This-Communication-Mistake-Destroys-Cofounder-Relationships.txt

This Communication Mistake Destroys Cofounder Relationships
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Your co-founder declines your technical proposal for the third time. You know what that means? They never respected your technical ability. They never have. Or maybe you're the CEO watching the CTO push back on customer requests and you're thinking, "She doesn't actually care about the business the way I do." You're not guessing. You're certain. The evidence is right there. And that certainty, it's going to slowly poison your relationship until every conversation feels like a negotiation with someone who doesn't believe in you, who doesn't have your best interests at heart.

The mistake you're making isn't that you're wrong about how they think. Maybe you're right. The mistake is acting like you know for sure. And the longer you've worked together, the more dangerous this gets. Let me explain. My name is Jason Shen. I'm a former YC founder turned executive coach and I help founders build businesses they're proud of with partners they can count on. And in this video I want to talk about a communication mistake that destroys so many co-founder relationships: mind reading.

Mind reading is when you believe you know what someone else thinks without explicit verification from them. It's jumping to a conclusion. Here's why you keep doing this even though it's not working. Certainty feels good. When you decide that you know what your co-founder is thinking, you feel like you understand the situation. You feel like you're in control, like you figured them out.

But that certainty is doing something else, too. It's making you rigid. Once you've decided that your co-founder doesn't respect your technical ability, you start filtering every action and communication through that lens. They push back on your ideas in a meeting? Confirmation. They send your pull request back with a bunch of feedback? They just think you're no better than your junior engineer. And if they agree with you, they're probably just patronizing you. Over time, it turns into a situation where nothing they can do will change your belief.

And so, here's the question I want you to ask yourself. You and your co-founder took a leap to start this company together. You took a lot of risks. You've worked really, really hard for months, usually even years. And if you are so right about this idea that they are discrediting your technical ability, then why are they working with you? Doesn't their behavior seem irrational, so personal, so unnecessarily hostile? If they want the business to succeed, why would they work with someone they thought was technically incompetent? Maybe they really are that unreasonable. Or maybe you've built a model in your mind about who they are that stopped being accurate a long time ago.

So what's the alternative? Well, it's going to feel slower. It's going to feel inefficient. Mind reading feels fast. You observe their behavior. You pattern match to what you already believe. And then you skip the conversation because you've already reached your conclusion. But that fast approach is why you're stuck in this conflict six months later. You're going to keep repeating this pattern until you make a shift.

And the shift is this. Instead of acting on what you think they're thinking, engage with what they're actually saying and doing in good faith. You state what you've observed. You explain how that makes you feel. And you ask a question or make a request. And then you hold your interpretation lightly, like a hypothesis you're testing, rather than a final conclusion.

This works better for a number of reasons. One, you might be creating the dynamic you're complaining about. If you've decided that they don't respect your technical ability, you start showing up guarded, defensive, maybe a little hostile, and they react to that version of you, which confirms your belief. You're not observing their true behavior anymore. You're observing their reaction to your suspicions.

Second, people change, but your certainty doesn't let them. Maybe six months ago, they did undervalue your contributions. Maybe they've since realized that they were wrong. But if you've locked into this story of who they are, you won't notice. They're trapped in an old version of themselves in your mind.

And third, even if you're completely right about what they think, mind reading is not helping. Let's say you've nailed it, they really don't respect your technical ability or care about customers. Engaging with them from that place of certainty still makes resolution less likely. They get defensive. Maybe they lash out at you and point out something that they think you're doing wrong. You both get more entrenched. The conversation becomes about who's right instead of fixing the problem. You're focusing too much on accuracy and the truth when you should be staying open and curious.

So, here's how you actually do this. Next time you catch yourself being certain what your co-founder is thinking, pause. Instead of acting on your interpretation, remind yourself that you cannot in fact read anyone's mind. And there's no such thing as a universal statement. Instead of acting on your interpretation, try this instead.

One, state what you've observed. Not what you think it means, just the behavior or the words themselves. Two, share how it made you feel. Not "I feel like you don't respect me," but "I feel hurt. I feel disrespected. I feel devalued." This is a very vulnerable step and which is why many founders skip it. Don't do that. If you can't talk about your emotions with your co-founder, then you really are in trouble. The two of you do not have just a regular professional relationship. You guys ultimately are dependent on each other in a way that 99% of people will never experience. Finally, ask a question or make a request. Say something that opens a conversation rather than closes it. Ask that question from a place of good intention and make that request something that is doable and not a demand.

Here's what this sounds like in practice. If you're the founder who keeps getting their technical proposals declined, you might say something like, "I noticed that you've pushed back on a number of technical decisions that I've been advocating for. I'm starting to feel like you don't really respect my technical competence. Is that true? Can you help me better understand why this seems to keep happening?"

And if you're the CEO who's frustrated by your CTO's attitude, you might say something like, "When customer requests get deprioritized, I feel anxious about whether we're aligned on what matters. I worry that our business isn't going to go in the right direction. Can we walk through what you see the priorities are for the product right now?"

Notice what's missing from both of these. No accusations, no "you always" or "you never." No mind reading. You're presenting your experience as your experience. There's a phrase I like to use, which is "the story I'm telling myself," which is a way for you to convey maybe thoughts that you have or interpretations that you're having from a place of open-endedness, from a place of curiosity, from a place of uncertainty. You're not presenting the objective truth about who they are.

And here's the part that's going to feel unnatural is that you have to be open to being wrong. If you use this script just as like a technique to get them to change, it's not going to work. They're going to feel it. The curiosity has to be real.

So, if you actually do this, something is going to change in the dynamic. You're going to feel it, not just in the conversation, but in your relationship. Your co-founder is going to experience you as someone who genuinely is trying to understand them rather than someone who's already made their mind up about who they are and what they think. As you can imagine, dealing with someone in that way feels a lot better, which is going to make them be more agreeable and amenable. It changes the way they show up with you.

So, as I mentioned in both of those scripts that I gave you, there is this act of talking about feelings, and that often makes founders feel uncomfortable, especially really smart, high IQ, hard-driving founders who aren't used to talking about feelings other than anger or excitement. Most of the founders that I work with have some resistance to doing this. Talking about feelings in a business context feels soft, unprofessional, and maybe even manipulative, but it's one of the most underrated tools for a co-founder relationship, and most people get it wrong. And I think many founders want to be better at this, but they don't know how. So, I'm making a video on that next. If you want to see it when it's out, subscribe to the channel and I'll drop a link when it's ready.