The most important thing to do for your business today
I want you to turn to your business partner today and tell them one thing you appreciate about them and what they are doing well. Then I want you to write to me directly or leave a comment on this article about how it went. How did they respond? How did it feel to share with them? How did the rest of your day go?
65% of startups fail due to interpersonal conflicts with senior management. Due to my background running ad agencies and today as a licensed couples therapist, I have both the business experience and clinical expertise to know how to prevent these interpersonal dissolutions upstream. According to the Gottmans, the leading researchers on relationships, the number 1 predictor of divorce is contempt. Contempt very succinctly conveys one’s feelings of superiority over the other (e.g. I’m right, you’re wrong..but on repeat). And the antidote to contempt? Appreciation, baby! By a measure of 5 appreciations to every 1 contemptuous or critical behavior, if you want to be bulletproof. That’s the science.
Years ago I remember sitting at an AdAge conference with the speaker talking about the single greatest predictor of burnout. They said it wasn’t the hours that people worked, or needing a coherent vision or direction, liking their colleagues, the complexity of the problems they were solving, or even the pay. It was how appreciated they felt by their superiors and by their colleagues. So it’s not just for you and your business partner, it’s an imperative for your entire organization to thrive.
As we know though, culture is modeled top down. In a home children do as we do, not as we say. Same in organizations! So, first I want you to start to think about your relationship with your business partner as a contained biosphere. What you put into it is what you end up breathing and feeling, day in and day out. That appreciation exercise, I’ll bet it made you feel better and your partner feel better? Your employees, like your children at home, will feel the effects of your partnership thriving. You will start to model for them what healthy looks like, and if you’re smart you’ll start applying the same learnings to the leadership of your teams. And viola, you can work them to the bone if they feel appreciated enough. Just kidding, work-life balance is of course important too. But it’s remarkable what we can get done as a team when we all feel like we matter, belong, and are appreciated for our contributions.
We are humans that are wired for connection and wired for belonging. Anytime this is threatened with something like contempt or criticism, we start fearing for our safety, become preoccupied with survival, and our nervous system reads everything as a threat. Hello reactivity and edginess. Hello clouded decision making. Hello bad ideas and performance. And hello burnout.
So do everyone a favor and turn to the person next to you (business partner or colleague) and let them know what you appreciate about them. Do it every damn day.