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Letters to My Brother – Common Work Ethic
October 10, 2008
In this post, I will continue with actual correspondence with clients who are in sibling partnerships.
“Dear Brothers,
It is clear to me that we cannot successfully work together. You tend to abdicate your responsibilities to a subordinate and clearly do not shoulder your share of the load. When the business is struggling I cancel my family vacation, while you take your full two weeks off and then some. I’m growing weary of carrying you.”
Another component of an effective sibling partnership is developing a common work ethic. Now, this is very difficult to do because everyone brings a unique personality to the table. Typically, first borns are driven to succeed and are the aggressive movers and shakers. They must realize that personality traits that lead to success in business are often the same traits that work against them in close family relationships. The second born tends to be a laid back and relaxed mediator who feels he gets no respect. He may have a tendency to avoid conflict and be secretive. The baby of the family is the life of the party, manipulative, charming, and attention seeking. Now obviously, there are role reversals that occur and many variations on this theme. The point is that all siblings have different personalities that lead them to have different work and leadership styles and often differing levels of understanding of what a strong work ethic looks like.
This makes it imperative that siblings in partnership establish clear roles and responsibilities and clearly defined parameters and objective indicators of success for their various roles. In other words, it must be clear that the job you are responsible for is getting done, and getting done successfully. If work ethic is left to subjective measures, then personality differences will play too big of a role in determining who’s working hard and who isn’t. Or if work ethic is left to objective measures that don’t necessarily apply to a job well done, such as “coming in early and leaving late,” then the measuring stick isn’t a fair one. Divergent attitudes and motivators are okay. When they are understood and accepted along with these clearly defined indicators of business success, then siblings in partnership can get along fine without feeling that one is carrying more of the load than another.
Posted by Jeff Faulkner on October 10, 2008 | Comments (0)
