As I wrote about my experience with a broken business relationship in Death by Twitter, I knew that I would not want to leave the subject of business relationships hanging after describing how you can effectively destroy one. As a therapist, it wouldn’t be fair to help you identify what went wrong with a relationship without also pointing out how many things can go right.

What happens after all hell breaks loose? Either you screwed up, the other business partner screwed up, or you both admit you were wrong. Now what? Is it possible to salvage a dying business relationship after so much misunderstanding, angry words, and gossip have flown around the conference room? What if resentment has crept in, and you catch yourself rolling your eyes, or even smirking to your colleagues even while you’re at the negotiation table?

People in social media are just that: people first, who have chosen social media as a forum for community, productivity, and profit. Constructing a way to revive a broken business relationship requires you to attend to the real “people issues” as well as the perceived infractions that have occurred between both parties. Translation: what may heal any relationship may also heal a business relationship.

The five elements below are not a prescription. There is no guaranteed cure for a broken relationship, but in general, if you apply these points, you will likely have either a stronger one, or you will learn for the future what you can do to prevent a valuable relationship from turning sour.

1. Come clean. All contributing members must be honest with what they have done, what their true feelings are, and what they have contemplated doing in response to the problems they face. When trust has been broken, both parties must work towards redeveloping a new track record of honesty in order to build trust. Each party should describe five tangible actions that connote trustworthiness, and each party should look at the other partner’s list in order to gain a clear understanding of how to work towards open communication.

That being said, honesty is not as easily achievable as it sounds. What’s so hard about telling the truth? Everyone lies and everyone hides. In my private practice, I assume that people lie to me, and this isn’t the worst offense. Being vulnerable with one’s self, even in business, is still akin to the vulnerability found in our most sacred relationships. It may take several rounds of painstaking attempts to get enough truth out of both yourself and the other party before healing and trust can occur.

2. Attend to the other party. There is nothing more disarming than someone who kindly offers his full attention. Ever notice how the best Chinese restaurants have a floor manager who seems to have eyes behind his head and skills of intuition that rival a psychic when it comes to your needs? Presence is a practice taught to therapists, mediators, and diplomats, but business people can benefit by it as well. When we offer presence, we offer the best of our hearts, minds, desires, and good wishes to the other party, while giving our full attention without negative judgment. We notice what we appreciate about the other person, what makes him unique, and why we need each other. Recall memories, photos, video, and conversations that help you see your business partner in his/her best light. Take a moment to enjoy those aspects of the person, and notice what elements are still there. Observe and enjoy.

3. Apologize and accept responsibility. Name your shortcomings, oversights, hurtful behavior, and careless decisions. Invite the other party to describe how your actions affected them. Repeat back their descriptions until they say you have named them correctly; do not add or subtract from their words. Accept responsibility for actions that were in your direct control, and acknowledge the ones that weren’t in your control. Apologize appropriately and sincerely for what you are truly sorry for. If there are elements that you are not responsible for, listen and acknowledge these as well. Most people want to know that they are important enough to you to deserve your care and concern, even if you are not directly responsible for a specific problem that arises.

After you have listened to the other party, ask them if there is anything more they need to share. If you have an apology to make, set aside your pride and your ego, and share a thoughtful and sincere apology. A half-hearted or superficial apology may backfire; this should be avoided at all costs. You may defer to another time if you sense the other party is not yet ready to accept your apology.

If you take the lead by accepting responsibility and soothing tensions with an appropriate apology, you may deflate your partner’s defense mechanisms and encourage him or her to model their response after yours. See #4, under “types of restitution” for a follow up on an short verbal apology. Often times, an apology needs to be given more than once. Why? Because understanding and action may require up to eleven times of repeated content before a person takes action on something s/he has heard or seen.

There are many forms of listening and responding which can lead to more positive outcomes. For more information on non-violent communication, see cnvc.org. Additionally, my friend DJ Chuang mentioned this organization, which trains and certifies practitioners in a style of communication targeting the business realm.

4. Make restitution. Ever notice how a dog puts his tail between his legs, lowers his head and shoulders, and may drop his entire body onto the ground when he’s done something wrong? I’m not asking you to physically kowtow to your business partner, or ingratiate yourself with tears and self degradation. But if you have knowingly done something wrong, even if you felt provoked to say or do something harmful or unethical, it is a movement towards peace, both internal and relational, when you attempt to make restitution for your actions.

There are three main types of restitution: money, services you do for the other party, and community service. Depending on the infractions, a combination of all three may be needed to indicate how grieved you are about your part in the mess you are both in. If knowing that your business partner made a generous donation to your favorite charity as a peace offering does not move you to consider how important your relationship is to him or her, you might be closed off to the possibility of reconciliation (a future entry will address this).

Examples of restitution include: written apology, money for damages, a peace offering gift that is meaningful to the other party, replacing damaged or stolen goods or services, a public apology for trust broken or actions that hurt individuals (written and/or video from a live apology), attending to some of the long-term needs of the other party that you can meet, etc.

5. Rebuild trust. In my work with couples in therapy where trust has been broken, a helpful exercise to rebuild trust is to create a ten-point list of “trust builders” — activities that each party records along with a three-month calendar to help track when each of these activities have been completed. Businesses may come up with their own ten-point lists, putting specific detail to the activities that would help both parties redevelop feelings of trust and appreciation.

For example, one partner may wish to have trouble shooting meetings twice a week. The goal should be stated, along with times and locations, and a spreadsheet record should be created, with tick boxes that allow people to record when those goals are met each week. The trust building spreadsheet lets everyone involved see that both sides are making an effort. When they see it, it will give them a factual record to help engage insecurities and weakened trust from the past. Accusations of, “You didn’t do this!” can be met with, “Let’s look at the record and the timeline.” Goals can be re-updated at regular intervals for at least three months (90 days), which is the minimum time a spreadsheet track record should be used when trying to build both trust and new habits. Hard facts about the efforts of both parties can help soothe sore feelings.

Anytime someone makes a change — whether it involves smoking cessation, a new exercise program, or a different approach at work — a period of at least eight months is required for a habit to “stick.” If you don’t understand this, do a cursory search on the top five weight loss programs in America. You might notice that many claim to have a high rate of success. What they don’t always tell you is that the rate doesn’t count the number of repeat clients. If they did, their success rates might drop to a modest ten percent. Why do these programs fail? Even if a person tries a new diet and exercise program and loses some initial weight, they often do not follow through with that same change of lifestyle long enough to keep the weight off. Those who stick with the program and see success for eight months or longer have a higher chance of demonstrating real change.

Once you stop using a spreadsheet tracker, bear in mind that you may not be entirely out of the woods yet. Re-evaluate at the end of three months, and see if the spreadsheet is still useful for keeping both business partners accountable towards moving together in the same direction.

For some businesses, it may not be too late. Being honest, attending to each party, apologizing, making restitution, and rebuilding trust may put you on a stronger path than the one you’ve been on, and it may even help you both to remember why you do what you do. For others, none of these things will change the direction of your business relationship away from a split. In that case, I’ll be writing about how to do good closure when a business relationship is ending.

Do you have story about your business? Feedback is welcome, but remember, please don’t use the comment box as a dumping ground for your complaints (read my previous article, Death by Twitter, as a reminder of things not to do, including gossip). Let us know what helps and what hurts.

Bernice Imei Hsu, RN, MAC, LMHC, is a licensed mental health therapist, Kripalu Yoga instructor, performance artist in belly dance and Bollywood, Target shopper, French bakery addict, collage artist, and musician, writing about her first 365-1/4 days as “the n00b” to Social Media. This is her second blog article for Lockergnome, and more of her writing can be found at www.hipsforhire.ning.com or @hipsforhire on Twitter. She lives with her cat Charles-Monet, her MacBook, and her Yamaha PSR-OR700 keyboard in Seattle, WA.

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