By Rob Wilders, Senior Researcher ELT Labs
Amsterdam, 16the of March 2022

Companies enter into partnerships with the aim of creating added value. They look for each other’s complementary capacity for various motives. Examples are the realisation of economies of scale, the limitation of risks, the entry into new markets or the sharing of knowledge. However, entering into a partnership is more than just signing an agreement. It is about interactions between people, with understanding and trust being the most important indicators of successful cooperation. The question is how to achieve this.

After the ink has dried on the cooperation agreement, the race is on. Partnerships can be challenging when conditions in the ecosystem change. This can include disagreement between partners on an adjusted course, division of disappointing revenues or unexpected costs, lack of clarity in decision making processes or unclear communication. When parties are no longer aligned, tensions can arise that considerably reduce the success of a partnership. It is therefore important that all parties involved remain aligned. This sounds logical, but in practice it is often difficult. Especially if the financial interests are high, there are cultural differences or parties have different expectations. When tensions are high, going to a mediator or (even worse) to the courts it might be the only solution to settle disagreements.

Insight into thinking and acting.

Cooperation requires more than transparency, open communication and the use of the same yardsticks against which milestones and goals can be judged. Ultimately, it is about interactions between people, which involve emotions. Understanding and trust are therefore perhaps the most important success factors in a good partnership. Even business relationships that start solidly can be eroded by changing assumptions, presuppositions, prejudices or opinions.

If companies want to work well together, they must be prepared to deepen their understanding of each other. Insight into ways of thinking and acting improves interactions and increases the chances of successful cooperation. Using narrative research techniques, we can map and analyse the story behind people. Together, we reflect on prejudices, beliefs, assumptions and/or opinions. We present the results in a narrative report. By sharing this report with each other, certain issues can be made easier to discuss, we gain more insight into each other’s motives and blind spots can be exposed. But most importantly, mutual understanding and trust will increase.

The relevance of narrative research

A narrative is a story that has meaning for you. It positions you in relation to others with whom you have interacted. The research especially zooms in on the critical moments in life that made you think differently. That is why we also call narrative interviewing ‘critical event interviewing’. The whole of meaningful and coherent events are elaborated in a narrative report.

Narrative research is a qualitative research method, aimed at collecting, analysing and interpreting personal experiences and adventures. The aim is to better understand human characteristics on the basis of stories. The stories that people live and tell are a rich source of knowledge and meaning.

Entrepreneurial aspects such as risk tolerance, self-confidence, self-reliance and perseverance are expressed in stories with a historical context. From a dynamic perspective, new stories with different values are constantly emerging. A narrative analysis does not only address the current reality, but also gives direction to future situations. This makes narrative research useful to make an entrepreneur’s way of thinking and acting predictable.

Independent and confidential

The main task of the interviewer is to listen carefully to the narrator and let him/her speak as much as possible. This is not about the ‘truth’ of the story, but about learning to understand situations as they occur in the narrator’s memory without passing judgement. The interviewer wants to observe as much personal experience as possible. The starting point is to give a detailed description of the experience and its influence on your way of thinking and acting.

Narrative interviews are characterised by a high degree of confidentiality. The interviews are audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. We only send the transcript to the participant of the interview for validation. If necessary, he/she can reflect on it and clarify passages to better interpret the narrative. Afterwards, the story is broken down into smaller pieces (defragmentation) and coded for further analysis. The analysis is presented in a narrative report. Only with the explicit permission of the participant, this report can be shared with other involved parties to serve as a talking point during a joint session with other cooperating parties. The starting point is to gain more understanding and trust within the group concerned in this way.

Preference survey

In order to be able to quantitatively interpret the thinking and acting process, we will conduct a preference survey in addition to the narrative interview. These are 240 questions with two opposite types of answers (dichotomous choice questions). The purpose of this research is to map the thinking and acting of the parties involved.

Participants first indicate themselves which of the two typologies they find most closely matches their personality. Answers are given intuitively, without long thought or consideration. There are no nuances in the approach. However, it is possible to reflect on the results during the validation phase.

For example:

1. Conservative
2. Progressive

1. Always on time…
2. Always late…

In addition to your own answers, we will also validate the characterisations to at least two people who know the participant well. Preferably one from the private environment and the other from the business environment. On the basis of the data obtained, we will make a profile description and explain the meaning of the various types. If the results of the preference research are shared with the other parties involved, a mutual insight into each other’s personalities is created, which also benefits understanding and trust within the group of partners.

Interested?

If you are interested in carrying out a narrative research within a group of collaborating parties, please contact Petra de Boer, research leader of ELT Labs (p.deboer@eltlabs.com). A first inventory of the group dynamics within cooperating parties is non-committal and confidential.

About ELT Labs

ELT Labs is a narrative research agency specialised in analysing the way entrepreneurs think and act. Our mission is to promote mutual understanding and trust between entrepreneurs and their environment in order to stimulate interactions.