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involve being out of touch with your partner’s dreams and aspirations. When partners are out of touch with each other’s dreams and aspirations, unintentional disrespect can occur in the relationship. In 3PL/shipper relationships, this might manifest itself in a lack of knowledge of both parties’ strategic direction and thus create gridlock in the engagement. This kind of misalignment can be avoided by deploying relationship systems to facilitate alignment. Principle #7: Action to Create Shared Meaning. The relationship expert breaks down shared meaning into four pillars: 1. Rituals of connection 2. Support of each other’s roles 3. Shared goals 4. Shared values and symbols These are fairly straightforward for creating shared meaning in a marriage. For a shipper/3PL relationship, creating shared meaning might be more like leveraging cultural synergies; specifically, to call out similar values and culture points as well as common goals that create synergy in the partnership. When priority is placed on leveraging the factors that make you strong together, each partners’ objectives can be realized. Given how supply chains are evolving and the ripple effect when there are hiccups, the importance of the strength
Both shippers and 3PLs should spend time in business reviews, one-on-one sessions, and strategic meetings to nurture positive performance factors and recognize team excellence.
when considering shipper/3PL relationships. The shipper typically takes the more dominant role and is therefore less likely to allow the 3PL to influence them. Greater success lies in allowing the 3PL to influence the direction of the partnership. In other words, learning from each other sets up the relationship to flourish and both parties work toward mutual success. Principle #5: Solve Your Solvable Problems. Gottman’s therapeutic suggestion as it relates to solving solvable problems is to treat your spouse with the same respect you offer to guests. We can all relate to how we treat respected outsiders compared to how we respond to our spouse in certain moments. Gottman shares the following five steps for resolving conflict in a loving relationship: 1. Soften your start-up. 2. Learn to make and receive repair attempts. 3. Soothe yourself and each other. 4. Compromise. 5. Process any grievances so that they don’t linger. Each one of these steps deserves a more detailed explanation, but when considering strategic shipper/3PL relationships this one requires humility. Egos should be locked up in a room, or better still, flushed down the toilet, never to rise again. There can be significant cost to organizations when parties are unable to solve solvable problems. Principle #6: Overcome Gridlock. Gottman declares that you can avoid gridlock by becoming highly competent with the other six principles. While he lays out four symptoms to help you recognize gridlock, most
This principle needs to be visited especially when things aren’t going well in a relationship but mastered as a normal practice as people change in both organizations. There should be a relationship system in place, and both parties should spend time in business reviews, one-on-one sessions, and strategic meetings nurturing the positive performance factors and recognizing team excellence. Principle #3: Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away. This principle is all about making connections with your partner; specifically, listening to your partner’s bid for a connection and responding with positive affirmations. Gottman found this to be very meaningful to the health of a relationship to the point of building a bank account. Likewise, in strategic partnerships, when both parties listen and therefore turn toward rather than away from the partner, the relationship becomes healthier. A good example is when a shipper talks about continuous improvement focus or major issues the 3PL can assist with, or when a 3PL is transparent about the economics of their relationship when scope changes occur. Rather than turning away and risking significant disconnects, each party should become good listeners and lean into the other’s bid for connections. Principle #4: Let Your Partner Influence You. As you might expect, men are not as likely to allow wives to influence their thinking on particular topics. In cases when men allowed their wives to influence them on key decisions, the healthier the marriage became, Gottman found. This principle has real application
of strategic partnerships cannot be overstated. Gottman’s research is
distinguished by his time interviewing and working with couples over years of counseling. He could predict divorce early on in marital relationships based on couples’ ability or inability to embrace these principles. What he has given us is a roadmap to challenge ourselves to approach our relationships with proven methods to flourish. While times of disruption and uncertainty may occur, we have a playbook to optimize strategic relationships, therefore strengthening supply chains and perhaps creating more honeymoon moments.
January 2026 • Inbound Logistics 85
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