The-Real-Reason-Why-Your-Cofounder-Doesnt-Listen-to-You.txt

The Real Reason Why Your Cofounder Doesn't Listen to You
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We have to give what we want to receive in a relationship. This seems extremely obvious, but it is so easily thwarted because it turns out in a lot of ways we are hypocrites when it comes to the people that we work closely with: our co-founders, our business partners, romantic partners, close friends, our family. What do we want from them? We want their respect. We want their attention. We want their affection, their effort, their creativity, their honesty. But we don't always give that back in turn.

And there's a good reason for it. There's an understandable reason for it at the very least, which is that we are afraid of being hurt. We are afraid that we will not get back what we give out. And so we hold back and we protect ourselves. Not always, not all the time, but when things get a little bit difficult, right? At the beginning of a collaboration, the beginning of a partnership, things feel so good, things feel so easy because you give freely. You have the best of intentions, and you're extremely curious, paying a lot of attention to the other person. But over time, you start to build maybe a mental model of who you think this person is. You start to look less charitably at the things that bother you, or things that seemed like cute quirks or just a funny different way of doing things becomes an annoyance, an issue, something that really bothers you, something that you wish they would fix, like a flaw.

You're going to get into conflict. You're going to get into disagreements. People are going to do things that hurt you, that upset you, that offend you. And those things don't go away as easily. So now we've got some scar tissue. And as a result, we start to hold back. If somebody shares an idea that you think you've heard before or that you think, "Oh, there they go again. They're always talking about this," and you brush it off, you dismiss it, you are not giving them the respect that you would like in return for your ideas. Because for every single thing that bothers you about them, they're going to feel that way about certain qualities of you. Certain things that you do or have done have hurt them, have bothered them. You want them to see you as good intentioned, as trustworthy, as honest, as reasonable. But if you can't see that in them as well, then we're going to have a lot of problems.

In the wonderful book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Steven Covey, I think it's habit number four: "Seek first to understand before being understood." And that is so critical to any good relationship. It is being curious, staying open, and starting with the premise that what your partner thinks and does makes sense to them. In their mind, this is a reasonable way to think, a reasonable way to feel, a reasonable way to behave. Now, you may disagree for you, which you're allowed to do. But if you start with the idea that it is reasonable for them and you don't understand it, then you need to dig in and try to understand what it is about their thinking, their past experiences, the way they're looking at the situation that they're in right now to understand why it is that they feel this is valid.

Here's a very simple example. You invite somebody on a hike, but you don't know that they recently rolled their ankle really hard and it's bothering them a lot. Now they don't react really excited about this hike. Maybe they don't want to go or they cancel last minute or they go but they kind of complain the whole time, and you're left feeling not so great about the whole situation. Obviously, if they told you that they had rolled their ankle really hard, it would be understandable. It would make sense. Maybe you'd even feel bad that you had invited them on this thing that would hurt them in some way, or you know, at least be really uncomfortable for them in some way.

Now, a rolled ankle is a very easy thing to talk about, to explain, something that can be even made visible, right? It can be seen by others. Oh, yeah. I totally saw them roll their ankle. It looked pretty bad. But many things in our lives are not so easy to talk about. Sometimes people don't even understand for themselves why they're reacting in a certain way, just that they are, or that it's something that happened to them in the past in a different situation that they didn't necessarily realize until now, or that they don't even necessarily want to talk about, or there are parts of it that are embarrassing for them or humiliating for them or just painful for them. Starting from the premise that there's something that you don't understand about their behavior, which is why they're acting the way they are and you don't get it, is really important. And there are certainly going to be things that you say and do and feel that have that same effect.

One of the things my therapist says is that you can either understand something or you can accept it. Ideally both. Understanding is you have a sort of intellectual appreciation for all the activities and events and things around a behavior that makes it make sense to you. You may still not like it, but you at least understand it. Think about an animal. Think about a dog that barks a lot, right? Chihuahuas were bred to be alert dogs. They weren't necessarily security, but they were watching out and they were designed to wake up a group of—to wake up soldiers in the event that there was somebody sneaking up on them. I'm going to fact check this afterwards, so hopefully that's not a total misunderstanding of the history of Chihuahuas. But if you understand that, then it makes sense why a Chihuahua barks at everything and all the time. One of my neighbors has some small dogs and they bark a lot. And that doesn't mean I have to like it, but at least I can understand why they do that.

Or you can just accept it, right? You can accept something without understanding exactly how it works. For a long time, a lot of medicine works even though we don't really understand it. Before the discovery of germ theory, there was one doctor who noticed that if you wash your hands after touching dead people—cadavers—and going to the delivery room to deliver babies, there were less complications and deaths of the mothers and children of those patients with the doctors that washed their hands versus the ones that didn't. Now, we don't necessarily understand why that was true at the time. He didn't understand why, but he knew it was true empirically. He accepted that fact and he tried to present it out to the world. Now, that didn't go so well for that guy, but the fact is you can accept something to be true without understanding why it is. Crazy thought, I know, but it's real.

So either you can try really hard to understand it or at the very least you can just say, "You know what? I'm just going to start with the premise that you're a reasonable person and I don't need you to tell me every single thing about your life in order for me to fully understand how this is. Maybe you don't even understand how this is. But I will accept that this is a dynamic that occurs for you. There are certain places that make you feel uncomfortable. There are certain people. There are certain ideas that you don't like."

And this brings me to the larger point, which is that every disagreement, every conflict, every point of contention can be either a source of stress and strain on a relationship or an opportunity for growth and connection. And I know what you're thinking. This sounds extremely optimistic, but hear me out. Yes, if you argue about something and you fight over it and you force one decision or another, one party is going to feel not so great about it, right? One person wants to go to the movies, one person wants to go again on a hike, or one person wants to sell the company, one person wants to sell their product in retail outlets, one person wants to focus on e-commerce. If you fight over it, or you choose not to make a decision in order to keep the peace, you're not going to feel great about it, especially if you don't find that the other person's position is reasonable and you might say things in those circumstances that hurt the other person and it's going to harm your relationship and your working partnership.

But if you recognize that when we fight over something, when we argue over something fiercely and defend an idea, it's because that idea or that decision is connected to something that we care deeply about that's really important to us. It may just be the success of the venture that you're pursuing. It may be a representation of freedom, of choice, of prestige, of knowledge. All of these are understandable values, but we rarely ever say it in that way. "I want to feel a sense of prestige because I want our product to show up on shelves across the country." That is an understandable reason for why you'd like to pursue the retail opportunity. The other partner might say, "I want freedom. I want the ability to work from anywhere. I don't want to feel beholden to large retailers and being pressured in certain ways or being forced into certain decisions because we need them to market our product." And that's why they value the e-commerce opportunity.

Now, we're talking about something that matters more than the business decision itself. We're talking about what matters to the people. And when you have things that matter to you, you and your partner can look at that as a problem to be solved, as an opportunity to have one plus one equal three. Instead of saying it has to be one way, it has to be the other way, there can be an alternative option available. Maybe you do a limited run in the retail outlets. Maybe you sell a select number of items on e-commerce only. Maybe you do pop-ups. Maybe you find an alternative distribution partner that is less controlling as retail. Maybe you bundle your product in with some other person's product. There are so many ways to solve a problem to create value, to create opportunity. And if you are committed to your partner, you can make one plus one equal three. And that is a strengthening thing. That is a deepening thing. That is something that makes the partnership valuable because you might not be able to go to somebody else and do that same thing. And you wouldn't be able to do it by yourself. That is why partnership is valuable.

So to bring it home, we have to give what we want to receive in a relationship. We have to give curiosity, engagement, attention, respect, trust, the assumption of good intentions. If we want those things in return from our partners, that does not mean being a doormat. That does not mean being walked all over or taken advantage of because you need to see your partner do those same things for you. By the way, my name is Jason Chen. I'm an executive coach. I work with founders and business leaders specializing in repairing business partnerships that have come under strain and tension and conflict. And if you're having difficulty communicating with or collaborating with your business partner, this video might be worth watching.

So, don't be a hypocrite in relationships. Give what you want to receive.