Couples Therapy for Business Partners
Are You And Your Business Partner Experiencing A Breakdown In Communication?
Do you find yourselves in a negative spiral of anger, frustration, and miscommunication?
Have you experienced a divergence in strategy and business goals?
Are you feeling less interested in your work because you’re not getting along?
Maybe you and your business partner started out as good friends who shared the same vision for your company. But as time has gone on, perhaps your decisions got crossed, your interests diverged, and you started to fall out with each other. Little wounds may have built up over the years, festering until they became too glaring to ignore. Now, the two of you may feel like you can barely even tolerate each other. As a result, you may be considering therapy for business partners.
Perhaps Money Is All That’s Holding You Together
Despite your inability to get along with your business partner, your company may still be turning profits and making huge financial gains. Yet at this point, the success of your business may be all that’s keeping you on any terms with your partner whatsoever. Part of you may want to simply take your money and leave, starting a business venture somewhere else. Perhaps you’re torn between separating, resigning, selling the company, or taking legal action.
The good news is that there is another option, and that’s therapy. As a therapist who specializes in working with business partners, my goal is to help the two of you solve communication issues and facilitate connection and understanding. I have 12 years of business experience in addition to a PhD in couples therapy, and I bring the best of both worlds into my work with business partners.
Have any questions? Send me a message!
Many Business Partners Experience Disconnection—Especially In The Post Covid-Age
Roughly 65 percent of startups flounder due to conflict between co-owners.* Needless to say, running a small business is hard. As with a marriage or romantic relationship, two people will never see eye to eye on everything. The key to success lies in accepting disagreements and being willing to work through them when they arise.
What’s more, conflict within businesses became even more prevalent in the wake of COVID. After all, the pandemic forced owners to rethink the way they did business and interacted with customers. Meetings had to be run online and in-person communication became rarer and rarer. And the more that communication fell off, the more misunderstanding abounded. As a result, running a business has become harder than it ever was.
Seeking Therapy Is Not A Natural Course Of Action For Many Business Partners
When couples experience conflict and disconnection, their first resort is often therapy. But when business partners do, therapy usually doesn’t come up as an option. Why? The answer is that society has taught us to separate and compartmentalize the personal and professional aspects of our lives. When it comes to issues in our marriage or relationship, we’re supposed to seek therapy. But when it comes to issues with co-workers and co-owners, we’re supposed to figure them out ourselves.
The problem is that, if we don’t have someone who can help us resolve our differences, we’re left deadlocked in our disagreements and split on foundational issues in our business. Counseling is a chance to work through these relationship problems so that your business can run smoothly and peacefully.
Therapy Can Help You And Your Business Partner Work As A Team Again
Not many people in the business world have therapeutic expertise. And not many people in the therapeutic world have business expertise. I have both, thanks to my work as a couples therapist and my background as a management consultant. I am confident that I can help you and your business partner move from a stuck place of conflict to a fluid place of open communication, deeper understanding, and mutual support.
What To Expect In Sessions
At the beginning of therapy, I will focus on getting to know both of you and understanding the hangups of your business relationship. I will hold one-on-one sessions with each of you so that I can understand your individual perspectives in depth. After that, we will have a joint session where we’ll go over:
The positives of working together
The negatives of working together
Your three biggest successes as business partners
Your three biggest problems as business partners
Assessing these four areas will help us outline a clear plan for the remainder of therapy. The three of us will continue meeting together and focus on resolving the problems in your relationship. I will provide a structure for you to do so confidently and securely, allowing you to take the skills you learn and bring them with you into your business partnership. The structure of therapy is generally about eight-to-ten sessions, but it is adjustable from client to client.
Tailoring Your Treatment Plan
What we work on in sessions ultimately depends on what you and your partner’s needs and goals are. Generally speaking, the main focus of sessions revolves around communication. After all, communication is rarely neutral—it either hurts our relationships or strengthens them. When you’re aware of this fact, it becomes much easier to notice when your communication turns hostile and avoid falling into the same old repetitive cycles.
In particular, I want to help you understand how hostile communication gets you and your business partner stuck in a negative spiral. You will learn to explore the emotions triggering your negative spiral. Are there any unaddressed feelings of sadness, anger, or loss beneath your reactions? When your partner disagrees with you, does it trigger fears of abandonment and make you worry that they’ll leave you? Answering these questions can help us figure out what’s beneath your negative interactions. You can learn to communicate from a place of understanding instead of reactivity.
Ultimately, the tools I give you can help you de-escalate conflict, repair ruptured connections, and stay ahead of communication problems. This way, your relationship can be peaceful again and running your business can be a more enriching and rewarding process.
You May Have Some Questions About Therapy For Business Partners…
What if therapy makes us fight more?
This is where my background as a couples therapist helps. I know how to facilitate a process that’s peaceful, unbiased, and nonjudgmental. While tension is a normal part of that facilitation, the strategies I use are specifically designed to help couples and business partners reduce tension and strengthen their relationships.
What if we decide to go our separate ways?
For some that is the outcome—and there’s nothing wrong with going your separate ways if you and your business partner decide to. I am here to help you bolster your connection and relate to each other in a new way, but that doesn’t mean there’s any shame in breaking things off. The facilitation process is designed to help you reach your outcomes in an amicable way, no matter what those outcomes may be.
What if my partner doesn’t want to come with me?
In that case, you are welcome to pursue individual counseling and work on your own part in the relationship. Once you learn how to improve your communication and relate to your business partner in a new way, who knows—maybe they’ll feel inspired to join you in counseling!
Bring Support And Understanding Back Into Your Business Relationship
If you and your business partner want to feel more heard, understood, and respected, I encourage you to pursue therapy with me. To get started, you can use the contact form to set up a free phone consultation. I look forward to hearing from you!
*Cofounders Need to Learn How to (Productively) Disagree (hbr.org)Recent Blog Posts
