By Paul Cutright Partnerships are intentional relationships between two or more
people who want to create a future together. That future
could be anything from a life long marriage to a business
partnership to a short-term project. Your partnerships are
among the most important relationships you will ever have.
And, like all our relationships, they are vulnerable to
misunderstandings, miscommunications, upsets and breakdowns.
Its just that there is often much more at stake in our partnerships. There are five keys necessary to unlock the potential of your most
important relationships, turning them into powerful partnerships.
They are: 1. Practicing High Performance Communication 2. Having a working knowledge of the 5 Stages of Relationship 3. Using a Design Model for your partnership 4. Practicing Radical Personal Responsibility 5. Committing to using your partnership for conscious evolution 1. High Performance Communication Our definition of high performance communication is communication
that is honest, compassionate, direct and honors the dignity of
everyone involved. Relationships live in language. That means that the quality of your
regular, everyday communication determines the quality of your
relationships. Your communication is not just the words you say;
it is how you say those words. The result you get in your
communication with others is determined by your intention.
Your intention is the superior force in any communication
because your intention, conscious or unconscious, is the
carrier wave for the words. People will usually respond to
the energy with which you say something more than the words you say.
Powerful communication is congruent, meaning the words you say are
consistent with your emotions and your intention. Another, often overlooked, part of communication is listening.
As the listener, you have the power to influence the quality of
a conversation by how you listen. Have you ever been in a
conversation in which the person to whom you were speaking
was not listening, or distracted, or thinking about something
else entirely -like what they wanted to talk about?
How did that make you feel? Have you ever done that with anyone?
How does it feel to have someones complete and undivided
attention when you are speaking? How you listen to another,
especially your partners, can have a direct affect on their
self-esteem and their sense of value. The
quality of your communication determines whether you feel
connected or not. We have written an entire book about high performance
communication called Straight From the Heart. You can have a
look at it at our website at
www.PaulandLayne.com/bookstore/communication.htm. 2. Have a Working Knowledge of the Five Stages of Relationship The second key to powerful partnerships is having a working
knowledge of the five stages of relationship. The five stages
are Attraction, Power Struggle, Cooperation, Synergy and Completion. The most problematic stages for most people are Power Struggle and
Completion. People often ask us if the Power Struggle stage is
necessary. Who wouldnt want to avoid power struggle? People dont
exactly jump up and down with excitement when they enter that stage,
like they might in the attraction stage! The Power Struggle stage
is necessary in that it is all about building trust. And trust is
necessary if a relationship is to mature. Power Struggle isnt bad,
its just inevitable, predictable, unavoidable and recurrent.
That is, it happens more than once in any long-term relationship.
Why? Because each time you increase the commitment in a relationship,
e.g., investing more time, money, emotion, etc., more trust is
required. Whenever more trust is required, you will temporarily
revisit Power Struggle. The other problematic stage is completion. Everything that is
created has a beginning, middle and end. And that includes your
partnerships. There are four ways partnerships end: 1. death 2. slowly drifting apart 3. abrupt expulsion 4. consciously The first is obvious, as when one of the partners dies. The second
is when partners may be separated by geography, time, interests or
what-have-you. They find little in common to sustain the partnership.
The third occurs with an apparently irreconcilable upset and the
partnership is abruptly ended, usually with very bad feelings. Obviously, the most desirable of the four is consciously, but most
people dont know how to do that. Conscious completion involves
acknowledging what you have learned from the partnership, what
you have contributed to the partnership, making any apologies
that might be necessary and asking for and extending forgiveness. Often, completion is about changing the form of the partnership,
as in parents who are divorcing. They will no longer be in the
form of marriage, but they will continue to be partners at some
level in co-parenting their children. In this case, conscious
completion is very important for developing or maintaining mutual
respect, dignity and caring in the partnership. There are particular skills to learn and master for each of the
five stages and specific things to avoid. We suggest you download
and print out the five stages article and read through the skills
for each stage, checking off the ones you know you need to work on.
This will give you a personalized curriculum for being able to master
relationships and help you to create powerful partnerships. 3. Using a Design Model Would you even consider building a house without an architect
and a blueprint? You wouldnt get some wood, nails and a hammer
and just start putting something together and hope it turned into a
house you would want to live in, would you? People do the equivalent
with their partnerships all the time. They believe it will work
out because it just feels right. Most people leave the success
of their most important relationships up to chance and luck,
in the hope that it will turn out. But, of course, it seldom
does and then they are left wondering, What did I do wrong? Clearly, love and/or good intentions are not enough to guarantee
success in your partnerships. In addition to those things, you also
need a strong measure of education and skill education about what
it takes to have relationships succeed, and skill in standard
practices of success. It also helps to have a good coach to help
you out along the way in applying your knowledge and developing your
practices. Here is a simple 3 part model we have found to be extremely
effective for designing partnerships. Purpose Results Form First, be clear on the purpose of your partnership.
You can get to that by asking why? why are we in this
partnership? Purpose determines the direction you are going in.
Purpose statements are best kept simple and general.
Then, write out the results you want to accomplish.
Those could be feelings, experiences, products or services,
depending on the nature of the partnership. This is where you get
specific. Results are the what. Look to see if the results you
want in your partnership are consistent with your purpose.
If they arent, then you know you will have trouble down the road.
Last, determine the best form to serve your purpose that will help
you achieve your desired results. Some examples of forms of
relationship are friends, teammates, business colleagues, business
partners, dating, engagement, marriage. Form is tied to the roles
you play in your life. Form is all about how you will achieve
your desired results and ongoingly fulfill your purpose. Here is an example of what this might look like. Take two people who
are attracted to each other romantically and are falling in love.
They start talking about building a future together. If they were
to use this design model, they would have deep conversations about
the purpose of their relationship. They may decide their purpose
is simply to bring out the best in each other. The kinds of
results they want to experience in their relationship could
include fun, laughter, deep, heart-felt sharing, travel,
time apart, creativity, sexual pleasure, intellectual
stimulation and community involvement. They would then have
conversations about what the best form might be to accomplish
those results, given their purpose. One of the important things
to remember about form is that form changes. If the couple in our
example is having these conversations as the level of serious
dating, they may look at going steady and being monogamous.
Or if they are further along in their relationship, they
may consider being engaged. All of these are forms, and they
change over time as commitment deepens and trust is developed. 4. Practicing Radical Personal Responsibility Here is something that is very important to understand. Upsets,
disagreements, misunderstandings, miscommunications and
breakdowns are inevitable, predictable and unavoidable in your
partnerships. Now, why in the world would we say something
like that? What about positive thinking? Just look into your
own experience. Havent you had upsets and disagreements despite
your best intentions and despite your positive thinking?
Unfortunately, good intentions and positive thinking are not
enough to avoid or prevent upsets and misunderstandings.
They are a fact of life in human relationships at this stage
of our development. What is really required is a new way of
interpreting these events. And that requires the knowledge
and skill necessary to truly use them as opportunities for
healing and spiritual growth. It is extremely important to have a mutually agreed upon,
pre-determined means for handling these things when they occur.
If you wait to see how you resolve your upsets when you actually
have them, you will be setting yourselves up to lose and possibly
making the situation even worse. We have written a best selling book on this subject called
Youre Never Upset for the Reason You Think: Secrets and
Strategies for Resolving Any Upset Quickly and Easily. You
may learn more about it www.PaulandLayne.com/bookstore/conflict.htm. Now, the fourth and fifth keys work closely together, so
we will talk about both of them here. The fifth key is: 5. Using Your Partnerships for Conscious Evolution What does conscious evolution mean? Simply put, it means
that you recognize that your partnerships provide you with a
powerful opportunity for your personal and spiritual growth.
And you can truly take advantage of the opportunities present
in your partnerships if you share a commitment to use your
relationship with each other for your mutual growth and evolution. The greatest opportunities for conscious evolution lay your
upsets with others and how you handle them. Practicing radical
personal responsibility means not blaming your partner or yourself.
Rather, you look together to see how you can learn from the upset.
This is based upon the idea that you are never upset for the reason
that you think, and there is value in looking deeper than the obvious.
It is the recognition that most present time upsets are simply an activation of unresolved pain and hurts from the past and
that this current upset is truly a healing opportunity. When you practice high performance communication, when you know
where you are within the five stages of partnership, when you are
using a proven model to consciously design your partnership to be
the way you want it to be, when you can use your present time upsets
to help you resolve your unresolved issues from the past, and
you and your partner have an agreement to be allies with each
other in that process, then you are practicing conscious
evolution and living in a powerful partnership. 2006 Paul and Layne Cutright All rights reserved.
You may publish this article in its entirety and
with the authors resource information intact. Layne and Paul Cutright are relationship coaches and teachers who have been offering secrets and strategies for successful relationships at home and in business since 1976. They are authors of the best selling book, Youre Never Upset for the Reason You Think Secrets and Strategies for Resolving Any Upset Quickly and Easily. http://www.PaulandLayne.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Cutright http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Five-Keys-to-Powerful-Partnerships&id=170951 us online pharmacy phentermine
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