Conjugation

In praise of partnership

Many years ago, my sister and I were talking about plans, and I referenced the person I was dating. I said, “We’re going to…”

She stopped me. “Oh, so you’ve conjugated.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve conjugated.  You’ve passed that moment in a relationship when you move from ‘I’ to ‘we’.”

Conjugating, moving from a consideration about what’s best for me to what is best for us, is very countercultural. And positive. Because that “us” can grow. From centering the partnership to centering the family, or team, to centering the community.

So much of the content I see about work focuses on the “me”. Self-improvement, life hacks, assessments to better understand me and how I tick. I'm not suggesting that we don’t attend to our needs or set appropriate boundaries. Self-awareness and building skills are always helpful, and they will help us be better friends and partners at work and outside of work.

I just think that a career that’s focused on what’s best for me alone is going to be sterile and, ultimately, less successful. Certainly, less joyful.

I’ve always been interested in partnerships at work. I’ve coached and consulted for a few partners who own creative businesses. Some of them are successful, others were not. What makes for strong partnerships at work?

Without exception, the people I’ve coached who are good at work partnerships are also very good at life partnerships, with long term marriages and long friendships. No judgement to people who, like me, are divorced. But my observation has been that people who are good at marriage tend to be good at work partnerships.

Friend partnerships can build that muscle, and those are my longest-term relationships. I’ve been friends with Mary Virginia since we were twelve. I have long term friendships where I don’t see my friends often, and we happily reconnect when we do, but that’s not how it works with MV. We talk almost daily, and we have since the olden days when you had to pay for long distance, and the even more olden days when the only phone we had was attached to the wall and we’d extend the cord as far as we could to get some distance from our parents.

Juliette and I have been friends since 2001, when she moved to Seattle from New York after 9-11 and we started working together. Both of these women are like sisters to me, their children like nieces and nephews. I think it’s no coincidence that they are both very successful, and that we share values around work and justice. We talk about our jobs and careers often.

I’ve always been on the lookout for work partnerships, with that same blend of desire, longing, hope and desperation that some people bring to dating. I’ve had one or two that were successful and life giving. But mostly not.

Part of that is on me. I’m deeply introverted, I don’t like being around people in groups more than I absolutely have to, and I’ve always felt like an outsider. Much of my career had me in jobs where I was either an “individual contributor” or wrangling teams, neither of which were conducive to partnerships.

Part of that is on the advertising and technology industries in which I spent most of my time. One of the cornerstones of partnership is trust, and neither of those industries encourage or facilitate the kind of trust between people that builds real partnership.

Lots of tech companies in Seattle are built by people who focused on establishing their brands as individuals. Never as a team, never “we” always “me.”  There wasn’t a penalty for being an asshole, as long as you were a talented white guy. And there wasn’t much space for success for anyone who wasn’t a white guy. That kind of dog-eat-dog ethos permeates not just one company, but others like it, as people learn how to work and be at one of those companies and then move to other companies, pollinating as they go with individualism’s fine poison.

Which is why any enterprise that leans more into we than me is a relief.

Eugene S. Robinson and I do a podcast together called the Bad Boss Brief. We started it in January of this year, and we just had a planning session about how to grow our listenership in 2024. Eugene and I have known each other for over thirty years, we’ve hired one another at various places. And I am reminded how productive it can be to work with a partner.

Here are the elements I want in the partnerships I have – what are yours?

Trust. As I said, that’s the foundation. The trust that this person won’t fuck with you. It doesn’t mean there won’t be conflict or disagreement, it just means that there is a critical center that is sacrosanct. That center circle is different for every person. But if I know what mine is, and what my partner’s is, then we both know where not to go. And what must be protected. Which assumes a level of self-awareness and curiosity about the other person.

Values. What is important to you overlaps with what is important to me. What we do, or are building, or are working on, matters. We care about it. Because any partnership is going to go through difficulties. And work partnerships don’t have all the cultural support that marriages or family relationships can. The solid work partnerships I’ve seen aren’t just about making money in business, although that’s a key component. But there’s more; making great creative work, creating a place where people can thrive, making the world a better place – any of these can be the values-based reason to keep going through the hard times.

Patience. Because there will be hard times. Difficult conversations. If we have the patience to wait that out and the maturity and perspective to understand that comes with the territory, then our partnerships will be more stable. This too shall pass, right?

Care. Successful partnerships include care. Thoughtfulness, consideration, even just politeness during a disagreement.

Respect. Strong partnerships include respect. Each person respects something in the other. They recognize talents or abilities or perspectives in the other person that they value and admire. Often, they are ones they don’t have themselves, and they realize that their joint efforts are exponentially better when they combine. Respect is the opposite of contempt. The Gottmans, the marriage researchers, say contempt is one of the harbingers of divorce. Respect is one of the protective factors in partnership.

Delight. Respecting someone else’s talents or abilities is great. Delighting in them is the best. Sometimes when Eugene and I are recording our podcast, he’ll say something especially good. Not only do I appreciate it, but there’s that moment of delight, that “aha!” and I think, that’s going in the clip we put up on social media. I’ve watched work partners do this, that quick look, the smile, the chortle of recognition. It’s unforced, almost unconscious, and when I see it think, they’re good. They’re going to be fine.

Gratitude. Have you ever talked to someone about their romantic partner and in the midst of a fusillade of their complaints, you want to point out that, by and large, what they have is pretty good? I’m always surprised by people who fail to recognize that the one consistent element in all their bad relationships is them. Be grateful for the good relationships you have. If you’re lucky to have more than one that involves trust, shared values, affection, care, respect and delight, thank your lucky stars. And appreciate those people, at work, at home, or wherever you find them. Because it’s a gift, and one that many people don’t ever get.