Here’s Where New Business Partnerships Must Focus to Maximize Performance

The rate of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) reached a high during the Pandemic. Although reports say the activity is approaching normal, there are many new business partnerships that have formed as a result of the continued activity.

Change in partnership structure is one of many reasons why leaders need to focus on leadership team performance. Here are three areas to focus on to see results.

Establish trust with new business partnerships.

Successful businesses focus on creating a healthy company culture, and trust is an essential component of a thriving culture. Entering new business partnerships generates questions, and trust has to be earned.

The first step for building trust is to level the playing field. Assessments across the leadership structure enable leadership teams to determine gaps and priorities for improvement. Creating a solid action plan impacts positive change. By assigning responsibility and outlining milestones for accountability, leaders will instill a fundamental foundation of trust.

Encourage difficult discussions early and often.

Leaders create organizational tone with behavior and actions. This is not new news to you. That doesn’t mean you should stick your head in the sand and pretend changes aren’t challenging. As soon as leadership teams address difficulties, the sooner you can overcome them and become more productive and effective. 

Inviting these conversations shouldn’t translate to being argumentative, but difficult conversations are inevitable. Recognizing challenges quickly and encouraging feedback allows you to get to the root of the problem at hand. Leadership teams that don’t address issues often think the rest of the organization doesn’t notice, but nothing could be further from the truth. When leadership teams don’t mesh, it becomes obvious.

Listen to open the door to shared perspective.

As the old saying goes – we were given two ears and one mouth for a reason. Use them proportionally. Leaders in new business partnerships who are open to hearing out ideas and concerns benefit from innovation. This applies to within and beyond the leadership team.

Listening doesn’t mean swaying the breeze of popular opinion — it means hearing out different perspectives. Asking questions and allowing for open-ended responses is another way to help steer the conversation.

Liddell Consulting Group empowers greater organizational success by working with newly structured partnership teams, teams that have lost a key player, or even leadership teams with a problematic member. Contact us if you believe your organization can achieve greater levels of success. We will help get you to where you want to be.