Inspiring Partnerships

Partnerships make the ideal topic for a day like today, Valentines. Many partnerships are born around this day as friendships swirl into love and open hearts abound. This is also the day of many relationship dissolutions as couple face the reality of a union headed for destruction as two beings admit that seeing eye-to-eye, working as a team, are impossibilities. Jealousy and self-interest will never allow such diverse connections to unite.

Inspiring partnerships are comprised of individuals who are associated by interest and responsibility. There is a chemistry of success and a mutual respect for winning and growth. Partners may tack to different winds, a characteristic that expands the vision of the team, but they also rejoin and regroup to achieve a common good. Partners visualize a common goal as they glance left and right, up and down, and all around with strength and confidence as they seek the best solutions.

Partnerships in business are replete with people skills as well as personal strategies and methods. Partners "get along" not to go along, but rather to acknowledge the positive perspectives and talents of the other members. While one member may have a higher-ranking seat in the partnership, as in founder/chair/director/president, when it comes to reaching goals, the hierarchy dissipates as the unity deepens and multiplies. The "top" leader is still willing to take the fall, if it should come to that, because the blame game is non-existent in a true partnership. A partnership is a team based on equality.

Partners play to win, but not at all costs. To succeed at the latter, partners must snub their noses to the common good. Winning to win is not winning at all but more of a power play, a show of strength. Partners produce Win-Win situations. While some may benefit more than others, like a prescription for diabetes is not one I need but one that is advantageous to those with the disease, it is something that in the Big Picture is good for everyone.

A partnership holds sacredness, a hallowed ground on which all partners walk. Days, months, and years of empower product, performance, and camaraderie. There exist moments of instant chemistry as novel ideas are excitedly introduced or new team members enter the fold, but a strong bond lives because of mutual esteem and veneration over time. This can be a difficult concept as new partners join as they have missed out on earlier segments of the growing process. Their history begins now, not at the founding or with the initial foundation. But reciprocal appreciation fills this gap.

The difference between a partnership and non-partnership is evident and clear, however, in spite of this it can be difficult to see. Non-partners, or members as I define them, yearn to belong. They believe with time and hard work they will be included in the sacred relationship. In fact some will, but others will always hang outside the fringe, perhaps deceivingly close to the inner circle but never invited to enter. While they may be excellent contributors and vital participants because of unique abilities and flair, they rest on the edge. Strength is present but the confidence in the individual is not there.

As a member (instead of a partner) you have choices. You can grin and bare it, hope for better days, gripe and complain, whine and snivel, or just do your job and go home. If the salary is great, it is easier to stay in such an unrewarding position than to pack up and go. You need to also evaluate and analyze the benefits of the job. Are you enriching your brain, honing your talents, and augmenting your aptitudes? Or are angst and agony replacing revitalization? Under-appreciation is painful and disheartening. Money is nice, but sanity and inner well being are better. Call up your courage for change if you are ready for the challenges entailed in that. Personal compensation outweighs grief.

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