Corporate therapy FTW

You spend almost every day together—hours and hours of it. You argue, debate, get excited, bounce things off each other, and plan for the future. You email, text, talk on the phone, and in person. It’s one of the most intimate relationships you can have. I’m not talking about your significant other, boyfriend, girlfriend, neutralfriend, or spouse. I’m talking about your business partner.

Being partners in a business can be fulfilling, exciting, joyous, and fun, but it can also be one of the most stressful experiences you can have. Our business partners get to see us at our best and our absolute worst. Disagreements can turn into hurt feelings, fights, or worse.

You know all those stories about great bands that split up right before (or after) they went big, right? It’s not just a cliche. Being up in each other’s intimate personal space while trying to co-create something that you are all incredibly invested in, at the same time feeling like your very future is on the line? That’s a recipe for fights, frustration, and disaster. Unspoken mini resentments turn into frustrations turn into unspoken big resentments turn into blowups/explosions/lawsuits turn into stories of your failed startup, or relationship.

So what do you do?

In my decades of working on projects for companies of all sizes there’s been one unspoken aspect that’s been consistent across all of them—we members of agency design teams end up feeling like therapists. For a project to be successful it has to be built. For it to be built you have to get to some kind of consensus around decisions. All the decisions. Who you’re building for. What you’re trying to accomplish. What color blue that button should be. etc. And that’s not always easy. Especially when you there’s a room full of people with little resentments.

The best design teams are experts at moderating discussions and mediating disagreements. They help their clients make decisions. Often they have to act like couples councilors just to keep things moving. I often find myself in that role. Holding space for disagreements. Helping team members listen to each other. And providing techniques for decision making that don’t trigger resentment. And I often think, “What happens when I leave? Will these guys just go back to sniping at each other?”

Why wait for a design project to get your team back to happy? Or at least back to listening and respecting each other? Why not implement a little corporate therapy right now? Some simple techniques can help you and your team communicate more clearly, process and release resentments, and get back to having fun creating something magical together.

Corporate therapy? It’s about time.