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Partnering Intelligence
Book

Partnering Intelligence

Creating Value for Your Business by Building Strong Alliances

Davies-Black Publishing, 1999 more...

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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Concrete Examples
  • Insider's Take

Recommendation

If you always thought that a partnership is based on instinct, friendship and a bit of good bookkeeping, think again. The keys to creating a successful partnership are a little more complex, according to author Stephen M. Dent who enumerates the qualities that make both internal and external partnerships successful. This process involves understanding the stages of relationship development and partnership development, as well as creating a past/future orientation. Dent discusses how to assess, explore, initiate and make commitments to create a strong partnership, and offers charts, checklists, and illustrations to help you at each stage. He also supplies a few case studies as examples of the process and to substantiate the value of creating solid partnerships. getAbstract recommends this hands-on book to anyone weighing a prospective partnership, or working to make a good partnership better or a bad partnership tolerable

Summary

What is Partnering Intelligence?

Today, you need a partner more than ever. Throughout most of human history, partnerships were necessary because people lived together in small bands or in agricultural societies and depended upon each other. The industrial age brought the growth of individualism and made the workplace more fragmented. However, in the information age, many people find they need to create partnerships to survive. Most business people lack the skills to go it alone in this highly competitive specialized world and, therefore, need to team up with others.

However, some individuals and organizations are better at forming and maintaining partnerships than others. Partnering skill can be measured like an IQ score. The IQ measures mental intelligence. Those with high IQ scores generally do well at tasks that use their cognitive skills. But there are other types of intelligence, such as your emotional, linguistic, spatial, musical and kinesthetic intelligence.

You need partnering intelligence to succeed in partnerships. Your partnering quotient, or PQ, measures how well you can "build relationships and cultivate trust while accomplishing predetermined tasks...

About the Author

Stephen M. Dent is the founding partner of The Partnership Continuum, a consulting firm based in Minneapolis. He has won awards as an organizational consultant. He has trained thousands of managers, executives and consultants through workshops, speeches and nearly 20 years of experience working with clients such as AT&T, Northwest Airlines, GE Capital Services, the U.S. Postal Service and U.S. West Communications.