When partners see different realities
Why partners see the same events differently: the Thomas theorem, the different experience of a corporate executive and an entrepreneur, "napkin" agreements each understood in their own way. The materials offer a procedure for synchronising worldviews and methods for resolving divergence.
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What does the film Twelve Monkeys say about a partner's "crazy ideas"?
The film's hero, whom the psychiatrists take for a patient, is telling the plain truth about the future. The author suggests not judging too harshly a partner who arrives with yet another crazy idea: he may simply have come from the future.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: When partners see different realities · Ideas from adjacent fields
How does the Thomas theorem explain rifts between partners?
If people define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences: one partner may read the other’s harmless act as a threat and start defending. Regular, structured dialogue, ideally a partnership session, keeps misunderstandings and discontent from piling up.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Ideas from adjacent fields · Partnership session · When partners see different realities
How do you resolve a conflict with the FAVER technique from Stanford?
Five first-person steps: name your emotions, ask yourself “what” triggered them, assume the other person means no harm, discuss the facts with I-statements, and part without hostility. The technique is taught at Stanford Medical School.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Conflicts between partners · Ideas from adjacent fields · When partners see different realities
Why does a partnership rarely turn out the way it was imagined?
Every partnership starts as a mental image, and that image is only preliminary: once partners move to implementation, things often do not go as imagined. How to make the partnership bear fruit is covered at the linked page.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Forming a partner team · When partners see different realities
Is an agreement on a napkin enough to consider the matter settled?
No: three co-owners believed they had agreed, but their points, “the majority decides”, “until things are normal” and “no nonsense”, left open who counts as the majority of three and normal for whom. At the partnership session everything was spelled out.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Partnership agreement · Partnership session · When partners see different realities
Why are friendship, enthusiasm and trust not enough for a lasting partnership?
The image of the partnership a person brings into the group differs from reality, and that tension has to be resolved through negotiation and detailed agreements in the form of a partnership agreement. Groups without them survive more by luck than by skill.
Original: Site blog
Topics: Choosing a business partner · Forming a partner team · When partners see different realities
Why does friendship between founders not prevent conflict over roles and money?
Wozniak and Jobs, the co-founders of Apple, could not discuss roles and compensation, and these issues stayed unresolved throughout their work together. Wasserman, in “The Founder’s Dilemmas”, notes that when co-founders avoid pressing topics, internal tension builds up.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Choosing a business partner · Forming a partner team · When partners see different realities
Why do an ex-corporate executive and a founder read events differently?
Each has a different idea of what is appropriate and a different way of approaching tasks, so partners perceive events differently, weigh them differently and assess them differently. This breeds disagreement; the author covers the roots of the problem at the link.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Turning a manager into a partner · When partners see different realities
How can partners synchronise their pictures of the world when these diverge?
The divergence itself is not the problem: the problem is maladaptation, when the gap between reality and private notions of it grows too large. A partnership session with a facilitator synchronises the partners, and its result is a partnership agreement.
Original: Site blog
Topics: Forming a partner team · Partnership agreement · Partnership session · When partners see different realities
What if one partner carries the suitcase and the money is split evenly?
In a joke about two friends splitting money fifty-fifty, the one who carries the suitcase eventually falls into depression: the effort is unequal, the share is equal. The author advises defining and fixing each side’s position in the partnership.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Disappointment in a partnership · Equity split between partners · When partners see different realities
Are joint, common and unified goals really the same thing?
No: similar goals share a direction, common goals matter to everyone, joint goals are reached by combined effort, and unified goals merge interests into one. The author shows each type with a car-buying example; regular partnership sessions help tell them apart.
Original: LinkedIn
Topics: Forming a partner team · When partners see different realities
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