Considering a Partner?

Choose carefully

Few business decisions are as potentially emotionally devastating as choosing the wrong partner. I’m aware of a few partnerships that have ended so badly that assault charges were brought by one partner against the other. In these particular cases, the businesses were doing well, so it wasn’t even the financial stress that led to the breakup. Just having different ideas about where the company should go and how the profits should be divided can be enough to ruin what had been a good thing.

Few people begin a partnership with malice toward their partner, but starting with misgivings is not uncommon at all. We would be foolish to assume that business partnerships are stronger than personal ones, and we all know the statistics on divorce. Like marriages, entering the relationship can be fun while ending it can be extremely difficult.

Business partners come in all shapes and sizes. There are formal business partnerships, in which two or more people decide to found a firm together. But there are also partnerships in which people select others to work with them in permanent positions that call for close collaboration, key direct reporting relationships, board appointments, and even shorter-term project team members. The importance of the choice of partners is directly related to the difficulty of ending the partnership should it become necessary. Therefore, it stands to reason that situations involving key partnerships that will be hard to undo should be given the most careful consideration. But what does that mean?

Dating apps ask lots of questions about your preferences and lifestyle to find a potential match. For the most part, the algorithms underlying the platform are geared toward finding a person whose interests line up with yours, the theory being that liking and similarity are related.

In business, identifying a partner who is just like you isn’t always what you are after. In some positions, that makes sense; the executive assistant who knows what you like and fulfills your wishes without you having to express them is a good thing. They are a natural extension of yourself and enhance your productivity by freeing you up to do things that are more important. But on a project or a board, you may be looking for someone who complements your knowledge base by bringing expertise in a particular area and the fortitude to express their views even if they disagree with your own. They may annoy you every time they speak but you accept this as a necessary cost in improving decision making. Left on your own, you would either make a poorly informed decision or one with which you are comfortable, even if it was not the best thing for the business. You know that to ignore your partner’s advice would be foolish; why invite them in the first place if you aren’t going to listen to them?

Choosing a business partner is difficult because you want a bit of both. Someone who is easy to get along with but also brings new ideas and different perspectives to the conversation. In an ideal partnership, you and your partner talk things through until you hit upon strategies or solutions that are better than either of you would have come up with on your own. In many partnerships though, this doesn’t happen. Partners fall into comfortable roles, dividing up responsibility for the things each is good at, and then trusting that the other is doing their part the way it should be done. This is fine as long as it works, but when things start to go south, it’s hard not to begin questioning your partner’s competence. What happens next may determine whether the partnership survives. If you are each committed enough to the relationship, you will talk things through until you come to an agreeable solution. If you have lost faith in your partner or need to have things your way, the prognostics are not good.

Personality plays a part in all this. Most people don’t take personality tests before deciding to partner with someone but as you would expect, some personality traits have a bearing on how people deal with setbacks or disagreements.

If you are familiar with the Hogan suite of personality assessments, you may recall a personality trait called “adjustment” which has to do with how easy going you are in the face of problems or setbacks. If you are “high adjustment” you roll with the punches. You don’t get too upset by a mistake on the part of your partner. You view mistakes as an opportunity for you both to learn and get it right the next time. If you are “low adjustment” however, you are always stressed out, looking for any sign that things could go wrong and then over-reacting when it does. You view your partner as less competent than yourself, whether or not you say it out loud. You begin to take actions that reduce your partner’s influence and believe that if not for you, the whole business would go belly up. Eventually, you wonder why you needed a partner at all. They are more trouble than they are worth.

The partnership might still survive if your partner is high adjustment, because they will accept that partnerships are never perfect and are a constant work in progress. But if they are low adjustment, like you, watch out. The sparks will fly and someone could wind up in court.

Since getting partnerships of all kinds right is so important, I would suggest that before deciding on who your partner should be that you engage in a two-step process. First, analyze the nature of the partnership. Why do you need a partner and what is most important about what they will bring to your work together? Do you want a partner who agrees with you about everything to make your life simple or are you looking for someone who will challenge you at every turn so that together, you achieve something that neither of you could achieve alone? What is your image of the perfect partner? If you share your thoughts with your potential partner, are they still up for the job?

Second, ask if you and your partner have what it takes to make the partnership work. It’s really not a bad idea to take the Hogan or other personality assessments and then work with someone to examine your compatibility. If you are incompatible at a personality level, it’s best to know that going in and to accept that the relationship will probably take a significant investment on both your parts to make it work. Understanding where the points of friction are likely to pop up will help you deal with them more effectively when they do.

Remember, entering a partnership is the fun part; ending one is where things get messy.