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Chemistry Versus Geography in Advising Families

My Favourite High School Subject Is Irrelevant Now

It’s amazing how fresh certain memories from over 40 years ago can seem when you allow yourself a trip down memory lane as you reflect back on your past.

The two main words that this week’s blog subject hang on, chemistry and geography, just happen to be two of the more memorable courses that I think about when I flash back to my days at St-Thomas High in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

Just a couple of weeks ago in Curiosity as the Antidote to Assumptions in Families I also harkened back to those days, but there I’d noted a favourite teacher, without referencing the subject he taught.

Back in those days, I was expecting to eventually succeed my father in the business he had founded, and so any idea that I might someday be advising other business families was far from my radar.

Looking Forward to Geography Class

There was something about geography class that I really gravitated towards, and I guess Mr. Dunning and his quirky style had a lot to do with it.

I really don’t recall anything specific that we learned, but the memories of my time in that class are mostly positive ones.

I suppose that having a person at the front of the room who has the right attitude helps a lot, and now that I am often the person who leads a group, I appreciate what goes into that.

Never Expecting to Need to Understand Chemistry

Chemistry class with Mr. Legros was less fun.. I recall only a couple of things about my time spent in those classes.

The first was that I could never imagine any scenario where the subject I was being forced to learn would ever serve me later in life in any way whatsoever.

Four decades later, I’ve still not figured it out.

The other thing I recall was that our teacher would be speaking to the class while writing something on the blackboard, that was completely different from what he was saying.

The Geography Angle – Inspired by Jay Hughes

Some of you are wondering where I’m going with this, so here’s where I’ll throw the venerable Jay Hughes under the bus.

A few years ago at the RendezVous of the Purposeful Planning Institute, it was Hughes who was the first person to name the issue of distance pre-empting people from spending quality time together as an problem of “geography”.

He’d begun to have regular Zoom calls with certain colleagues and was fascinated by how little drop off in quality there is compared to being face-to-face.

This was before the pandemic, so it was actually kind of new to many of us in attendance.

I’ve since commented that what you lose in effectiveness when meeting virtually is more than made up for in efficiency.

The geography “problem” in getting together to meet with people has almost completely disappeared.

We All “Get” the Part About Chemistry – In Theory

When it comes to working with the members of an enterprising family, however, there is no way to work around for the question of “chemistry”.

We all know what I’m talking about, and it’s easy enough to understand. “Let’s meet and see what the chemistry is like.”

While the chemistry we studied in school could be used to predict what will happen when you combined two things, combining people together and knowing in advance what’ll happen is another matter.

As someone who often works with all the members of the same family, it’s crucial that I have “good chemistry” with every single one of them, or else I really won’t be able to do what I need to do for them and with them.

Chemistry Can Be Tricky in Practice

In practice, this can get very tricky at times, and I always need to tread carefully.

I need everyone to believe that I am there for them and that I get them, and I need to have their respect and earn their trust.

At the same time, they’re typically trying to get me to take their side in matters, so I need to walk a fine line because the person on the “other side” is also doing that. See Choosing Sides in a Family Business

I need to be wary of any sparks that might set the laboratory ablaze!

My New Stock Answer 

When people ask me if I work with families who aren’t located near me, my new stock answer is:

 “Of course, chemistry is much more important than geography”.

 

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Some Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda’s for Family Enterprises

So Many Questions, So Little Time

As much as I enjoy speaking with people who are part of a family business, some of the discussions I have with colleagues who also work with such families are even more stimulating.

These can involve general topics that affect many families, or, on occasion, a specific family situation that one of us happens to be dealing with concerning a particular client family.

Some of the most energizing dialogues meander all over the place, from general to specific and back again.

This blog stems from some notes I jotted down after one such meeting a while back, with two friendly colleagues who happen to work for a multi-family office, where the subject matter bounced all over the place, much to my delight.

Needless to say, together we raised way more questions than we answered, but all were related to how families can get their needs served as they prepare for the future.

Handling a Family’s Concerns

The questions also rotated around what a family could do, should do, and would do, depending on a number of different factors.

For example, what should a family be concerned about, as they begin to prepare for an upcoming generational transition?

What could they do about things, assuming that they even properly comprehended what challenges they were actually going to be facing together?

What would they be ready to undertake as first steps to move in the right direction together as they begin to understand the importance of doing this work as a family?

Finding Resources and Getting Help

What kind of work could they be doing together, assuming they knew that some help was available to them?

When it comes to what a family should be doing, as advisors that’s really tough to assess up front, until we’ve done the work and spent enough time getting to know them, so that we can have some ideas to suggest to them.

Assuming that we have some ideas, we also need to consider what the family would be able to handle right now, so that we can get some small early wins and develop momentum with them.

Preparing for the Family’s Future

An interesting way to learn more about a family can involve asking them what they would like the future to look like for their family.  You can expect different answers from different family members, so you also need to decide whether you’re asking them as a group or one-on-one.

After that you might want to ask them what they think they could be doing to achieve that kind of future.  A follow-up to that one might be to ask what they think they should start with.

It’s one thing to have these kinds of conversations with people who are part of a business family, but it’s even more important to make sure that they are also having such discussions amongst themselves, as a family.

Encouraging Families to Have Dialogues

As much as you might think that most families regularly talk about things together, you’d be surprised how often you find out that the really important subjects just don’t seem to come up very often.

Family enterprises result in some complex relationships between people where the family and the business overlap, and maybe because people spend lots of time together, they assume that they know how the others feel.  See: Curiosity as the Antidote to Assumptions in Families

As advisors we can and should encourage families to have dialogues about important subjects that involve their futures together, but that might not be sufficient.

Often what families really need is someone to guide such discussions so that they feel like a safe space for everyone to share, which is not always the case.

Moving Away from Should to Could and Would

Often families who are looking for advice will ask what should we do.

Even when we have some good ideas, it’s better not to jump in with an answer right away, as noted above, because we really need to get to know them first.

Helping them see what they could achieve and become together can go a long way.  But there’s usually lots of work involved in hitting their full potential, so it’s best to also share with them everything that would be involved in getting there.

What we want to avoid is having any of our family clients someday having regrets about what they woulda, coulda or shoulda done.

 

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Overdue 4-D Connections at FEC Symposium

Overdue 4-D Connections at FEC Symposium

So Refreshing after Years of 2-D

Far be it for me to declare an end to the Covid pandemic, but it sure feels like we’ve entered back into the land of face-to-face connections with colleagues and clients, both new and old.

I’ve just spent a few great days in Vancouver at the Family Enterprise Canada (FEC) Symposium, and I’m more energized than I’ve been in a long time.

The reasons for my positivity are varied, but mostly stem from so much pent up demand within me and others to actually spend time with other like-minded people, in each others’ physical company.

I can’t tell you how many times I shared face-to-face conversations with familiar people who I had only ever seen on Zoom, in two dimensions (2-D).

I even got so tired of my own joke about this, “So nice to see you in 3-D” that I decided I needed to go a dimension further, but you’ll need to stick around to the end for that punchline.

 

Let Me Count the Ways

FEC brings together two major constituencies, members of enterprising families, and advisors to such families who’ve completed FEC’s family enterprise advisor (FEA) designation. There are now over 400 FEA designates, and our numbers at this sold-out Symposium were well into triple digits.

I got reacquainted with several colleagues whose hands I’d already shaken in years past, and also to finally size up some people I’ve known for a while but whose height I’d been unable to assess thus far.

Not that that’s crucial, but more than one person told me that I’m taller than they expected from our online encounters, where Zoom is the great height equalizer.

I even had a chance to meet a former client in attendance, who brought me up to speed on their family’s progress since I last saw them a few years back.

I also slipped out of the hotel briefly to meet with a current BC-based coaching client who happened to be in Vancouver at the same time.

Thanks to CC who alerted me to his presence and for inviting me to their work meeting; it was so cool to see a group of advisors in the same room together working to develop solutions for a complex family situation.

 

Fun Being Back Up Onstage

By far the key element of my time there that created the most lasting memories was the fact that I had been recruited to co-MC the event over the two main days.

Getting mic’ed up and going up onto the stage to introduce all the wonderful session facilitators was an honour and a pleasure.

Getting to know my co-host, Keita Demming, and developing the rapport required to pull that off relatively seamlessly is a testament to his flexibility in dealing with my “Costello” to his “Abbott”.

The kind feedback I received from so many people, friends and strangers alike, will keep me pumped for months to come.

Something about being in a room full of family business types makes me feel like I’m in my element and that I’ve found “my people”.

 

True and Authentic Sharing of Experiences

The format of Symposium included a few breakout sessions where the family members and advisors went to separate sessions, but the majority of the time was spent together in plenary sessions.

There was lots of magic in those, because of they way they’d been ingeniously set up, which was quite well received.

The main room sessions were mostly panels moderated by seasoned family business advisors, where the panelists came from family enterprises.

The result was so much valuable sharing of true, lived family business experiences, which benefits both family attendees and the many FEA’s in the room.

 

So, What About that “4th” Dimension?

Alright, so what did I mean earlier when I teased about the fourth dimension? Well, so many of the people I’ve met working in this field during the past decade are more than just colleagues, they have become true friends.

And like many friends, when I see them for the first time in a while, hugs are exchanged.

It’s tough to replicate a hug in an online meeting.

Thanks to Covid, we now need to make sure a hug is welcome, and most were.

I’m looking forward to more 4-D encounters later this year, at the PPI Rendez-Vous in Denver in July, and FFI in Boston in October.

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Curiosity as the Antidote to Assumptions in Families

We All Know What Happens When We Assume

For me it was Mr. McGee, a High School teacher, who first shared the dangers of making assumptions. I cannot recall the context of this lesson from circa 1980, but I distinctly remember him writing the word “ASSUME” on the chalkboard.

He then said, “You know what happens when you assume?”

The class waited for the punchline. He then drew two short vertical lines, before and after the “U”, leaving three distinct words:

A  S  S   [  U  ]   M  E

“You make an ASS out of U and ME”

That was over 40 years ago and it’s still with me, so let’s just say the message stuck.

And We Are ALL Guilty of It

I’m pretty sure most readers will have heard some version of this tale somewhere along the way, and if not, feel free to borrow the one from Mr. McGee.

And, not surprisingly, all of us are also certainly guilty of making assumptions, because, well, you can’t not make them sometimes!

But what if there were an antidote that we could dream up that could help us minimize those occasions where we risk making an ass out of each other, especially with important people in our lives, like our family members?

Well I’ve got good news, there is one. And we all have some of it in us, and we can improve with practice.

My title has already given it away, but for those of you who already got lost in my prose (and I don’t want to assume that you recall the title of this blog) it’s curiosity.

A Coaching Webinar as Source

The idea for this post came a while back when I was watching a webinar about coaching, and presenter said, “The greatest resistance to curiosity is assumptions”.

I jotted that down because I felt like there was some juice to be squeezed from it.

But as I thought about it from many family business contexts with which I am familiar, I decided to turn it around and focus on the assumptions that too many people make about family members.

Rather than looking at “resistance to curiosity”, I want to concentrate on using curiosity to overcome the many problems that come from not having enough curious conversations.

It Comes Down to Attitude

My guess is that senior generation family members are typically guilty of this a bit more often, but I’m sure it happens in every generation.

It typically stems from an attitude of believing you know things you just never bothered to verify.

“Of course the kids will want to work in the family business” comes to mind for me, personally.  In my case it also came along with a healthy dose of not leaving me any choice.

My Dad knew what was best for me, or so he surely believed. Of course his plans for me also happened to be what he thought was best for him.

He could have been much more curious about what I wanted, but he never allowed himself to go there, just in case he’d learn something he didn’t really want to know.

Someone from Outside the Family as a Spark

So how might one go about sparking the kind of curiosity that I’m talking about here?

When the group of people is always exactly the same, it’s easy to get into a rut, and there isn’t much room for curiosity.

But what happens when an outsider shows up with the group, and that person is curious and begins to ask questions to satisfy their curiosity?

This could be just the right way for some new subjects and ideas to land on the table for consideration.

There are many things I should have pushed back on with my Dad, but I did not, for all kinds of reasons, many of which are more clear to me now than they were decades ago.

Could a well-placed and well-meaning outsider have helped spark certain discussions that could have been started, so that I could shine a spotlight on some of the many assumptions he had made about me?

Recognizing That Something’s Amiss

Sometimes you know that something is amiss and if you take the time to ask what you’re assuming, you’ll likely be onto something.

If you can then get curious and actually ask questions so that you can learn, you’ll be going in the right direction.

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Facing Up to Addiction in Family Enterprise – 5 Considerations

Entering Uncharted Territory

This week we’re entering some new territory, in a number of ways. First off, I took up this topic based on a suggestion from a reader I’ve never met.

I received a LinkedIn message a while back asking me to talk about addiction and the role it plays, and was intrigued.

I also realized that this potentially huge topic can be a pretty big deal for some families who are trying to create and pass down a legacy, and yet I’ve yet to discuss it here, despite having written over 400 posts.

That all changes now, as I want to share my thoughts on what is also “uncharted territory” for many families, who are often unprepared for how they should respond when a family member has an addiction.

I decided to revisit a version of the “5 Things” blogs I’ve done over the years, much to the dismay of my wife, who wonders aloud why it’s always five things, and never four or six…

1.  You Cannot Change Someone Else

As much as we’d all like this to be different, you cannot change someone else. You can try, and many do, but true change really only occurs when the “changee” does the work.

This can be the most difficult realisation of your life, especially as a parent. 

When they have young children, parents can and do manage to create many of the changes they hope to with their offspring. 

Unfortunately, at some point, this ends. Then, the more a parent wants something, the less likely their children are to acquiesce.

If your instinct is to simply insist more forcefully, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

2. Look to Provide Help, Not to Punish

An initial reaction to a family member’s addiction might be to use some form of punishment to try to curb the unwanted behaviour.

Punishment, whether simply threatened or actually enacted, will often backfire and make matters more difficult to fix.

Nobody sets out to become addicted to anything. 

Yes, there’s often some behaviour involved that’s less than desirable, but by the time they reach the stage of addiction, it’s no longer an easily-solvable problem.

Offering help, in the form of support and understanding, will go much further, and hopefully get the addicted person to cooperate, as opposed to rebel, which is what punishment will often engender.

3. Set Realistic Expectations

There’s no magic wand that will make an addiction disappear overnight. 

These situations all vary, of course, based on what the addiction is, how long it’s been going on and how deeply affected the person is, and whether this is the first time or not.

Giving the whole situation the time required to be satisfactorily resolved is what I suggest, and it’s better to err on the side of planning for things to take more time (months/years) than less (days/weeks).

4. Work on Organizing the Rest of the Family

While the addicted family member seems to take up a lot of time and focus, you shouldn’t neglect the rest of the family.

In fact, I think it makes sense for most families to organize themselves to survive for the long term as if the addicted person will never get over whatever their particular affliction may be.

This is a variation on “plan for the worst” but also hope for the best.

If the addicted family member is putting the enterprise at risk, finding ways to minimize and eliminate those risks should quickly become the focus, and that means having different people assume certain key roles.

Making a plan that you can all work on together to get through this makes sense and should be a priority.

5. Bring in Outside Help to Manage It

Few families are well equipped to deal with such issues on their own.

Bringing in outside expertise makes sense for dealing with the addicted person, of course, but may also make lots of sense for the rest of the family as they deal with things in a new way.

I hold himself out as such a resource for families, so this suggestion shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone reading this, of course.

But an addicted family member creates emotional reactions that need to be managed.

You need to reduce the “reactions” and instead focus on a constructive “response”.

Ignoring the issue and hoping it will disappear rarely works out well.

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Progressing Up the Family Governance Mountain

It’s Usually a Slow Journey to the Top

As the world returns to more in-person events, I’ve been playing catch up with occasions to be with like-minded colleagues. I’ve just returned from New York where I took part once again in the Institute for Family Governance’s annual conference.

I also got in some family time with my sister, my nephew, and my son, so that was a nice bonus.

Since family governance is about improving relationships among family stakeholders, this opportunity of combining the conference with personal family catch-ups was a big plus.

When thinking about a subject like family governance, I normally like to look at it from each individual family’s perspective, since no two families should approach it the same way.

However, meeting with colleagues who all work somewhere in this space allows me to also take the pulse of the professional community to see how the subject is understood and received in general, and I’m left with mixed feelings on that score.

Caring Enough to Understand

Some of those who showed up didn’t seem to care enough to try to understand the family relationship aspects that actually create most families’ governance challenges.

Perhaps I was jaded by some interactions at my lunch roundtable, but the subject of the families and their challenges in establishing some sort of governance seemed far from the radar of many colleagues.

Having self-selected to come to this conference and sign up for a table to discuss “Family Considerations when Designing your Family Office”, I had assumed that they’d care enough about it to try to understand better.

Or maybe they didn’t understand enough to care; maybe some of each (?).

Enough about the negative, because as usual, the presentations contained many positive nuggets worth remembering and sharing.

Some Random Nuggets to Share:

Josh Baron kicked off the morning discussing Owner Strategy for Family Enterprises, and he reminded us all how important the owners of any business are and the roles that they can and should play as owners.

The group of owners is much more than whatever it happens to say in their shareholder’s agreement, and he was encouraging them to work together with intentionality.

What Does the IRS Have to Do with This?

A panel after that shared a couple of nice take-aways, notably that it’s important not to let the IRS decide things for you. 

This underscores the need to make plans in advance of anyone’s death, although I suspect that for many, those plans are actually precisely about making decisions that are very much driven by the desire to deprive the IRS of any of the family’s dollars!

They also noted that there’s a serious lack of role models for generational stewardship for families to learn from. 

I think this is largely true, and hopefully changing for the better.

On Family Business Boards:

Brendan Wall then shared his lived experience in his eponymous family enterprise, discussing How to Design and Implement an Effective Family Business Board.

Keeping the Board fresh by rotating directors on and off was noted, as was the need to put the right people on the Board in the first place.

He also mentioned that the qualities of who should be on a Board differ widely when looking at outside independent directors versus family members who sit on the same Board.

A G5 Keynote to Remember

Matthew Fleming’s keynote on the Importance of Family Values was fantastic, as he shared stories from the heart about his family, who are now in G5 (the fifth generation of his family), and how their multi-family office maintains their family’s values at the center of the work they do with all the families they serve.

He shared their model of the Four Pillars of Capital, and also left us with an existential question:

        “Is your family office becoming a bigger problem than 

                      the problem it was designed to solve?”

Hmmmm, as any family office heading towards a generational transition knows, this is an important thing to consider, as a need to evolve to serve the rising generation will emerge at some point.

More Nuggets:

After lunch we were treated to some wonderful examples of families who Use their Family Fortune to Serve their Community, as well as trip down memory lane for sailing fans, featuring a member of a three-generation family who repeatedly won the America’s Cup.

Next years IFG Conference in NYC is set for May 3, 2023, and I’m looking forward to being there once again.

I hope we’ll all be a few steps closer to the top of the family governance mountain then.

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Working Out the Family Dynamics – Before Vs. After

Working Out the Family Dynamics – Before Vs. After

My Bias Has a Clear Winner

This week we’re revisiting an old idea but looking at it in a new way. There will be some flashbacks and an interesting juxtaposition that came from a peer call that inspired this post and the lookback.

We’ll also have a look at two ways of doing something important that each occur with some frequency, and for which I have a clear bias for one over the other, even though it is way less popular than the other.

An 8-Year Blog Flashback

As I sat down to write this piece, I began with some notes from a recent call that gave me a good starting point, but it was not nearly fully formed, and coming up with a title was presenting a struggle.

As I turned it over and over in my head, I had a flashback to a post from 2014, and then had to shake my head as I did the math and realized that I wrote about another version of this over 8 years ago.

The good news is that I haven’t changed my mind and my bias remains intact. If anything, it has been reinforced.

Back in 2014, inspired by a webinar by the Purposeful Planning Institute, I wrote Pre-Mediated Planning, Sounds Good to Me.

That blog was inspired by Dean Fowler, a psychologist with a long history of helping enterprising families work through the intricacies of an intergenerational wealth transition.

Having come to this work many decades ago as a mediator, frequently brought in by lawyers of disputants, Fowler was advocating for clearing up potential landmines before they became problematic.

The 6-Month Rush and 4-Year Clean-Up

Getting back to the recent peer call, one of the leaders was referencing a case where the family had rushed through some of the structural planning for an upcoming transition in about six months, and who were then pleased that that work was now behind them.

Lo and behold, however, once some of the previously uninvolved family members learned about some of the terms that had been arrived at by the family leadership, problems quickly appeared.

Once a number of the ideas that some thought of as a “fait accompli” were deemed deficient in the eyes of those who were actually most affected by them, it became apparent that things were quickly grinding to a halt.

As it turned out, it took this family about four years of working on coming up with a workable plan to straighten things out.

The 4-Year Process Wrapped Up in 6 Months

During the ensuing discussion, someone mentioned that the reverse might have been an easier road to take.

When asked what they meant, the reply was, “Well, what if the family had instead taken four years to discuss and negotiate the kind of scenario that would work for everyone.”

“Then, they could have easily wrapped up the legal work in less than 6 months!”

It was only later that it dawned on me that this was essentially what Fowler had been referring to when he spoke about “Pre-Mediating” the plans.

My Bias Versus What Typically Happens

I have a strong preference for supporting families in the long process of sorting out what they want and what will actually work, ideally before they make commitments in writing with legal consequences.

However, I also know that this isn’t how things typically play out.

Family leaders, unsure of exactly how to proceed, consult with professionals who are only too happy to make suggestions based on work they’ve done for others, whose circumstances likely resemble those of this family, but also differ in important ways.

The family leaders, wanting to trust the experts, hoping for something quick and simple, and not knowing any better, usually just go along.

And that’s where you get it done in six months, only to need four years to fix it.

The Same Story, Over and Over Again

As I wrote the lines above, I flashed back to another blog I wrote about this, Successful Planning, Who Should Be Involved.

The money quote from that one, which I wrote back in 2015, is:

    “Plans that are about us, but don’t include us, are not for us”.

If it seems like I’m repeating myself, I guess I probably am. The good news, I supposed, is that when I wrote these previous posts 7 and 8 years ago, the battle seemed to be more “uphill”.

It still is, for sure, but hopefully less steep in 2022.

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Can Communication Really Be Overrated in a Family Enterprise?

Aren’t the Three Rules “Communicate, communicate, communicate”?

This week I want to touch on one of the sacred cows of the family business space, and that’s the constant harping on the fact that improving communication is THE number one step that families need to work on.

Regular readers know that I fully acknowledge that most family enterprises are quite complex, and therefore the way that they communicate with each other can almost always be improved for the benefit of all.

This remains true, and almost surely will for as long as families choose to work together or share the ownership of assets as a group.

So I’m not planning on throwing communication “under the bus”, but I do want to shine a light on the way some people treat the subject, and simultaneously ignore a much less popular aspect of what it takes for relationships to be at their best.

So What Is It That’s Underrated?

Before I get to the underrated element, I need to give a shout out and a tip of the hat to the man who put this on my radar a couple of months back.

I discovered the Vermont Center for Family Studies almost a decade ago, when I was trying to figure out why people who work with business families should go through the trouble of learning about Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST).

At the time, the head of VCFS, Erik Thompson, just happened to be launching a training program for people curious about BFST, so I jumped at the opportunity to dive into the Bowen pool.

I soon discovered that this pool doesn’t have a shallow end, which I suppose is a good thing, since I did dive in.

So perhaps you think that understanding family systems is underrated, vis-à-vis communication, and I guess you’d be partly correct, but that’s way deeper than where I’m going.

Making Relationships Work Better

Families who continue to work together from one generation to the next need to constantly work on their relationships, because those relationships are crucial to being able to continue to make decisions together for the benefit of the family group.

Good communication will of course contribute to such relationships, but there’s a lot more to it than simply more and clearer communication.

Thompson now holds regular free online events on Zoom where he shares ideas that come from his BFST training that he now uses with his leadership coaching clients.

It was during one of these recent calls that he said the magic words that inspired this post:

       “Communication is Overrated.  Self-Regulation is Underrated!”

Okay, so any regular reader will know that at this point I jotted those words down with a huge smile on my face, knowing that I had just landed myself a blog topic.

There Are Two Parties in Any Communication

Whenever there’s any communication, there are (at least) two parties, one who’s attempting to deliver the communication, and someone else, who’s the intended recipient.

On which end do you suppose the self-regulation comes into focus?

This is a bit of a trick question, I’ll admit.

Your first inclination might be to consider the receiver of the communication, and the importance of not overreacting to what was said (or written). And that makes plenty of sense.

But, and this is where Thompson was actually pointing, too often it is the people who are delivering the communication who could benefit from working on their self-regulation.

Communication as a Weapon

He then related a scenario that came from the “couple’s therapy” realm that some may be familiar with.

Two spouses are encouraged to work on the ways that they communicate. One dives in head first and begins reading up and studying and taking communication courses, so as to be better armed for the task.

However, lacking the requisite self-regulation, they now use this “one-up” position to lord this over their partner.

“I’m communicating properly, you’re not!”

Can you see how the communication “silver bullet” clearly missed the mark?

Can you imagine a similar scenario with family members who work together?

It’s Never as Simple as It Appears

This is yet another example where “how you are” (i.e. being) is more important that “what you do” (i.e. doing).

Self-regulation is the “being” part, while communication is the “doing” part.

Yes, continue to work on how you “do” communicate.

And, also focus on how you regulate yourself when you’re doing it.

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Leading the Family Conflict Dance

Some New Ways to Look at Conflict in Families

Anyone who’s ever been involved in a family enterprise knows that the potential for conflict is never far away. 

Those of us who work in an advisory capacity for such families have seen every sort of denial and attempt to pretend that “our family is different”, yet those are actually quite rare.

There isn’t necessarily anything new under the sun for me to share here, but I did come across a couple of new angles on this question recently, and I thought they were worth writing about, if only to spur more discussion on the topic.

A Recent FFI Session on Conflict

The Family Firm Institute hosted a recent half-day webinar on the subject of conflict, and since two friends and colleagues of mine were among those presenting, I thought I’d check it out.

They did a nice job of covering the territory and the feedback was great. My take-away tidbit, though, came from a comment from another experienced practitioner in one of the break-out rooms.

She’s someone who not only works with business families, but has also lived the family business experience, having followed her father into this work.

She recalled a quote of his, which was the initial inspiration for this post:

           “We don’t run from conflict. We dance with conflict”

“Ooooh, I like that”, I thought, as I jotted it down. “This will turn into a blog post”.  (Thanks KSM)

Something Good from Social Media

The second different angle that came my way followed in short order, when I wasn’t expecting it, from social media.

I love LinkedIn and have found many treasures there, initiated plenty of relationships there, and swear that there’s nothing else like it for business.

But my go-to “regular” social media is Twitter, which I use mostly for news, sports, and politics, because I’m a bit of a junkie for those subjects.

But every once in a while, I get a great nugget there too, and this was once such case.

I follow Dan Rockwell, a.k.a. LeadershipFreak, and he shared a tweet about conflict that included this magic line:

                         “Conflict Is a Leadership Opportunity”

If you go to stevelegler.com and use the “search” function and type in “conflict”, you’ll find blogs, videos, podcasts, etc. that discuss conflict in various ways.

But I’ve never, ever, heard it put this way, and it struck me.

One Plus One Equals Five

So now we have a couple of elements to work with, and you may already see where I’m going.

We’re talking about dancing and leadership, and when people dance together, ideally, in most cases, someone takes the lead, and it helps when their partner is a good follower.

This metaphor actually has some legs, and the feet at the end of them are wearing their dancing shoes!

And we haven’t even brought in the dance teacher yet, who, if they’re any good at their job, will always play the appropriate level and speed of music so the dancers can succeed.

Willing Partners as a Starting Point

In order for any family to deal with their conflict, they need to acknowledge that it exists, and then someone needs to have the courage to take the lead and put it on the table and insist that it’s high time that the family face it and manage it.

Notice I did not say “make it go away”, because that’s usually not a very realistic expectation and can be a bridge too far.

It’s rare for conflict to completely disappear, but acknowledging it can usually allow people to discuss it in ways that they can learn to make some changes in order to be able to manage it.

Or Maybe You Need the Teacher First

It’s great when the participants are ready to discuss the conflict and try to dance with it by themselves, but sometimes there’s an unwillingness to engage from someone, usually caused by a fear of making things worse.

In such cases, it can help if you find yourself a “dance instructor”, who can then convince the other party that you can learn how to dance with conflict together.

Or even if the parties aren’t all ready for the dance lessons, the motivated party might begin searching for someone who can hopefully lead them to some agreement down the road. 

There are opportunities for leadership whenever there’s conflict. Who will step up in your family?

/by
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Serving Families in Crisis, Hopefully Without Hostages

Expect the Best, Train for the Worst

Friends, colleagues, and regular readers of my newsletter (same $0 as this blog subscription) know that I recently participated in a training program that was off the beaten path for those in my field of practice.

It’s taken me over a month to reflect on the experience and share it here, because there was so much to absorb.

Everyone with whom I spoke about this opportunity, before I went and since I returned, has been intrigued by the fact that I attended, and curious about what I gleaned from the experience.

This week I’ll share the salient highlights, along with some surprises.

 

“Intro to Crisis/Hostage Negotiation for MHP’s”

Before diving in, the only reason this possibility came to me is thanks to my social capital, i.e. the relationships that I’ve built and maintained with the fantastic people in the community I’ve encountered, via PPI, FFI, and FEC.

Being involved in various capacities with these peer networks has resulted in many cherished relationships, and with relationships sometimes come unique invitations.

So it was when Amanda Koplin, founder of Koplin Consulting, reached out to me and asked if I’d like to fill one of the extra spots in the upcoming training program she was organizing for her team.

She’d mentioned this weeklong program during our work together on a PPI committee, and I guess I sounded intrigued enough for her to extend this generous offer to me.

I still recall her initial idea: “In a hostage situation they send the cops, because it’s a crime; but it’s actually a mental health crisis”.

 

Role Plays and Playing Roles

So there I was in Nashville, surrounded by mental health professionals – “MHP’s” — (which I’m NOT, but trying to fit in) all being trained by ex-FBI folks.

Meanwhile, we were all learning the material these trainers normally teach to law enforcement officers.

There were some official “role plays” along the way, but I was also quite pre-occupied in playing the role of not sticking out too much.

It’s amazing what you can learn when you step out of your comfort zone. And yet, it was not nearly as uncomfortable as expected.

 

Key Takeaway Message

As I’ve shared with many since then, the most important learnings were about the attitude and demeanor one needs to adopt when presented with a crisis situation.

Not surprisingly, the ability to remain calm is fundamental to becoming a resource to those in crisis. 

Their brains are filled with anxiety and therefore not functioning in an optimal way, so just by being there and remaining calm, you can already add lots of value.

Perhaps my lack of discomfort with this aspect stemmed from the fact that I’d been down this road in previous training programs, notably those in conflict resolution and Bowen Family Systems Theory (BFST).

It was underscored once again, and should never be forgotten.

 

Connecting with Those in Crisis – Not with their Heads

The second take-away was the importance of connecting with anyone in a crisis, and not just with their head. As noted above, their brain isn’t fully functioning in a crisis, so they’ll respond better to those who connect with them in other ways.

Getting someone to trust you in such situations comes down to connection at a deeper level whether you call it heart-to-heart, at a gut level, or having your souls connect.

Please note that these are my interpretations of what we learned, and these words were nowhere in the course materials.

In fact, I attended in search of learning to better connect with members of families I work with, so don’t be surprised that my learnings fall here.

 

Surprises Since My Return

Since coming back home, many people have asked about the experience, and so many of them get hooked on the hostage aspect, and not the crisis angle.

Indeed, some family enterprise situations do feature folks who do feel like hostages, but that’s really a whole other subject, because those are usually more “chronic” as opposed to the “acute” situations we learned about.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that colleagues also seemed curious about the “what to do” in a crisis angle, whereas my experience was more about “how to be” in a crisis.

Like many life situations, much of it comes down to a negotiation of some sort, which isn’t rocket science by any stretch.

Keeping a cool head always helps.

/by