What Makes A Good Partnership?

November 9, 2009

Interview with Rodd Wagner, co-author of the book Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life

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Mike Carruthers:
Partnerships - we all have them at work, at home and with friends.

Rodd Wagner:
Most people are not very deliberate about their partnerships. When you ask them whether they’ve had good partnerships or bad partnerships they will tend to say they’ve had a lot more bad partnerships than good ones.
 

Rodd Wagner

Rodd Wagner, co-author of the book Power of 2

We define a partnership as anytime two people team up to accomplish a single goal. When that happens certain elements kick in...those that will make the difference between two people who click and two people who clash.

In fact, Rodd says, there are eight elements to a good partnership - personal or professional.

They are complementary strengths, a common mission, fairness, trust, acceptance, forgiveness, communicating and unselfishness. The absence of any one of those elements could severely handicap a partnership because you need to be hitting on all eight cylinders.

Interestingly you’re about the worst person to pick your own partner.

One of the handicaps that we tend to have is choosing partners that are too much like ourselves. Many of our most productive potential partnerships are with people who are dramatically different and therefore more likely to be the people that we would NOT choose. And maybe more likely to be the people who would be assigned to work with us rather than those who we would choose.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.