#spirituality #selfdevelopment #personaltransformation
Partner Conflicts
What does one partner expect from the other? One of them wants to earn a lot of net profit and believes the partner should always be smiling. They might want to earn a hundred times more than you want. No way: if anyone does that, you'll owe each other a million dollars. What did your partner want from you? Later, there will be such an explosion where you can lose a lot.
On the Issue of Business Partnership
In business, of course, everything depends on me, but in reality, everything depends on the partners and the owners who own it. Today, we will discuss an important question: why do business owners conflict the most among themselves? Because the owner's conflict leads not only to the destruction of the business, loss of own money, profit, revenue, volumes, because customers receive bad services, employees, the team are unhappy. This also leads to losing oneself; we lose not only the partnership, but the owner's conflict greatly affects our internal state and perception. In 2014, I had a conflict in Business Youth: we then made about 20 million dollars a year. The most important thing that worried me when I woke up in the morning was my relationship with my partner. You wake up in the morning, and the first thing you think about is what your partner feels and what he thinks.
I had a friend who said, "Sasha, I think I need to change my driver." I asked, "Why?" He said, "Listen, every morning for half a year, I get into the car and feel the driver thinks something bad about me. I worry about it the whole ride." I said, "Interesting, you hire a driver, pay him decent money, and every day you worry about it for several hours." A driver is one thing, but a partnership is another.
Business partnership is incredibly important: it's special and not accidental in our lives. It's not a matter of where we bought a phone or groceries. It’s something that gives us a point of development, support for our internal state, a sense of work, living, and, of course, brings or doesn't bring scale, money, power, earnings, professional growth, balance. Although, of course, I've had very different partnerships in my life.
The Problem of Expectations
So, the main conflict between partners is that these partners have certain expectations of each other. And it's not even about the business.
The first main problem is what the partner feels and expects from the other.
For example, he thinks his partner should always smile, or communicate well, or agree with what he does and says, or must necessarily have a different opinion, express counterarguments, or work 24 hours a day, or work all his life, or work more than himself, or he thinks his partner earns a lot or little money, or he has a strange life, wrong family, relationships, or he doesn't eat right, talk right, hire the wrong people, do the wrong things.
Expectation of my partner in another business is the most important point of conflict. There are, of course, other points of conflict.
For example, an expectation from the partner about the business.
One partner wants to personally take out 200 thousand dollars every month, earn a lot of net profit. Another partner says: "No, no, wait. We'll send 200 thousand dollars to development, take out 10 thousand yourself. That's enough for me. The main thing is that the business grows, we will sell it in the future, earn a lot of money." Or he might say, "Let's invest money to make customers happy." And some points of support begin to diverge. A third partner, if there is one, can create a quarrel between the two. Or when there is a team of employees, and partners misunderstand each other because of external circumstances, people. But the basic thing to look at, pay attention to, is the expectation. What can be done to resolve this point of conflict? How to minimize it, use it for your business to grow and scale, and for you to scale?
What to do, How to Solve the Problem of Expectations. Step One
To get a multiple growth in business, for the owner and the business to grow, you need to have good communication between partners.
This doesn't mean kissing every day, incredibly loving each other, being friends daily.
This means being in a state of some harmony, understanding, synergy, and added value when we strengthen each other.
The first, most important thing to do in terms of ambiguous action is to look at your own expectations of your partner.
What do I expect from my partner?
What do I want?
Do I want him to think well of me?
Do I want him to recognize me?
Do I want him to say: "Sasha, what you did is cool: the system you implemented, the people you hired, the strategy you came up with"?
To say that we earned a lot of money because you brought it?
What are your expectations of this person or what happens around this person?
Can you admit that your partner has the right to stop working tomorrow?
Can you accept that your partner generally has the opportunity to leave this business?
Or does your partner have the right and opportunity to change his point of view?
Can he come to you and specifically say that he disagrees with you?
Or can he come to you and say that he thinks the current management system is wrong, the strategy is wrong?
Or can he allow himself to want to earn 100 times more than you want?
For example, you want to earn 100 thousand dollars a month, and he comes and says: "You know, it doesn't suit me. I want 100 million. I want 10 million. I want to grow, I want scale." And it shakes you inside: not only because you don't know how to do it, but because you are not ready to allow yourself such a goal, and he is.
The first action is to work on your expectations. The only thing you can really do honestly is to remove your own expectations of the partner.
Step Two. How to Discuss Problems
The second is to try to talk to the partner calmly and carefully.
By no means come to him and say: "Listen, I watched a cool video here, let's quickly sit down, tell each other what expectations we have. And sign a paper that we have no expectations of each other. If anyone does that, they owe each other a million dollars." By no means, absolutely not.
This means that you calmly try to listen to the person, find out what he wants now, in a year, two, what thoughts he has. Only when he says: "I think our team sucks" or "I think I want to fire this director" – do not immediately protest. But find out what other things there are, and why he thinks so. And try regarding everything he will say (he will most likely start throwing out negativity at some point) to be neutral.
Imagine you were just recording, like a child. They tell you to write, and it makes no difference to you – red or green, 100 or 10 thousand. It's all the same, you treat it equally, not as something that belongs to you.
Of course, in resolving any conflict situations, the most important thing is to find the reason for their occurrence, because you can endlessly resolve conflict situations.
If you do not figure out the reason – nothing will happen. The conflict situation may be that the partner does not want to grow. You will find a growth point, start growing, but your relationship will not strengthen, the vectors will diverge even more. And then there will be such an explosion where you can lose a lot – money, freedom, emotions, state, and anything. While once again allowing yourself to say: "I want to be a person. I want to really act, so I remove the expectation I have of my partner." You came, listened to him, looked at what he thinks, started taking certain actions. Some time must pass: by no means a day, two, or three. Some time should pass, this process needs to be launched. Note: it needs to be launched not so that your partner removes the expectation, but so that you know it's right. This is the only possible point of the maximum correct growth of relationships between you, and it will lead somewhere. You go for you to have great relationships and for you to scale and grow as a business owner, as a businessman, as an entrepreneur, as a person. And your business grows, and you earn a lot of money, or make some super cool well-known business if that's your primary goal.
About the New Spectrum in Relationships After Resolving Expectation Issues: Two Paths
When you've gone through this stage, you come to a fork in the road. On one hand, your relationship will enter a completely new spectrum – one you can't even imagine because it never existed before. Relationships with mutual expectations and relationships without expectations are not just night and day.
It's like comparing the sky to tomatoes – completely different things, almost impossible to imagine. It's not just strengthening your partnerships from "1+1=2" or, as they say, "3". It's like "1+1=Z" (something different) or "1+1=some word" (creating something entirely new).
Or it could lead to your partnerships reaching a stage where you will most likely make decisions like, "I understand that our partnership is very unique. It's unlikely to bring us to the right point over time." And it ends.
Or you might end these relationships, the partnership – and that will also be a great personal growth point for you. The most important thing here is not to rush and let time pass.
How long it will take is visible: 2 or 4 weeks, 4 months, a year, 2, 3 years, 5 years. At some point, you will clearly understand whether you have removed your own expectations regarding your partner, even if they continue to be a complete jerk, and how well you've started listening to your partner – their expectations, words, and actions. If your partner has expectations, no matter what they say to you (even if those expectations are sensible, great, and right for you), you might hear everything very negatively. And it's natural for partnership relationships to end.
About My Experience
In my life, over the past 20 years, I've had many different types of partnerships. There were partnerships with strong tech businessmen, the well-known partnership in Business Molodost with Petya and Misha. I had a partnership with a person who earned the first billion dollars in Russia in cash, not through privatization, and created a retail chain – Andrey Rogachev. The partnerships were very diverse. And in these partnerships, the best thing I could do was these two steps. I helped more than a thousand business owners find their right state, their core, to take the next right action, to make the next step.
Right now, you need the right next step in terms of your partnership. It's always said in different places that a partnership in business is just like a partnership at home. It's one sphere of being. Here, too, there's a wife or husband, girlfriend or boyfriend. It's interesting that I met my wife in 1987, and we've been together ever since. I'll have one wife. So partnerships can be very different. And you, as one person, can have very different partnerships.
Don't lose the partnership, transform it and get not just the probability of the next step, but change your current state, emotional, personal state, business state, solidity, support system, and management system of your team within the company.