Based on Dr. John Gottman's marriage research, he could predict with 85% accuracy whether a couple will be divorced in four years, only after watching them fight for 15 min. If he watches them for an hour and have them also share their hopes and dreams, his prediction rating goes up to 94%. With the same video,
It turned out that we all fight about the same things: money, kids, sex, time, jealousy, the in-laws and what we are going to do with free time. This is true for happily married couple as well as couples that eventually divorce. What's interesting is that all these map out to what we fight about in a company:
Money --> Fundraising / Runway
Kids --> Customers / Employees
Sex --> Performance
Time --> Roadmap
Jealousy --> Competition
In-Laws --> Partnerships
Kowinng that everyone fights, we can make a plan to figure out how to deal with the situation that will determine whether we will work together on the thing that we're so passionate about down the road.
Dr. John Gottman also figured out that there are four major things we want to avoid when we are fighting: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling.
Listen to Kevin Hale's talk where he explains how entrepreneurs can leverage Dr. John Gottman's research to work better together.