Building Trust in a Partnership

"It is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest, that holds human associations together." --H. L. Mencken

Trust in the people you are partnering with is one of the most important elements to establish. It is not something you can ever take for granted. It takes focus and patience to establish, and needs to be constantly renewed.

Here are a few ideas to consider when you are trying to establish trust.

Be honest about your goals

Being up-front and honest about your goals for the partnership are critical. It's much better for potential partners to know early if goals are not aligned, and it also helps set the tone for future conversations.

Go first

Be the first person to volunteer information, put yourself out there and share some meaningful ideas to discuss. By being willing to trust the other team early in discussions, it can help build trust quickly and get ideas flowing.

Add lots of context

Your partner will not know much about your business, your organization structure or how your operate. Add as much of this context into the partnership discussions as possible. This helps them learn quickly about what is possible, but will also help as bumps and roadblocks happen and your work together to work through them.

Be realistic, not optimistic

When discussing exciting partnership ideas and projects, it can be easy to get over enthusiastic. Remember to highlight any headwinds that may happen, resource constraints, timing issues, etc. Always better to under-promise and over-deliver.

Play to your strengths as partners

All partnerships and companies are different. You may have different approaches for things like sales, press and PR, go-to-market, etc. Work to identify these strengths and differences and add them into the partnership.

Help your peers get promoted

In the sales team at Facebook, they thought us that "if you help your customers get promoted, that will be good for everyone". The same applies to partnerships. If you can build a successful partnership, that meets it's goals, that will be good outcome for everyone involved.

Get specific on goals early

The sooner you align on specific goals, the better. By not aligning on specifics it can be hard to call success down the road and it can be hard to spot areas where you are over / under-investing. SMART goals are good if possible.

Flag issues early, but show the path to resolve them

Get comfortable with sharing the challenges you are having, but always bring your approach to resolving them. Once your partner understands the context and rationale for your approach, they can often suggest ways to help.

Get to know your peers personally

Treat your partners, they same way you would treat any colleague. Try to build a strong, real relationship with them. What are there hobbies? Do they have children? Where do they live? Always remember they are another person like you, who wants to do their best.

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