All partners should have, to some degree, substantially all of the following personality traits:
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A partner should be a self-starter. He should, without prompting, take (or offer to take) initiative and pick up slack for work that may not fall into his own designated domain.
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A partner should be conscientious, thorough, and judiciously meticulous. In the context of his responsibilities, he should be expected to thoroughly examine all available options in the world and be able to justify any action or in-action in regards to his responsibilities.
- Being the expert. He should be able to communicate an analysis of the most up-to-date state of the world, under his designated domain, such that he can give the team a broad but nevertheless exhaustive overview of his domain.
- Offering alternatives. If an initial analysis or the conclusion of such analysis proves to be difficult for meeting our team's needs, he should have prepared an analysis of alternative courses of action and further analyses.
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A partner should be willing to roll up his sleeves. No partner is too high up to sweep the floor if the floor needs sweeping. In any organization, there will be grunt work that people like to avoid. This is human nature and is very understandable. It is, however, the founders/partners' job to pick up on this and do the grunt work if need be. This can include simple things like typing up a first draft of a business plan, creating screenshots or basic sketches, etc.
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A partner should be an auto-didact. Pardon me for the use of the word "auto-didact", but I believe it expresses the spirit of this point more accurately than "self-learner". In addition to being a self-starter, he must have the attitude that "anything can be learned" and that "all learning is self learning". While one can recognize that certain tasks may be more suitable for one partner rather than another, a lack of expertise should never be an insurmountable barrier to pushing the team forward.
- This means that you can't say "I can't code" or "I've never done X before" if you are the only person who is available to complete a time-sensitive task. Hint: Almost all tasks in a startup can be considered time-sensitive. This also relates to the above point about rolling up ones sleeves.
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A partner should always be shipping. He should have a personal habit of creating and delivering something that requires effort and perseverence. Whether it is a simple hobby project, a personal blog post, or even baked goods for the neighbours. There needs to be an attitude of artisanship, of following through and completing something from start to finish, and putting it out into the world without any kind of external prompting.