Time to Partner Up

A good partnership at work is a blessing. Partners get more done, are more successful, and have a better time than singletons plugging along in isolation. But do you know what makes a good partnership? Do you even know how to be a good partner?

Rodd Wagner and Gale Muller do. Five years ago, Wagner, a Gallup principal, and Muller, Gallup World Poll vice chairman and general manager, started unpacking the data on partnerships. They realized that much of what people think makes a good collaboration isn't true, and that what is true isn't widely known.

Part of our brain is there for tracking reputations: Who do we trust and who don't we trust?

For instance, did you know that the work doesn't have to be split evenly and that it usually isn't? Did you know that great partners often have different motivations and that it doesn't matter as long as both people get what they want?

What does matter, Wagner and Muller discovered, can be summarized as eight enduring principles of collaboration: complementary strengths, a common mission, fairness, trust, acceptance, forgiveness, communicating, and unselfishness. How to put them in place is the focus of Wagner and Muller's book Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life, which was named one of the best business books of 2009 by CEO Read.

In the following conversation, the second of two parts, Wagner and Muller discuss how to make those principles work, including the advantage of courage, the value of honesty, and why being unselfish might be the most self-interested element of a strong partnership.

GMJ: Please talk about the theme of reciprocity that runs through all the eight principles of partnership that you discovered.

Gale Muller, Ph.D.: Reciprocity resounds throughout the book. Actually, we did many factor analyses with different sets of items and found three major factors contributing to good partnerships: a common goal, complementary strengths, and reciprocity. And there are six elements that are a part of reciprocity: acceptance, forgiveness, fairness, trust, communicating, and unselfishness. All elements except goals and strengths are, in one way or another, aspects of reciprocity.

GMJ: Should partners be conscious of reciprocity?

Dr. Muller: Absolutely -- because a collaboration doesn't work without it. Two people can have the same goal, they can talk about it, they can both be truly on the same page, they can be perfect complements for each other, but unless they provide each other with mutual support, nothing happens.

Rodd Wagner: Yes, the best partners constantly make overtures to or throw good deeds in the direction of their counterpart, trusting that their partner will reciprocate. Now there's all kinds of research showing how people differ on this: Some people can be neglectful or abusive -- there are jerks amongst us. A large part of our brain is there for tracking reputations: Who do we trust and who don't we trust? Who will reciprocate and who won't? And it's a hair-trigger mechanism; we don't wait for a whole lot of information before we judge someone one way or the other. It's the Achilles' heel to the whole challenge of creating solid partnerships.

But because we're wary that someone may abuse our trust, all of us to some extent withhold many of the partnership-building overtures that we ought to be making. We probably ought to stick our neck out far more often, take risks far more often, because in the vast majority of cases, people feel a moral obligation to reciprocate.

There are more partnership opportunities out there than people really realize, but they don't take the risk because they're so worried that someone will take advantage of them that they hold back.

GMJ: OK, but how do you do that in practice? Demonstrate that you're trustworthy and hope that the other person is too?

Dr. Muller: To a certain degree, there's only one way: You have to take a risk. In any partnership, there are critical moments in which one or both partners must take a risk. And if they don't, the partnership never takes off. So they take the risk that they may be taken advantage of. But more often than not, they won't be, especially if the people they're risking for can be trusted and truly complement their strengths. But you shouldn't stop taking risks if your first two or three overtures don't pan out, because otherwise you might be stuck when you don't need to be.

Wagner: And when it doesn't pan out, it's often caused by a lack of communication. If you say, "Hey, let's go get a cup of coffee. I just want to bounce some ideas off you," you indicate your intentions of cooperation and that you want to communicate. I've never experienced or even heard of one of those situations that have gone wrong. Sit down and talk, be very deliberate about the fact that you are forming a partnership, about what you're trying to accomplish together, how to divide up the responsibilities and use your strengths. Those kinds of conversations are absolutely crucial if you're going to increase the quality and quantity of the partnerships you have.

GMJ: That sounds like "active acceptance."

Dr. Muller: Well, it's a relatively new psychological term, part of what we sometimes call active listening, but it's useful in this area. One of the challenges in any kind of relationship -- but particularly in a working partnership where there's some intensity -- is that there are things that will go wrong. Or there will be something particularly annoying or problematic about one of the partners, and the other must accept it but not ignore it. What seems like annoying behavior may be part of that person's ability to get the job done.

GMJ: But what if you really are exploited? Or what if you screw up and do your partner harm? How do you get the collaboration back on track?

Dr. Muller: If you truly get burned, I don't know how many times you can forgive that. You might be able to do it once or twice, but I don't know that forgiveness can be given more often than that. At that point, I think the relationship and the partnership is done.

We have this focus on singular stars, such as the CEO or the MVP. Companies rarely focus on the true collaborations that actually exist.

Wagner: We certainly don't gloss over it in the book or try to sugarcoat it. We say that this is one of the most difficult decisions that you'll make as a collaborator: whether you can forgive the individual and whether you even want to. But good partners are much better at patching up cracks like that than bad ones are, because good partners can communicate. The individual who made the breach needs to say, "I'm sorry, this was not my intent. Here's the commitment that I'll make so that you're aware that I'm still with you. I apologize. Let me make it up to you, let me go the extra mile."

But the person whose trust was breached also must be able to forgive. That requires distancing yourself just enough from the initial hurt that you can put it into perspective while also realizing that you can learn from it.

GMJ: That requires a certain amount of unselfishness, which is another one of the eight elements.

Wagner: I think that unselfishness must enter in early in the partnership. You must do something on behalf of the other person in hopes that they will reciprocate. True unselfishness occurs when you are excited for your collaborator's success without getting anything out of it yourself. You're just as delighted to see your coauthor's name on the book as you are to see your own, or as excited to see them give a speech as you would be if you were giving the speech. When you have that kind of strong partnership, you stop thinking in terms of just yourself; you start thinking about what we could accomplish together and what this gets my collaborator, because I want to see him succeed.

GMJ: Speaking of collaboration, can you really collaborate with your boss? Can a manager collaborate with a subordinate?

Dr. Muller: Absolutely.

Wagner: Sure. Why not?

GMJ: Because there's a power imbalance. Don't subordinates feel compelled to show deference?

Dr. Muller: In our research for this book, we asked people all over the world if their supervisor was more like a boss or a partner, and more people said partner than boss. But it takes two to be in a partnership -- and remember, partnerships don't have to be equal, they just have to be fair. I think the key is that as a supervisor, you'd be a lot better off making all of your employees your partners than keeping them as subordinates.

GMJ: What advice would you give to companies that want to encourage collaboration?

Wagner: Companies have this idea that we need to be all things to all people. We have this focus on singular stars, such as the CEO or the MVP. Companies rarely focus on the true collaborations that actually exist. When you look into the success of [former Disney chairman and CEO Michael] Eisner, you find [former Disney president and COO Frank] Wells; when you look behind Warren Buffett, you find Charlie Munger. We absolutely believe that this book ought to be read by everyone in an organization that is attempting to be more collaborative because of the fundamental changes that must occur if companies are going to succeed in that.

-- Interviewed by Jennifer Robison