If you don’t prepare yourself to handle business disputes when they happen in your business partnerships, you may find yourself getting emotional and losing sight of the larger picture. A resolvable conflict with your partner could throw your business into a tailspin particularly when the stakes are high and money is on the line. The best way to handle disputes with your business partners is to contain and manage your disagreements to find a resolution that leaves your partnership and business safely intact.
Consider Help From a Third Party
Involving a professional business partnership mediation expert can help you settle your disputes quickly and avoid lingering partnership disputes. A third-party professional can bring in their experience dealing with the most complicated business disputes to propose solutions that appeal to all parties to the dispute. To have a non-partisan professional assist and facilitate the resolution of your business dispute in a constructive way you can choose to:
Hire an Attorney
If you find yourself in a deadlocked disagreement with your partners, an attorney from the New York Law Firm can be the ultimate arbiter to your business to help you follow any management agreement in place to solve the issue.
Seeking legal action to mitigate your business dispute can be especially helpful with your business disagreements where a partner is trying to win control of the business or trying to force a buyout. Depending on the legal structure of your business and your state’s law, your business’s lawyer can help you convince the judge of a court to rule in favor of the best interest of the business.
Get a Professional Mediator
Hiring a professional mediator can also help you resolve your business disputes in a non-confrontational manner. A business partnership mediator may help you solve your issue in a constructive way that avoids a bitter litigation process. A mediator can help you realize that preserving your business may benefit everyone as opposed to winning a one-sided argument that will only feed the ego and result in a lose-lose situation for all.
Create Partnership Agreements to Stop Issues Before They Escalate
Having a partnership agreement allows you to resolve disputes in an environment where everyone is friendly and level-headed. Partnership agreements establish the basis for resolving your dispute by specifying:
- The different partner’s roles and responsibilities
- How much control each partner has
- How decisions will be made
- How to remove a partner or dissolve the partnership
- How distributions and compensations are shared
- The amount of capital contribution for each partner
Your partnership agreement should encompass all situational aspects and account for worst-case scenarios like what should happen in case one partner dies. Having a business agreement is equivalent to planning ahead of time to enable you to avoid common disputes regarding responsibilities, monetary commitments, and managing your business.
If there are things that may trigger disagreement, you can cut them off before they start by establishing how to resolve them in your partnership agreement. For example, to avoid a dispute where one partner feels that they are doing an unfair amount of work, you can lay out specific responsibilities in advance in your business agreement to avoid questions about the division of labor, especially during holidays or unusually busy times.
Be Timely and Don’t Rush Into Judgement
You may find it more difficult to resolve a business problem if you delay too much before tackling it. When you have a dispute with a business partner, you need to promptly prepare and dedicate sufficient time to have a detailed conversation about your issue and objectively negotiate how to resolve it. You’ll find it easier to discuss the possible solutions to your business dispute with less confusion when you tackle the problem as soon as possible instead of later on when you may be buried in work.
Have an Active Listening Session
When solving a dispute in your business partnership, you need to remember that it is not about who wins but about how each partner will feel once the conflict is resolved. Solving your business dispute in a manner that leaves one side feeling resentful or marginalized can ruin your partnership and negatively impact your business over time. This is why it is important that you all agree to actively listen and acknowledge each other’s opinions in a respectful manner to find a solution that works for everyone.
Keep Emotions Out of the Equation
When a conflict occurs it’s easy to have your emotions blur your objective discussion to find an amicable solution. Making decisions in the heat of emotions during your business dispute reduces your chances of reaching an agreement and increases the risk of making a decision that permanently damages your partnership and business. You may want to involve a mediator to help keep the emotional component out of your business discussions especially when collaborating with family members and friends as business partners to safeguard your family business.
Endnote
It’s unrealistic to think that your relationship with your business partners will sail along without conflict because this can leave you unprepared for when disputes occur. You need to always establish and respect that you’re working toward the good of the company, especially during disagreements in your business. This is why it’s important that you resolve your conflict quickly and amicably and get back on track to avoid risking harming your business and its culture.
