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How Your Family Can Work Together Better
July 16, 2007
Family relationships can be tense. Communication problems and patterns of relating can undermine the best of intentions. If we understand our communication challenges and how our patterns affect relationships it will increase our chances of being able to resolve family issues, navigate conflict, and develop a healthy family system – and in the context of the family business – that’s a good thing.
Family issues can twist the family business arm when it comes to making decisions, and when there are unresolved family issues it negatively impacts business decisions. The best way to break the power of family problems and there impact on the family business is to understand them and work hard at addressing and resolving them.
Below are a few tips to creating a healthy family system:
- Grow up emotionally – an emotionally mature person is able to take responsibility for one’s self. Acknowledge your true feelings honestly, and honor them by learning to express them without blowing your stack or blaming others.
- Eliminate the crazy patterns in your family by developing genuine and open relationships with as many of your family members as you can. If you avoid certain subjects with certain family members – there’s a problem.
- Stop the triangles – a family triangle happens when a two person relationship endures stress, one of the people will reach out to a third to bring stability. This actually prevents the original two from resolving their differences. Many dad’s in family businesses find themselves serving as the “control rod” in other family relationships. If you find yourself being a mediator in family relationships, stop it! Send the fighting parties back to one another to resolve their own differences.
- Set appropriate boundaries – Understand what’s your responsibility and what’s not. I don’t cut my neighbor’s grass – it’s not my responsibility. Stop letting other people, such as your parents, dictate your life – you’re 45 years old for crying out loud.
- Understand ingrained family roles and give each other the flexibility to change. Are you the scapegoat? The peacemaker? The black sheep? Stop it already!
If your family is too rigid to adapt to changes you can maintain balance by not addressing issues. But understand that you are further reinforcing dysfunctional patterns and an unhealthy system and the impact on your family business will not be a good one. If your family is flexible enough to adapt to alternative patterns it will become a healthy system – and that’s good for the family business.
Posted by Jeff Faulkner on July 16, 2007 | Comments (0)
