What are some common sources of disputes among entrepreneurs and how can you avoid them?

This is a huge one! Your co-founder is basically like your spouse or partner. Lots of startup founders end up parting due to different communication styles

Communication makes the world go round! Now, more than ever, with so many of us working remotely, we don't have the serenditipous check-ins and quick interactions like we used to. Lack of communication, or a mismatch in communication expectations can quickly lead to a break down in trust. And without trust, the foundation of a young organization can quickly erode. Invest the time early in defining communication expectations, modes, and cadence. You won't regret it!

Poor or insufficient communication ultimately leads to a lack of collaboration and a decrease in productivity, which results in a decrease in profits and the potential failure of the business. A good solution to this is to establish clear communication channels, expectations, and boundaries between partners. Partners should make sure to regularly communicate and keep each other informed of their progress and any changes or decisions they make. I feel that most importantly, a willingness to have open and honest conversations and be able to compromise and work together to find solutions. It also makes sense to document any agreements and decisions to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Partnership disputes are like two people trying to decide on a pizza topping - everyone has a different opinion! But just like how you can avoid pizza disputes by agreeing on the toppings beforehand, you can avoid partnership disputes by having a partnership agreement, communicating with intent, being clear with who does what and having a process in place when one wants to add pineapple ! ( dispute resolution ) With these in place, you and your partner can focus on making dough instead of fighting over it! ????

In high-conflict situations, it's important to strive for empathy, not simply understanding. To accomplish this, you really need to slow down, create space (both time *and* mindshare) to consider the lived experience of the individual, and to seek a means of identifying personally with it. This can't be accomplished without suspending your own judgements or agenda, which is precisely the point. By allowing your own priorities to leave center-stage, you make it possible to begin to understand the other person more authentically. In the end, it takes you to a place of seeing that other person as inherently valuable and worth considering, before you return to tactical questions of communication. In the end, this is about mindset, not method.

In my experience, it is critical to define roles and responsibilities between cofounders before launching and hiring additional team members. Focus on the strengths and skills that each founder brings to the table and assign roles accordingly, putting your egos aside! This can make or break a startup!

As a business owner, I know how important it is for everyone to be on the same page when it comes to roles. Role ambiguity can be a real headache and can cause conflicts and misunderstandings among partners. I also think it's important to periodically review and update these roles to ensure they're still relevant and aligned. Agility in business is so so important. Clear roles, clear goals!

In addition, it helps to agree with your partners on how you will check in with one another on the shared understanding about roles and responsibilities. How will you raise future questions or disagreements, related to who is doing what? By agreeing on an approach for these future discussions, you can de-stigmatize the topic of role ambiguity and provide the team with a gameplan and permission structure for addressing. This is not unlike the way that some leaders work to reduce the stigma associated with escalations--an important action often viewed as punitive, even when grounded in legitimate business or stakeholder interests. So create a plan for these future disputes, and celebrate them when they occur successfully.

A great starting point is to create a clear and detailed partnership agreement that outlines each partner's role, responsibilities, and expectations. Including a division of authority, decision-making processes, and a plan for resolving disputes. If we add to this open and honest communication between partners, then each partner is aware of their role and how it fits into the overall business plan.

Financial issues--including disagreements--are a leading cause of partnership failure. It may help to consider a couple of things when beginning a partnership: First, enter partnership discussions with a truly principled approach to priority issues, including finances. Take the time to understand the significance of each partner's priorities, and don't let it devolve into mere haggling. This requires patience and commitment. For more on this, read "Getting to Yes" (Roger Fisher & William Ury). Second, get real about likely points of failure on the road ahead, and agree on specific contingency plans so you know when/how you should persevere, as well as when you should pivot or call it quits. For more on this, read "The Dip" (Seth Godin).

I've helped partners to consider implementing a feedback system to help them identify and address any potential issues or areas of conflict before they escalate. This should involve regularly scheduled meetings between partners to discuss any potential financial issues or areas of conflict that may be arising. During these meetings, partners should take the time to openly exchange ideas, listen to each other's perspectives, and brainstorm solutions that are mutually beneficial. After each meeting, they should document any decisions or plans they make and review them periodically to ensure progress is being made. You'd be amazed how little this is implemented and how much conflict is mitigated as a result.

To avoid vision mismatch, there are two things to keep in mind: 1) You don't have to agree, but you have to align. Alignment is one of the MOST important things in business. It's critical you know the direction you're rowing the boat. What's your #1 goal this year? If you had a third-party interview you and your co-founder separately, they should hear the same goal. 2) "There was never a statue built for a committee." Don't try to get everyone's opinion. Ultimately, one person is in charge. Understand the role and functions for your co-founders and leadership team, and defer to them in their areas. Understand who is the final decision maker for each decision.

How Workplace Culture Kills Gooses That Lay Golden Eggs. A white-collar executive running a midsize white-collar company quit his job to buy a smaller (highly profitable) company providing blue-collar services. And employing blue-collar workers. Their customers were blue-collar people, too. The workers lived on the other side of the tracks. The new owner’s wife was embarrassed to tell their country club friends about their new company. The employees didn’t look like and talk like the owner. They thought the owner looked down upon them and their lifestyles. Employee loyalty quickly evaporated. Their productivity declined. It didn’t take long for customers to become uncomfortable with the new owner. All the employees quit.

Vision mismatch commonly arises because a team has failed to either (a) adequately develop their shared vision, or (b) reference it authentically in the ordinary course of business. Many teams view visioning as a one-time exercise, after which it risks being forgotten or misremembered. While it's true that vision statements should be durable over time, staying true to that vision requires meaningful intention, follow-through, and occasionally inconvenient or costly tradeoffs. A team can strengthen their ability to overcome these vision-related obstacles by working both individually and as a team to keep the vision top-of-mind when planning future investments and developing strategies.

I strongly believe creating and maintaining an atmosphere of trust and respect among partners can go along way to ensuring they are on the same page in terms of their goals and expectations. This starts by listening to each partner’s opinion and take it into consideration when making decisions. While acknowledge each partner’s contributions, as this show appreciation for each other’s efforts and recognize when someone has gone the extra mile. Trust and respect is all about keeping any promises and commitments made to each other. It helps of course to provide a safe and nurturing environment for everyone to share ideas and work together.

We are more than useful people. One great way to realize how we, as a founder, owner, partner are more than useful is to write down and share our personal vision for our life with our business partners. The ultimate purpose of our business is to serve our lives. What we may learn from this dialogue is how we may help each other, as an ally, to achieve a portion of the company vision, without feeling obligated to be in it for the entire journey. What's more, before we start the company together, or we fool ourselves into thinking this will just work out, the personal visions may be a look in the mirror to recognize we shouldn't be in business together, because being useful for each other is what robots do.

Personality clash is a broadly misunderstood issue, which is actually a symptom of values-based conflict. While many teams are able to communicate openly about team-level values, it's less common for teams to take time to explore and understand each others' personal values, which ultimately must be implicitly reflected in the team's values, in order for the team to succeed over time. Rather than limiting discussion to the symptom (i.e. personality traits), teams should delve a bit deeper, to explore the core values that drive their actions and behaviors. The benefit to this exercise is that people generally discover that they a great deal in common, at the values level, even as individuals may act upon shared values in different ways.

Just like any serious relationship, a cofounder or business partner relationship is one that needs and requires constant investment from both sides. One thing I think is often overlooked, is a 1:1 check-in between founders to share in the ups and downs in psychologically safe-way. It might be easiest tostart with a 15 minute check in at the end of the day. A typical standing agenda could be: 1. What were your wins? Why is that significant? How did it make you feel? 2. What went wrong, that just sucked. Why is that significant? How did it make you feel? 3. Anything else we need to share with each-other? You'll find this moment can become a way to learn about each other's personalities and adjust your management style to optimize them

Preventing potential issues of personality clash among partners should include creating a safe and supportive work environment, setting clear expectations, and maintaining open communication. Partners should be encouraged to share their opinions and feelings in an open and non-judgmental way, so that any issues can be addressed and discussed constructively. They should also make efforts to build trust and respect with each other, and to identify and accept each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

The founding team are vital for the success of a startup but often they are brought together on a skills basis alone. Two alphas isn't a good idea, etc. It's usually worth working on a small part of the startup idea first to gauge how personalities work together before going all in.

"Just because they're a catch, it doesn't mean they're a match", as Simon Stockley, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Cambridge, says. It's often better to pick a business partner based on suitability rather than eligibility -- ie. choose character over skills or credentials alone. Skills can be learned, but character, personality and ethical values are much harder to learn. A good tool to use to help you better understand your partner is the Enneagram, a personality system which reveals what's the main unconscious primary motivation driving behaviour. Psychometric assessments based on the Enneagram can help to reveal what your unconscious triggers may be, as well as character strengths and weaknesses.