It is very natural when you start a business you want a partner that will approach your business with the same level of enthusiasm and commitment that you have. However, according to Wasserman, a professor at Harvard Business School, 65% of high-potential startups fail as a result of conflict among co-founders. Often, the most successful teams are made up of people who worked together in the past.
A partnership is a legal agreement and a long-term process between two or more partners. You have to spend plenty of time together to plan important business events with your partners and need to get along with them.
- Choose a Partner That Can Bring Abilities and Expertise to the Business
A good business partner should have abilities that help and complement your own. Nobody is perfect in all of the business things. If you have excellent interpersonal skills but poor business investment skills it will not be going to benefit you, consider a partner who follows business accounting. The more abilities you and your partner bring to the business together the more comfortable it will be to begin, plan, develop, and run your business.
- Choose a Partner Who Shares Your Values
Strong partners generally agree on rules about what is beneficial, useless, good, and bad. These values manage their actions, decisions, and preferences. Your values develop your personal and professional statuses so they typically carry a strong emotional charge. When partners’ values align for instance they share a sense of responsibility to family, success, passion, work ethic, or political persuasion they are more inclined to make harmonious decisions and remain united.
- Choose a Partner Who Gives and Takes
In successful business partnerships, each partner understands their success is equal or exceeds their contributions. Random acquaintances can keep this sense of justice by keeping records of the profits they exchange. However, in long-term and more dedicated relationships keeping track is not good. Rather, each partner should have that sense of equity, knowing that some days are of giving and some days are of receiving.
- Choose a Partner That Is Financially Stable
Whether or not your partner offers finance to the business is less valuable than if your potential partner is in desperate financial straits. Someone in the middle of financial pressure may not be the most suitable option to go into business for a variety of reasons.
Money, asset, and time management skills are important for small business entrepreneurs, and someone who has grossly failed their personal or business finances may not have the abilities or discipline to make a business partnership work. Worst case situation, they may even look for ideas to steal from your business to resolve personal financial problems.
- Choose a Partner That Can Offer Resources and Reliability to Your Business
It is exceptional to have a business partner that has financial resources, but there are other participations a partner can bring to the business that can be just as important. A partner with a strong business network, industry connections, client list, or specific credentials and expertise can also enhance the worth of your business and increase your possibilities of achieving long-term success.
- Choose Someone Who Can Share Your Vision
The vision shows an organization’s passion for the future. When partners hold many visions, they can easily become discouraged, confused, and separated. In order to build and help from a shared vision, four responsibilities are necessary: formulating the initial vision, explaining that vision into a set of actions, articulating and selling the vision to others, and keeping true to the essence of the vision when reality breaks the plans.
- Choose a Partner Who Is Prepared for The End
It is usually said that a graceful exit is evidence of a flourishing venture. Without an exit policy in place, partners can be confronted with making critical decisions at a time when they are least level headed. An exit policy is a shared understanding of when and how an agreement will end. A written exit policy should be added to every business plan. However, even though planning for the end is a crucial aspect of business ownership, it is one of the most overlooked things. An exit is easy to bypass when the problem is not pushing and raising it might turn the deal or suggest a lack of trust. An exit plan should acknowledge four questions: what circumstances might trigger an end to the partnership; how will the business be considered at the end; which options for future ownership are agreeable; and what post-alliance ties and restrictions, such as non-compete clauses, need to be included.
- Choose a Partner That Believes in Good Personal and Business Ethics
Only choose the option of partnerships with someone you can trust. Look for someone who appreciates honesty and believes in good personal and business ethics. An improperly preferred business partner may end up stealing from the company, taking your concepts or clients to start their own business, or breaking laws that could bring legal trouble into your business.
- Choose a Partner Who Is Willing to Engage in Proactive Conflict Management
When people share a close association, competing and avoiding are not practical conflict management strategies. Instead, successful partners will practice proactive and strategic plans to conflict management such as accommodation, understanding, and collaboration to settle their disagreements.