Everyone Makes Mistakes
Part of being together in a relationship with someone, is that they know your downsides. Having a partner in life, means that someone else sees your mistakes, and so you cannot really hide this away. You have to be authentic with your partner, because they are your support in life and in business.
There will be mistakes that both of you will make in business, decisions that cost the business, sometimes the price you pay is high, other times, not so much. Rest assured, everyone in business makes mistakes.
Because we are together, we also have the awful task of owning up to the mistake to our partner. That in itself can be tough, because we just know the conversation that will follow next. How the hell, did that happen?
There will most likely be a few hours of ranting and raving by our partners until we eventually calm down, come to terms with the magnitude of the problem and then set about working out how we fix this mess.
The point is, the last thing you want to do in this process is magnify the mistakes that your partner has made, or make them feel guilty for being human. We have to bring out our accepting side, Which is really difficult to do. Obviously the pain of the mistake, or whatever the consequences are, can be extremely tough to forgive and forget sometimes.
While it is easy for me to say, just get over it, the reality for many people, is not that simple.
Realizing and accepting that a mistake has happened, can be 80% of the battle to winning for you both, because we know that we are all human, so it is no surprise that mistakes will happen. Taking ownership and responsibility is very difficult to face in ourselves.
We feel defeated, and often can be overly hard on ourselves for these things happening, so the first part would be to accept and forgive ourselves for making the mistake.
The best strategy is a proactive approach. "Honey, sorry but I stuffed up." is a line that always works, because we admit to the fault as soon as we find it. What makes things worse is when we try to hide it, cover it up or worse, blame someone else. These things only serve to bring us back to the Trust and Respect issue we spoke about earlier.
Without honesty, especially when it matters most, then the respect dies and all we have proven to our partner is that we are trying to deliberately hide the truth from them.
Work together to bring about a strong relationship built upon trust and respect. Be accepting that each of us, is human, and we can make mistakes.
The only thing that can really help bring us both together, is to work on solving the problems rather than lay blame. Together we can fix this, and together we can celebrate another great achievement.
Excerpt from the foundations behind Dynamic Duos in Business: the Essential Guide for Couples in Business. (Release early 2018)
