Earlier this year, I was working with two cofounders who were stuck in a period of intense conflict.
They had raised a $40 million+ round of funding, built a strong team, and their product was gaining traction. But, after three years of working together, their partnership had gone from the honeymoon phase to a period of intense frustration and repeating conflict.
In our first session, both founders shared a feeling that their communication styles were too different to continue working together.
Spiral Up or Spiral Down?
Having coached dozens of cofounders through breakups and near breakups, I have gotten to see firsthand an important truth.
When a partnership reaches a breaking point the relationship is just as close to failing as it is to evolving to a new and better place.
Most business partners who are in a state of repeated high conflict will go one of two ways:
Rupture.
One or both of the parties decide that they are not willing to engage in the work needed to rebuild the partnership (often for valid reasons) and the partnership breaks up.
Rupture and rebuild.
The partners recommit to trying to make the partnership work. They seek help. The act of asking for help acknowledges that something is broken that needs to be fixed. The combination of accepting something is wrong and the choice to recommit to each other, creates a burst of energy and experimentation. Partners in this situation, when supported by a strong guide, are often able to let go of their old ways of partnering, navigate through the messy process of change, and discover new paths forward. This overall process is known as “rupture and rebuild.”
What is fascinating is that even in the most intense partner conflicts, Option 2 (spiraling up) is just as possible as Option 1 (spiraling down).
Great founders, great executives, and great partners know this truth—when things get bad you must take a leap of faith and lean into change, knowing that it will be the end of one era but the beginning of another.
““Great founders and great executives (and great partners of all kinds) know this truth, and when things get bad they are willing to take the leap of faith and explore change, knowing that one possible solution is moving to a new and better land.””
Awareness, Action, and Accountability (The Sharpend Method)
Based on working with dozens of pairs, who have successfully spiraled up, here are the three key ingredients that together create an alchemical reaction and increase the odds of landing somewhere new and better vs breaking apart.
The ingredients are:
Awareness
Action
Accountability
Let’s discuss each one in more detail:
Awareness
Breaking patterns requires confronting deeply rooted behaviors. You can think of these behaviors as deep grooves worn into a path over many years. Without awareness and clarity, we follow these grooves without thinking.
Awareness is the flashlight that helps you see the grooves and the other paths that exist just outside of these grooves. So, the first goal when trying to get your partnership unstuck is to become clear on a number of items:
Your “why” for wanting to change (motivation)
Your one most important “what” of what to change
As leading psychologist Ellen Wachtel says, “All partnership-based change begins when both parties acknowledge what they would like to do differently.” For strategies on working with parties/leaders who are resistant to change, you can watch this discussion I had with fellow coach Jennifer Clamp on the topic.
Action
Awareness without action is like a river without a current. Without action, your awareness becomes stale. Awareness and action work in unison. Awareness gives us the information we need to try new behaviors and action is the hard labor of taking risks and breaking out of our old groove.
And, action must be repeated and rewarded. This repetition builds new skills, collects new data on what is possible for ourselves and our partner, and creates new grooves that take us to new places.
Accountability
True change is counterintuitive. When we practice change, our minds and bodies will feel awkward. The old groove (our old patterns) will try to pull us back.
This is why this work requires a support system (whether that be a coach, a mentor, or a community of learners). This accountability allows us each to persevere through the messy middle of a change eventually reaching new altitudes.
The Results
So, what happened with these two Series A founders who thought they needed to separate?
Three months into our engagement the founders came to our group session and I sensed something had changed. They felt grounded and were smiling more (this was in contrast to their facial expressions from past sessions, where they were guarded and tight).
When I asked what had shifted, one stated, “I realized that my anger towards my cofounder had grown like a large backpack, and over time it filled to the brim with resentment. I saw that I had a choice to collapse under this weight or to let go of these negative emotions in service of our shared goal, and let the anger pass.”
The founder went on, “As I committed to this, I felt the pack get lighter and lighter. Eventually, it was so light that I took it off. I couldn’t believe how much I had been carrying. My partner took her pack off as well. We know there is a big summit ahead, but we feel so much lighter now. I don’t know if we’ll make it, but we’d rather fail gloriously going for the summit than fail under the weight of our packs, without having even tried.”
Since this point, there has been backsliding. Each founder has old grooves and they occasionally get pulled into past reactions or old frustrations. But there has been a fundamental shift—one of letting go of the old frustrations and embracing a new way of being and possibility.
“I felt the pack get lighter and lighter. Eventually, it was so light that I took it off. I couldn’t believe how much I had been carrying. My partner took her pack off as well. We know there is a big summit ahead, but we feel so much lighter now””
Sources:
I want to thank you to my teachers, some of whom I learned from directly and others through their writings, videos, and lessons; all of which support me in being able to deliver results to my clients.
This includes:
Dr. Lisa Lahey and Dr. Robert Kegan, authors of Immunity to Change
And more.
If you have additional questions about partnerships or coaching, feel free to reach me at nathan@sharpend.co.