Top Mistakes That Can Make You a Bad Partner (And How to Avoid Them)

Leaning Toward Wisdom

Let’s define “partner” broadly. It could be a spouse, a business associate, a legal partnership, an informal collaboration, a co-worker, or something else. In short, it’s a joint venture of some sort. You get to define it the way that best suits you.

My first partnerships were likely being a sibling to my sister who is 6 years older. We may have been too far apart in age to be a real partnership, but aren’t all kids with brothers and sisters partners in some sense? I watch my grandkids and it seems not much has changed. As children, we had to learn to get along, work together, protect, and support each other. Okay, maybe there were some fights along the way, too.

Once I got into school I’d often be teamed up with other students for projects. Mostly, I remember doing bulletin boards or something creative. The teacher would assign one or more people to me to produce something. It was my first real experience with frustration in a creative endeavor. I’ve thought about it often – how early on I should have known I needed to be more discriminating in the ideal partner. Or to consider whether or not I even need or want one.

Through the years one phrase has captured my biggest challenge: being like-minded.

That doesn’t mean seeing everything identically. Nor does it mean coming to the same conclusion. I’ve wrestled with this notion all my life, attempting to distill the meaning of “being like-minded.” Maybe there’s a better way to figure it out, but my approach was to identify the source of my frustrations. What is driving me crazy and why? It always comes down to, “Is it me, or is it them?” That leads to wrestling with whether or not it’s going to require compromise to lower quality. To lower the expectation. To accept good enough. To avoid reaching for something better.

By the time I reached junior high, I knew I was cursed. There would never be a way out. So I started looking for some way forward. It didn’t often happen so I learned to pursue things by myself if the thing was important to me. Think school projects.

I had close friends. I had many more friendly acquaintances. I enjoyed being amongst friends. Humor and sarcasm were constant common denominators. But when it came to getting things accomplished, I was sober-minded. Serious. Maybe to a fault. A few people who didn’t know me misinterrupted my introversion and seriousness for conceit. But that was never the issue because I never esteemed myself better than anybody else, albeit I did frequently think, “I wouldn’t do that” when watching somebody make a foolish choice. I was compliant listening to teachers and parents. Mostly doing what I was told, behaving and always mindful of the situation. I was a noticer which made it easier to avoid problems, easier to read people, but impossible to avoid noticing. As a result, my inner signal-to-noise ratio has never been great. When you notice everything you learn to discriminate between the two, but it’s important to distinguish between what you think you’re noticing and true evidence. As a young adult, I began to seriously learn what I termed evidence-based intuition. Gut feel is terrific when you notice everything, but it’s not error-free, even if it is mostly accurate. Pile on some questions that force you to consider what you know to be true, and the accuracy gets closer to perfect. I’ve now practiced that for over 40 years and I’m still working on it.

The context matters lest you think I’m just a wild contrarian. I’m not. But I’m driven by accomplishment, not ambition. They can look similar, but the difference is selfishness. Credit. Glory. Honor. I don’t much care about any of those. I care about the final product. I care about the conquest. Today, I often use the metaphor of “taking the hill.” I’m driven to take the hill in the best method possible. The challenge, struggle and adversity provide the juice. Otherwise, everybody would be taking the hill. But not everybody does. And that excites me.

Enter the problem. Those who say they too would like to take the hill, but don’t seem to display the stuff required to achieve it. Or to achieve it as efficiently. Or to be dragged along by the momentum of others so they can also experience the hill top. I’ve never had patience with such people.

Two things erupted early in childhood about such people (again, think school projects). I remember so many classroom bulletin boards or door decorations that drove me nuts. I’m assigned, with two other students, to decorate the classroom door for the holidays. We brainstorm some ideas and immediately it’s evident my cohorts just want to get past this assignment. Me? I want the output to be awesome – the best in the building. So right off the bat I now know I’ve got two passengers willing to never put their oars in the water as we paddle hard toward producing a great door decoration. But I’m stuck. Never mind that I often would ask – and be granted permission – to just do it by myself. It had nothing to do with not wanting to work alongside others. It had everything to do with wanting to avoid lowering the standard of creating a dynamite door decoration.

Listen, I wasn’t some nose-to-the-grindstone kid. I slacked off as much as anybody looking for shortcuts while procrastinating all along the way. But when it came to producing something creative, my brain entered a difference gear. It was completely unintentional. It’s like some auto-pilot feature kicked in that said, “Let’s make this as good as it can be.” And rarely was I tethered to anybody who felt the same way. It was true then. It’s been true ever since.

That’s why I started aiming at only helping high-performers some years ago. After serving people who had that “it’s good enough” mentality I quit. I quit trying to help them. It was too frustrating. Besides, they didn’t accept the challenge to be better.

Try to help a business owner improve his marketing and pricing, things that will drop to the bottom line quickly. Demonstrate that his pricing is more than 25% lower than he can easily get if he’ll only ask. Do that by making sales at the higher rate. Do it again. And again. And fight him every inch of the way to elevate his customer service so he can continue to raise his prices. Battle him so long you’re exhausted pushing water up a hill (my metaphor for futility) and you’ll have some idea of my frustration.

Work with a business owner on reaching new heights of success by challenging how things have always been done. Challenge to think about what might be possible. Not guaranteed, but maybe (just maybe) possible. Then fight to help her see what could be only to realize she won’t, or can’t.

For me, there’s always a bigger hill worth taking. And ways to take it better. The excitement, fun and exhilaration come in pushing to see if we can’t do this better. And not just better than anybody else, but far better! I remember challenging grade school classmates that somebody is going to produce the best-decorated door in school (maybe there was a contest, I don’t remember because that didn’t much matter to me – my success was never reliant on somebody else’s approval)…it may as well be US.

I’m not a good partner for very many. Not when it comes to getting something done. I know that about myself. I’ve always known that. This has nothing to do with teamwork. Teamwork excites me. Challenging willing people to achieve something together that none of us could alone is a magical experience. However, the driftwood (low performers) on a team frustrates me because I know the damage inflicted on the rest of us. That drove me to pursue leadership in business where I could better serve those of us driven to do our best. I craved being the boss for that very reason. Thankfully, early in my career I got the chance and was able to prove to myself that putting a focus on helping high-performers worked. It always worked. And getting low-performers off the roster as quickly as possible, that always worked. Always.

That context isn’t the same as being tied to a person, or maybe two, who just don’t care as much as you do. Or being tied to people who aren’t as capable. Two major factors bubbled up over time: capability and caring. Sometimes I found myself shackled to some idiot who just couldn’t do it. Worse yet, was being tied to somebody who could do it, but didn’t care enough to. Either way, the outcome was awful. As a boss with employees, I was constantly working to determine which is it? If it’s capacity, can I do something to improve that? If YES, then what can I do and how much am I’m willing to do? If NO, then the game is over. If they don’t care, I used to spend time attempting to persuade people to care, but I soon gave up that pursuit because I was never able to figure out how I could do that. I respected everybody’s ability to decide for themselves, but it didn’t mean I had to have them on my roster. So I hit the eject button hoping they might find a team where they could care. Where they could perform better.

Partnerships are different animals. They’re more mutual. More equal. Even if there’s some authority hierarchy they just feel and behave differently because they’re more intimate. A marriage partnership is the most intimate of them. A business partnership is a different kind of intimacy, but for some (I don’t condone this) it’s even more important than a marriage.

I’ve been married to one girl since 1978. We first dated when we were 18 and since then there’s never been anybody else. For either of us. I’m not a perfect husband. She’s not a perfect wife. We’re good for each other though. Sometimes we even have brief moments of being great for one another. There are many mistakes we can make as mates to ruin or wreck our marriage partnerships. Most of us married folk could make more than a handful before lunch!

Here are five mistakes that have made – and currently make – people bad partners for me and ways to avoid them. Hint: the best way to avoid them is to avoid people prone to making these mistakes, but sometimes we don’t know that until we experience it. An ounce of prevention and all that!

First, thinking only or mostly about yourself is a mistake.

Don’t consider the other person. Be wrapped up in what you most want. Take square aim at getting only what you need from the partnership. All the other mistakes are some form of this first big mistake.

Focus on what the others in the partnership can do for you. Impose on them. Don’t be considerate of their time or effort. And never, ever think about yourself as any of those things – imposing or inconsiderate.

Avoiding this “mistake” isn’t easy because self-centered people mostly aren’t able (or willing) to think about others. Selfishness is their way of life, but to them, it’s not selfishness. Many of them think they’re quite compassionate and altruistic. Perhaps our first mistake should be delusion, not self-centeredness. 😉

Second, being a poor listener is a partnership mistake.

My lengthy preamble demonstrates a fundamental weakness I have. Paying attention isn’t tough for me. Don’t get me wrong – I can be distracted. Mostly, I can be preoccupied, which causes me to not be as present sometimes. When I’m in a conversation 1:1 in a partnership setting though…I mostly am able to be in the moment and pay close attention. Tone. Words. Body language. Meaning. I’m watching closely so I can understand. If I’m not sure about my understanding, I’m going to ask questions until I do.

When I struggle to listen:

a. The conversation is unimportant (small talk)
b. The person is uninteresting
c. The person is verbose, filled with extraneous details
d. The person is evasive, not open and putting on a front
e. When I don’t care

The partnership can be important, but the conversation may not be. That’s hard for me.

Cues matter. Avoid cues by neglecting to listen and it’ll demonstrate you don’t care about your partner.

The best way to avoid this is to care about your partner and the partnership. Care enough to pay attention.

Third, ignore your partner’s frustrations (or preferences). That’s a mistake.

We all express displeasure. Sometimes we do it with precision, but mostly we do it more subtly. I’m direct. Not blunt (usually), but direct. I view communication as a relay racer carrying the baton. I want to make sure when I hand off the baton that it’s securely in possession of the person with whom I’m communicating. It’s my responsibility to make sure they get it.

Recently I outlined a three-step process to fix a problem a “partner” and I were experiencing. We discussed it. I wrote it down and shared it. It was acknowledged, but ignored. Frustration ensued. Honestly, it’s a result of the other mistakes I’ve listed, too. And if it weren’t for some other positives that outweigh the behavior that drives me crazy, I’d split. But I stick with it hoping I can influence some growth and improvement. I’m hard-headed like that.

Remedy: acknowledge your partner’s preferences or frustrations. But more importantly, demonstrate that you care enough to do something about them, to whatever degree you can.

For example, after almost 47 years of marriage, my wife and I have a pretty good idea about what frustrates us and our preferences. I love fried catfish and fried okra. She doesn’t much care for either one. I’m mindful of that and seldom suggest dining at a place that offers no alternatives. I don’t want her to choke down something she doesn’t enjoy. A better solution is to find someplace where we can both be satisfied.

We could consider numerous behaviors that wreck partnerships. There are likely hundreds of nuanced behaviors, but it seems to me they all stem from one issue, pride. Self.

During his recruitment of the men who became His Apostles, the Lord admonished them, “Deny yourself. Take up your cross (of self-denial) and follow me.”

Stand up for yourself in partnerships or you’ll get completely run over. People will take over your idea, lower or change your standards, and make your life miserable if you let them. Not because they’re bad people, but because they care more about themselves than you. And while you certainly must care about yourself and your goals, you can still consider and defer to others in the process. Acquiescing to others isn’t a 100% of the time thing.

Please tell a friend about the podcast!

• Join our private Facebook group
• Email me