During the business development process, especially in the phase of fast growth, founders start facing their different approaches, different values, different needs, desires, visions, expectations, leadership styles and understanding of how things should be done, what to delegate and what should remain under their control. These differences create tension between them and are the basis for many conflicts and even heated discussions when emotions rise considerably. Besides their personal differences, the huge pressure of the business growth process and growing teams add additional layers of tension due to the need to support every newcomer in integrating into the work process, the long hours founders spend putting out fires, which eat into the time for strategic thinking, and their significantly disrupted work-life balance, which leads them to exhaustion day by day.
All these factors create a basis for real frustration in both parties involved in the daily conflicts.
And if another party is involved in the company’s management, such as a representative of the investors (with their own different approach and expectations) to whom the managing partners have to report, the tension becomes even bigger.
Sometimes such pressure might even lead one of the founders to consider leaving the business. And something that started as a good friendship may lead to a very painful moment.
Sometimes the partner stays, but the tension between the two partners continues to exist, often because they were hurt during previous periods of conflict. Other times, one of the partners may leave, often taking part of the team or even some of the clients with them. In such cases the aftermath is not pleasant at all, but we will talk about it and how to deal with it in the next article.
Here I want to say that if this conflict between business partners is not addressed in time, it may have serious consequences for the business and the people in the organization.
But during this process, not every founder is ready to work on solving the problems between them. This could be due to the level of emotional pain they experience, their ego, or other factors.
So, what can the other founder do in such cases?
They can start working on themselves with the goal of improving the relationship with their co-founder.
It doesn’t mean they should adjust themselves to meet all the differences or expectations of the other partner. No. But they can start working on several important things.
First and most importantly, they can start reducing their own stress and releasing the pain they have accumulated during the partnership. Then they can start building more awareness about their own approach, needs, values, leadership style, and how they react under pressure.
They can learn to express their own point of view, needs, values, vision and opinion in a more assertive way. They can also learn to cope with the negativity that comes from the other partner without immediately reacting to it, while at the same time helping the other person express their own pain, concerns, opinions, needs, values and expectations.
And when the tension in the conversation decreases, they can start intentionally leading the conversation towards a solution by listening actively and choosing their words carefully, but doing this from a calm inner state that I call Calm Authority.
You may say, “But I have tried everything and nothing works.”
I hear this often from founders who come to coaching with me. But when we start working with NLP Somatic Coaching tools, they realize quite fast what the difference is and why they couldn’t achieve the same result alone.
What actually happens?
When we are under stress or in emotional pain because of relationship issues, we react from this emotional state even when we try to hide our emotions and appear calm. We still carry the inner emotions we hold, and they influence our tone of voice and the words we choose. Our voice becomes sharper, our words more judgmental or blaming, and the other person continues to reject what we want to introduce, defend themselves or attack. And the conversation ends up in the old way again.
We also carry unconscious triggers and patterns of reaction. They become very visible through the way we feel touched during a conversation or conflict. So, even if we manage to keep ourselves calm at the beginning of the conversation, the other person may touch one of our “weak points”- sometimes because they know them very well after years of working together, and sometimes without even realizing it.
That is the moment when our old triggers and patterns show up, and they can become difficult to manage even if we try hard to do it consciously.
This is where the deeper inner work becomes important.
With NLP Somatic Coaching tools, we can work with these old triggers and patterns, release them and build new ways of responding that create lasting transformation. It is not only about controlling the reaction in the moment. It is about transforming what creates the reaction in the first place.
One founder I worked with, who had experienced very heated conflicts with their business partner during a period of fast growth in their company, shared that after we worked together, they no longer experienced negative emotions during difficult conversations, or even if an emotion appeared, they could release it within seconds and continue the constructive dialogue.
I have seen similar results with the clients I have worked with on emotional regulation during difficult conversations and conflicts. Some of them needed just several sessions to achieve this, while others needed more inner work. It depends on the emotional experiences, unresolved pain and patterns they carry with them from the past.
The other very important point is empathy.
During the process of conflict escalation, both parties often lose empathy for each other. Being able to put ourselves in the shoes of the other person is extremely valuable because it gives us information that can enrich our perspective. But it is very difficult to do this by ourselves when we are deeply emotionally involved in the situation.
I remember very well while I was working with one business owner of a medium-sized company, I asked him, “What is the most valuable thing for you from our coaching partnership?”, he said:
- “Your questions are very valuable because they are unbiased and objective, asked from the position of an outside observer. I am involved in my situations and I can’t always ask myself the right questions. But in order to have the right answers, we need to ask the right questions — and this is what you do as a coach.”
And this is part of my role as a coach – to help founders release emotional tension and pain, see the situation from a different perspective, make an inner transformation and use the conflict to grow through it.
How does the change happen?
When one founder starts changing in this way, something in the old dynamic between the two people changes too. You stop reacting as you used to, you communicate differently and you no longer feed the conflict in the same way.
At the same time, the other founder starts responding differently too:
- In many cases, they see the positive change in you and become more open to looking at themselves or even agree to work on the relationship together.
- But this doesn’t always happen. When the other person has deeply rooted defensive or destructive patterns, they may continue reacting negatively or find another way to attack. They may try to bring you back into the old way of communicating because this is the pattern the two of you have known for a long time. However, in many cases, your own change shifts the partnership dynamic for the better.
And this is something important to understand:
You can work on your own transformation, but you cannot make the other person do their inner work. This is their choice.
If you have genuinely worked on yourself, changed the way you approach the relationship, tried different ways of communicating and perhaps even received professional support, but after repeated attempts there are still no signs of meaningful change, another question begins to appear:
What are the best next steps for you, your business and your team?
Sometimes this may mean preparing yourself for decisions you hoped you would never have to make. But this is a different stage of the co-founder journey, and I will explore it in another article.
If you are facing challenges with your co-founder and they are not ready to work on them together, you don’t have to wait for them to start working on the situation. You can begin from your side.
If you would like professional support in this process, you can
book an individual conversation with me
to explore your situation and what could be a helpful next step.
