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Why Your Partner Must be Two Faced

Written on November 12, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Business

two_faces Bigg Success is two years old today! What a two years it has been!

Over the past two years, you’ve given us two thumbs up in so many ways. You’ve made us one of the regularly featured business career podcasts in iTunes. You’ve helped us grow the number of people who visit our site every day.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn celebrate the 2nd anniversary of Bigg Success on The Bigg Success Show! Cick the purple player to listen: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Bigg Success is not a two-seater. We love to hear from you. We’re so happy that you’ve been here to share your thoughts with us over the past two years.

Because it takes two to tango. We couldn’t do this if it weren’t for you. We thank you so much for all your support.

Bigg success is life on your own terms. It’s two for the price of one here. We feel so fortunate to be able to work together. That’s life on our own terms!

Now on to the topic of today’s post.

There’s a two-step in selecting your partner or partners. We got lucky on this one, even though we had two left feet! It naturally happened for us.

But don’t follow our lead. You probably want to be more intentional. There’s a dichotomy at play – your partnership must be two-faced.

The first face: You and any partner should be like two peas in a pod.
Partners must share the same vision and values or they will constantly be at odds with each other. For example, business partners must agree on whether you’re in business to create current income or to build long-term wealth. Your strategies will be quite different with these two different visions of success.

You also have to share core values. You will face some tough decisions on the path to bigg success. Partners with different core values may respond differently.

The second face: Two heads are better than one.
It’s important to have a shared vision. It’s important to have the same core values. However, if you share too many characteristics, your partnership will likely fail.

You want a partner with complementary skills. If you both have the same talents and strengths, you would probably be better off with a different partner. There won’t be much synergy in your relationship.

You also want a partner with a different point-of-view. You want someone who takes a different approach. Otherwise, neither of you gets a critical review of your ideas. You needlessly waste time and money because your bad ideas don’t get filtered out before you take action on them.

We think these principles apply to any partnership.
You can extend it as far as you want. It may apply to your partner in life, a partner in business, key employees or a joint venture partner on a specific project.

The key to building partnerships that aren’t two-dimensional is to understand this dichotomy when you select a partner. It’s critical for creating synergy which multiplies your results more than two-fold.

Get this right and you’ll get two tickets to paradise … partnership paradise, that is. And that’s bigg success!

Put in your two cents worth anytime. Review our show in iTunes. Leave a comment. E-mail us at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com. Call us at 888.455.BIGG (2444). However, whatever, wherever or whenever … we love to hear from you!

Thanks so much for reading our post today. Please join us next time when we look at a killer combination – that’s two things – that lead to bigg success! Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Entrepreneuring Life on Your Own Terms

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3 Comments

How Honest Should You be with Your Employees?

Written on September 5, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Decision Making, Management

questions Clinton Korver wrote a great article for Harvard Business Publishing. He talks about his experience running a start-up and why it’s especially important during tough times to share information with your employees.

He says that he went against the advice of his venture capitalists. They feared losing employees, customers, and other investors if the bad news got out. Clinton found that being completely forthright strengthened his relationships with his employees.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn debate today's ethical dilemma on The Bigg Success Show! Just click the purple play button: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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marylynn One of my radio managers did that when our company wasn’t doing so well. I appreciated the honesty and how it put all of us on the same page.

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Honesty is high on most of our lists of core values. However, do we really think that we should always be honest?

For example, picture yourself standing with your best friend adoring her newborn baby boy. You think he’s the least attractive baby you’ve ever seen. She’s going on and on about him, when she asks you the dreaded question …

Isn’t he the best looking baby you’ve ever seen?

Would you tell her what you really think? Or would you pick your words carefully to avoid hurting her feelings?

Of course, this is a different situation than the first one presented – being honest with your employees, even when things are not going well.

But it illustrates that there can be a second value at stake – the desire to not cause undue harm.

Is there a reason to tell your friend what you really think? What good will come from it?

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george I’ve come to believe strongly in open-book management. As a general rule, I think the more you share with your employees, the better. Having said that, I have found you also have to know your employees. Open-book requires a higher level of maturity from your employees. If that’s not present, sharing more just creates undue emotional distress.

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The reason an ethical dilemma is a dilemma is because two or more core values at odds with each other. These situations flow up to the leader. You have to find a good solution.

It’s a personal decision. There likely will be disagreement on the best way to handle it. That’s why it’s so important to have a framework in place for these kinds of decisions.
This framework will help you:

be more efficient in making decisions like this

make decisions that are consistent instead of all over the board

build goodwill with all affected parties

respect the face you see in the mirror at the end of the day

We have a great resource that helps you set up the framework so when an ethical dilemma comes your way you’re prepared. It outlines the three steps to solving an ethical situation: