively and to develop business.
The time of solo entrepreneurs passes. Less and less common are those who work alone: collaborations, joint activities, business partnerships come to the fore.
In the age of hybrid offices, freelancing, remote work, you need to learn to look at business organization differently than, for example, 10 years ago. The new reality needs a new way of management – multidimensional one, where it is important not only “how” to build a business and a team, but “who?” And “with whom?”.
Why did they begin to distinguish partnership ability as a separate competence?
A number of nuances arise in partnerships: psychological, ethical, legal issues. Of course, all this can be attributed to communication skills, but still the ability not just to agree, but to be shoulder to shoulder with a partner requires additional skills.
CEOs and top managers of companies admit that they drag companies on their shoulders and are often ready to abandon their plans from fatigue and burnout. What solution can be found to remove this heavy burden? The answer is both simple and complex: collaboration. It is through cooperation and mutually beneficial partnership that you can build or breathe new life into the business (and not only).
In addition to the ability to think, a person has surpassed other species in the ability to create partnerships.
Why do you still need to develop partnership ability?
Statistics in matters of partnerships are inexorable: every fifth enterprise cannot develop due to the inability to resolve disagreements between co-owners. Therefore, it is important to learn this skill so that formula 1 + 1 = 11 starts working correctly.
Partners must be able to conduct long and deep conversations: 10-level “why?” and “what for?” will help you find the true answers and motives of the behavior and actions of each of the partners. Be coaches to each other.
Legal formalization of partnerships. It is impossible to bypass this point, since it was legal uncertainty that destroyed no less partnerships than life routine did with families. Legal registration is not just writing on paper “we are partners”, it aims to agree, delimit areas of responsibility in business and consolidate all this not with formulaic wording, but with those that reflect reality and will really work. The partnership agreement is a story about you. If you borrow a template, you borrow someone else’s story, which can play a cruel joke for a partnership.
A lawyer can do this, but he will never be able to agree and make a decision for partners. Do you remember the fable “Swan, Cancer and Pike”? Do not do this from your company, conclude partnership agreements, build a strategy together, and draw up statutory documents correctly.
It is important to pay attention that if you are building a business with a partner, then it becomes extremely important to build a system in business, understandable business processes for both partners, and, most importantly, to keep financial records. As they say, “money need to be counted”, and if you do not count them enough, then suspicions and disagreements may arise. Therefore, in order to become a partner, be prepared to pay special attention to transparent financial accounting, willingness to devote time to business processes and systematization.
Joint activities require adjustment for each other. Thus, “partnership” includes a number of soft skills – empathy, adaptability, time management, leadership qualities and a number of others. But the most important thing is the ability to build trust, creating a psychologically healthy environment where conflicts are easily resolved.
I like 5 points that Stephen Karpman, Doctor of Psychology, cites in his writings:
- Ethical compliance arrangement.
- Care and support arrangement.
- Agreement on transparency (it is advisable to discuss problems on the same day when they appeared).
- Flexibility arrangement.
- Pleasure arrangement.
I think many people know the phrase that great companies are distinguished by the fact that they have a vision of the future. I would continue this phrase as follows: “and a tandem that cannot be repeated”.
When an entrepreneur knows how to create and be in partnership, he receives much more energy, which allows him to bring a beautiful and powerful business to new heights.
We live in a time of high speeds, blurring cultural codes, AI and living in a matrix. We are in the illusion of great opportunities, while we lose our foothold, which insures against falling and gives us the opportunity to push off. A real breakthrough and take-off is possible only in gaining experience, and we gain experience only in communication with other people, be it family or business.
We were all so carried away by achievement and self-development alone, creating a consumer society that consumes itself. In order to create a society of creation and complicity, it is necessary to develop the skill of partnership, going into partnership and communication with other people.
Think how wonderful the words “assistance”, “community”, “joint” and “creation” sound in partnership.
By Julia Chentsova, lawyer, entrepreneur, founder of JTLconsulting