Partnering Intelligence (book by Dent)

Partnering Intelligence (2^nd Ed)

Stephen Dent

 In a world increasingly dependent on information and skill, the ability to gain access to more information and skills will be a big competitive advantage. Success in this effort requires a capability for partnership. Analogous to other sorts of “intelligences”, this book is about partnering intelligence.

 6 attributes contributing to partnership intelligence are:

1. Self-disclosure & feedback*
2. Win-win orientation
3. Ability to trust
4. Future orientation
5. Comfort with change
6. Comfort with interdependence

Partnerships can be internal or external. Internal partnerships are the foundation of organizational effectiveness. These partnerships may be between colleagues, teammates, departments or functions. Partnership implies a more complete relationship than collaboration does and reflects a common approach to the 6 attributes listed above. Organizations with low internal partnership skills will find it difficult to form good external partnerships. Few companies recognize their employees as partners in this sense, but they should if they hope to form successful external partnerships.. No matter how financially successful a partnership is, if it fails as a relationship it will fail in the end.

 

Partnerships are easy to initiate, but not easy to establish and maintain. Partnership establishment stages are very similar to the stages of team development. An important difference is that partnerships usually begin with uncertainty about whether to even form the partnership, while most team know why they are coming together. While a team is learning HOW to work together, a partnership is learning WHETHER AND HOW to work together. The critical stage in both is the second stage. The conflicts that surface in this stage must be resolved to allow progress. Failing to address these conflicts productively prevents the partners from moving from exploration to commitment and can lead to dissolution.

Team/relationship	Partnership
Forming	Assess
Storming	Explore
Norming	Initiate
Performing	Commit

 

Outside forces (relative to the partnership participants) drive the partnership back towards the beginning. These forces can be external to both partners or internal to one partner’s organization (lack of internal alignment can be a negative force).

 

As potential partners enter the assessment stage, a primary focus needs to be on trust building. One model for building trust is the Plan-Do-Check-Act/Abandon cycle (Shewart or Deming cycle). Together, the partners create a plan, execute that plan, check its execution, and decide whether and how to proceed. Completion of the cycle builds conviction that both parties are trustworthy, and the more cycles completed indicates more trustworthiness. This is not to imply that all such tasks are successfully completed, but the initiatives taken during task failure also indicate commitment. This cycle can (and should) be used through the whole life of a partnership to build and maintain a high degree of trust.

 

People and organizations typically have strengths and weaknesses related to the 6 partnership attributes. Simplistically, the following table suggests actions if you are weak in one of the 6 attributes.

If you are weak in:	Then:
Self-disclosure & feedback	Get comfortable with more self-disclosure. Partnership requires that you get what you need and inability to express your needs to a partner will doom the relationship.
Win-win orientation	Reconsider how competitive you are and how you define winning. A partnership is not succeeding unless both parties are winning
Ability to trust	Review why you expect potential partners to behave badly. Does this always apply or just on occasion. Be careful about generalizing.
Future orientation	Consider if you are too focused on past outcomes. Sometimes the past is a good guide to the future, but it’s no certainty.
Comfort with change	Low trust and past orientation may make the status quo seem safer. All partnerships will change the partners, and the goal is a change for the better.
Comfort with interdependence	Independent action may be very comforting as it seems to provide good control. A good partnership does involve some surrender of control by both parties, in return for better outcomes.

 

The following sections describe some approaches and tools to help people and organizations to develop the six attributes.

 

Self-disclosure & feedback

Good partnership requires that you get what you need from the partnership. If your partner does not know what you need, they can’t help fill that need. This requires self-disclosure of your needs. Self-disclosure helps develop understanding and trust. Often partners have conflicts due to misunderstanding of intent or motivation. Sufficient disclosure can prevent this misunderstanding.

 

A limit to self-disclosure is self understanding. Interestingly, others may understand things about you that you don’t, and you may project things about yourself that are untrue. In any relationship, understanding and trust flow from the arena where both parties know about themselves and each other. The relationship between self-understanding and mutual understanding is illustrated by the JoHari Window (see below). Through self-disclosure you increase what they understand about you and, through receiving feedback, you increase what you know about yourself. The bigger the arena you are working in, the more trust and understanding potential can be available to the partnership. It is wrong to assume that others do not know about your weak spots - no matter how much you try to hide them. And it is wrong to assume that your partner will abuse the knowledge they gain. In the assessment stage, you use progressive disclosure as the relationship develops as trust builds – your arena increases in many steps – not one big one.

 

JoHari Window

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the foregoing discussion has emphasized self-disclosure, giving and receiving feedback is very important. Not all feedback you receive is “valid”, but it is important information to consider. Offering feedback is important as well, as it is one way that you communicate your needs – most often what you need from the relationship.

 

Win-Win Orientation

Conflict is inevitable at all stages of partnership development. Early in development, conflict can lead the parties to terminate the relationship – to both side’s detriment. Most people respond to real or potential conflict with some form of “fight or flight” expressed as evasion, harmonization, compromise or fighting. Evasion, harmonization and compromise deprive you of what you need, while compromise and fighting deprive your partner of what they need. This is illustrated in the chart below. Negotiation is the only approach that allows both parties to “win”, and thus is critical to partnership development. In business, competitive instincts may drive a need to “win”, but this can damage the partnership’s potential.

 

Conflict resolution model

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If a conflict is not resolved in a way that benefits both partners, it sets the stage for the conflict to be replayed at another time. In fact, the process of reaching an unsatisfactory result can be the main issue in a second round of conflict, even if the conflict is nominally about something else.

 

Ability to Trust

While two parties can collaborate without trust, they can’t be partners. Within organizations, the absence of trust is one corrosive force degrading performance. In external partnerships, parties are very tuned to their degree of trust in the partner and sensitive to signs of untrustworthiness.

 

Some simple actions to make trust possible include:

1. Tell the truth
2. Take time to develop a relationship, exploring needs and expectations
3. Be accountable for doing what you say

 

Where ever you are in the partnership process, it pays to treat trust building as a process. Five things that you can do to increase the possibility of trust building are:

1. Be open, honest and direct

1. a.      When you have trust issues, it is important to say that. This is an important self-disclosure.
2. a.      Action trumps words. Insure your actions indicate and support partnership.
3. a.      Understanding your emotional reactions is critical to determining what to do about them. Failure to understand can  sabotage the partnership.
4. a.      Discussing the emotional content with others provides a chance to work through emotional issues outside the partner context.
5. a.      If you begin to feel uncomfortable, stop and address the source of discomfort. You won’t be productive until the issue is resolved.

2. Focus on your (own) behavior

3. Focus on your feelings

4. Talk it out with others

5. Stop the action

 

In the partnership, trust depends on ten categories of actions and attitudes. Five focus on execution of tasks and five on the state of the relationship.

TASK	RELATIONSHIP
Commitment (to keeping agreements)	Commitment (to the partnership)
Competence (in technical skills)	Candor (in communications)
Consistency (in producing results)	Communication (level and style)
Contributing (equitable input)	Compassion (for others)
Collaborating (willingness to cooperate)	Credibility (in word and action)

 

 

Future Orientation

Future orientation appears in the language of hope. Past orientation appears in the language of fear, resistance and inevitability. Partnership is a very future oriented; the benefits of partnership will primarily be felt in the present and future.

 

A central problem in past orientation is essentially stereotyping. Because this is what happened in the past, this is what will happen in the future. Because we remember the bad things that happened well, a past orientation favors the status quo. Entering into a partnership has some risk, and a future orientation allows that risk to be taken. Having a future orientation does not mean “ignore the past!”, but it does mean “don’t be controlled by the past”.

 

Comfort with Change

A new partnership involves change. The partners will move from a current state (not partner) to a future state (partner) through some transition. After evaluation of the current and prospective future state, an analysis can be made of what must change and a plan established. The following is a list of approaches that help in building commitment to making a change.

1. Communicate your vision of change
2. Ask for your partner’s vision of change
3. Take time for discussion and understanding of the visions and each party’s needs
4. Include all partners (stakeholders) in this discussion
5. Retain the potential for new options and choices to be created
6. Share information, prevent unwelcome surprises
7. Take time to get it right – it’s a relationship
8. Try new ideas before committing to them - prototype
9. Demonstrate your commitment to the change
10. Be honest above the impact on people; the intent should not be to create winners or losers
11. Set out milestones for the change; provide feedback on progress; reward people’s commitment to the change.

 

Not everybody has the same perspective on change. The author estimates that 20% of people are initiators, 60% are adaptors (at various speeds of adaptation) and 20% are resistors. Adaptors and resistors (the majority of people) have fears (whether recognized consciously or not) that must be relieved during the transition. These fears probably relate to: loss of control, uncertainty about the future, loss of competence, loss of familiarity, or surprises. Part of transition planning should include actions to address these fears. Good planning will allow people to adapt as fast as they can, but bad planning will slow adaptation further. In developing a partnership, with the changes that this implies, it is important to balance the task execution and relationship building.

 

 It is tempting to focus on the task to avoid stress during change, but this is a mistake. The partnership relationship needs constant nurturing, though sometimes more is required and sometimes less. Probably 20% of the effort needs to go into the relationship, but sometimes it may rise to 80% of the effort.

 

One issue is to identify what each stakeholder can gain from the partnership. As long as the benefits are unclear, slow adaptors and resistors will feel justified in their position.

 

Comfort with Interdependence

Most people and organizations prize autonomy, and partnership may threaten that autonomy. In a good partnership, each party remains independent and autonomous in most areas, and interact in some areas. The essence of partnership is to develop interdependence – areas where each party is dependent on the other. In other words, each party will get what they need from their partner and not give up something critical. As described above, a partnership must be win-win to survive over time.

 

Achieving and maintaining interdependence will require “Interest-based bargaining/consensus” negotiations. The framework presented for such negotiations has five steps.

1. Parties will achieve resolution through their joint efforts to discover the best solution

1. a.      Pay attention to what others are saying
2. b.      Ask clarifying questions
3. c.       Paraphrase back to the speaker
4. d.      State only your point of view
5. e.       Don’t discredit the views of others
6. f.        Limit discussion to the issue, not the person

2. The solution must be acceptable to all parties
3. Any of the parties may block a potential decision
4. Voting, horse trading and compromise are not part of the process
5. Look for the best decision with the available information
6. Both parties should focus on discovering the best decision within the context of the partnership while at the same time satisfying the interests of all the major stakeholders.

 

 

Some final words on partnership

In forming a partnership, there is a tendency to get right to task. The initial focus should be on the relationship - to build the trust level to help cope with task problems. If partners trust each other, they can work through task problems. When they do not trust each other, the problems become an excuse to separate. Here finally are two lists of items associated with success and failure.

 

Six hallmarks of success

1. Active support of leaders
2. Appropriate team membership
3. Common objectives
4. Clear boundaries and scope
5. Consensus and openness
6. Trust and mutual benefits

 

Common reasons for failure

1. Inappropriate team membership
2. Failure to address internal/external partnership issues
3. Inability to create win-win orientation in building common platforms
4. Failure of internal departments  to support organizational partnership due to self-interest
5. Lack of internal partnerships, resulting in poor cross-functional coordination
6. Lack of clear boundaries and scope
7. Lack of leadership support
8. Lack of defined mutual benefits and measurement system to track them
9. Partnership by evolution rather than design
10. Failure to build trusting relationship into the partnership
11. Failure to develop a partnering culture
12. Failure to produce a joint strategic framework

 

The book contains a large number of assessment questionnaires, checklists, and templates that can guide discussions and inform plans. I’ve chosen to ignore them in this summary, but they are distributed throughout the book.

 

*sections in italics are directly quoted from the book