Many bright and highly qualified individuals are passed up for promotions because they don’t realize the critical importance of building partnerships. So, what is a partner? While there are several definitions, for our purposes we will use this:
partner
noun
one associated with another especially in an action
Mirriam-Webster Dictionary
We spend most of the time on our disciplines, and we do not include the critical importance of creating and maintaining functional, cross-functional, and external partnership building in our schedule—an easily avoided career killer.
Increasing your partnership rating is another way of stating, “How do I increase my status?”
Elevate your Partnership rating, and you elevate your Status. If your Partnership rating is high-you get the job. If your Partnership rating is low to non-existent, even if you’re the most qualified candidate- you don’t get the job.
The key to building successful Partnerships is all about Trust, attitude, sharing, communication skills, operational skills, and people facing skills. All learned qualities. Much of our work encompasses building on these qualities.
To quickly create Trust:
- Raise your level of interest in what’s essential to the other person
- Get in-sync with how the other person wishes you to communicate with them
- Satisfy one of the other person’s value systems, or what’s important to them to make their decisions
So, how can you be better, more proficient at Partnering? Be aware of Partnership stoppers:
- Insincerity-not being genuine
- Hearsay-using gossip and innuendos
- Focusing–don’t dwell on problems
- Prejudgment-self-understanding before really knowing
- Ego-It’s all about me, it’s a killer
- Self Interest-Always making decisions that favor me
To eliminate these Partnership stoppers apply the flip side:
- Be genuine, use facts and corroboration, offer and share solutions, probe to know then make a decision, find interest in another person’s story, do the right thing.
Want to accelerate your career? Reach out, we can help.