How should my wife and I handle partnership responsibilities when more than 3 people are involved.

ryan: How should my wife and I handle partnership responsibilities when more than 3 people are involved.
My wife is a partner in a not profit business w/ another woman. They have difficulty determining on who should be “in charge”. My wife and I do not assume most of the leading challenges but do give some input. The main partner will often delegate responsibilities to us but if she does not like the task when completed she will redo the work herself which undermines us and makes look incompetent. How can we approach this situation?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Dr. Wu
You did not say if your wife is an equal partner. If she is than she needs to decide if she wants to remain with the business. If not, she can advertise to sell her share of the business. She can also ask her partner to buy her out. This is likely to start a candid conversation of the problems they have with each other. She will find out just how much she is actually wanted or needed by her partner.

The average lifespan of a partnership is about 5 years. After that the people involved get tired of working with the same person. It is like having an argument with your spouse but without having make-up sex. The tension rises with no obvious relief.

If her partner is not willing to listen than it is time to move on.

Good Luck.

Answer by Kevin Salwen, SBAC Expert
Ah, the control issue. You’ve touched on a pet peeve of mine, one that usually rears its ugly head from manager to subordinate not between partners: the senior person needing to exercise control by appearing smarter.

Marshall Goldsmith, the outstanding career coach and author, argues that providing “the right answer” might be the single most unempowering activity a manager can do. What happens, of course, is that the “smart” manager ends up sucking the creativity right out of the team. “Why bother,” the rewritten folks end up saying, “when the work is always redone.” The organization then lapses into “good-enough syndrome,” in which employees try to meet the minimum standard instead of striving for exceptional.

My guess is that the third partner has no idea how damaging her behavior is. The first step would be to sit down as a threesome and explain your situation, offering specific examples and holding up a mirror to your colleague’s activities. That should go a long way to clearing the air. If that doesn’t work, it’s a reflection of a much deeper problem that you’ll have to address longer term.