Getting on Better with Business Partners - Relationships and Conflict

By fencing off responsibilities and knowing when you are crossing into your partners' territory, you make life easier. This extends not just between partners but to the whole company - a clearly defines set of roles and responsibilities will ease communication throughout the business.

In small business, very often the directors or partners have very mixed roles; we make tea, sell and buy, we are the secretary, the boss, the marketer. This works (and has to) when there is one owner.

It breaks down when there are two or more. In my business, we defined our roles quite late in our partnership, several year after natural roles had already developed but it really helped and reduced conflict.

Here's what we did:

Write down what we see as our own roles

Write down what we see as our co-directors' roles

Agree final roles and responsibilities and write these down for review

Recognising that what I think my business partner is doing may be different to what he thinks he is doing, helps us get on.

OK, so this means recognising strengths too, but knowing what aggravates others and letting them know you know, really helps. It gets rid of the voice inside them crying out to call you pedantic, dogmatic or late. I am not saying you should fix this stuff - you can if you really want to, but that's not what this article is about, and sometimes I quite enjoy being cantankerous.

I can't emphasise enough how liberating it is when you say "I know I'm being ..." - you remove the stress caused by your business partner wanting to tell you himself, but wanting to avoid causing insult. It allows you to discuss the real issue at hand.

Bring another person into the mix who the current group will have respect for. Make their role consultative and meet regularly, monthly is fine. As well as the traditional roles of a non-exec, an experienced person who is not involved on a day-to-day basis in the nitty gritty, can provide clarity and also help partners to argue their point with logic rather than emotion.

I am a big fan of (good) meetings - if meetings are run well, arguments can sometimes be saved for this more controlled and mediated environment.

Just knowing you have a time and place (and host) for the heated discussion can help.

You may also want to agree that each director or partner can use the adviser independently to vent - moaning to others can be good.

Lighten the mood at times of real conflict. Ok, sometimes this has backfired on me and colleagues have mistaken this for avoidance of an issue, but sometimes breaking the downward spiral of aggravation can be achieved this way.

End the day, or a crappy email with a link to The Onion.

Extreme abuse may help (and amuse) - I was annoyed at the third email riddled with typos sent by a co-director - rather than a rant he got "About &"$£(*" time you read what you write, you type like *r*p you &"$£(*" sausage for fingers &"$£ !" I rarely swear but this got attention, amused, and got stuff done without too much real offence. (Compare the response if I had said plainly that he needed to take more care with communications - it would have sounded preachy and self-righteous).

He now does the same with me and will berate me with foul screams when I labour a point - he doesn't mean the abuse, but it makes me think if I am going on and on.

Fight the important issues: in discussions only raise the key issue, not everything that happens to be on your mind. This helps in turning a disagreement from a fight or battle into a constructive issues based discussion.

Finally - take time out away from the office, a lunch, dinner or drink in a social environment builds stronger bonds.

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