You meet and think, hmmm, good partner material.
He or she shares your passions. Fills in your voids. Complements your strengths. Buttresses your weaknesses. You get to know each other, and pretty soon you're talking about building a future
together.
Marriage? Of a sort.
The business partnership is just like one. You dream of a shared destiny, which involves those big emotions of trust, loyalty and sometimes, when things go sour, gut-wrenching betrayal.
"I thought he would be a good partner to have," David Radler said earlier this week about his former corporate spouse, Conrad Black, in a Chicago courtroom where their business marriage and divorce is now in the airing-the-dirty-laundry phase.
They had instant chemistry when they met in 1969.
"I was impressed with Mr. Black's knowledge and ability," Mr. Radler testified about his first "date" with Lord Black, a blind one in fact, set up by a mutual friend, Peter White.
And they shared great intimacy as the years wore on. They attended each other's weddings, travelled together on business and occasionally on vacation. One always knew what the other was doing. Think of that photograph of Mr. Radler and Lord Black at the height of their partnership. Mr. Radler is whispering a little something in the ear of Lord Black, who bows his head slightly to hear him better.
"A business partnership can be intoxicating when it's going well. It's an infatuation," says Aron Pervin, an organizational psychologist in Toronto. "There's mutual admiration. You're turning to each other. You influence each other. You have this sense that the other is going to show you the way, that he will dispel your deepest fears, get rid of your anxieties."
Sounds like romantic love to me. You feel rescued. Completed. Secure.
Okay, so there is no sex involved in business partnerships, but there is money. And in the corporate version of marriage, making money is the sex.
You want to do it. You imagine doing it, even fantasize about it, and figure you will do it well together. And you hope that you will be able to help each other get pleasure from the activity well into the future. As long as you're making it, you're happy.
There are only a few relationships in life that involve this deep a level of intimacy. Even the parent-child relationship doesn't measure up. Parents love their kids unconditionally, and their kids love them back, but the idea behind that bond is to learn to separate from it. And you certainly don't want to be privy to all their secrets.
But the business partner love-match? Oh, baby, there's a lot you're taking on when you decide to get in bed with someone you hope will help you realize your professional dreams.
"I often think I should have gotten a psychology degree rather than a law degree," says Nina Kaufman, a principal in the New York boutique law firm Paltrowitz & Kaufman, which specializes in negotiating issues that arise in business partnerships. (Her soon-to-be-published book on the subject is called The Key Questions for Business Partners: 100 Vital Questions to Ask before Going into Business with Someone Else.)
"Often people want to take on a partner because they don't want to be lonely. There's a sense that you have someone along for the ride, that you have support, a cheerleader. You have this other brain to work with, that it's not just me who has to come up with the solutions."
Sound familiar? Isn't this what marriage is? Even romantic relationships are the result of some calculated transaction.
