I Just Sold My Business for $50 Million. Now What?

This kind of situation happens in real life, and it certainly causes people to be seen differently by others, but that is only the beginning of how their lives will change. Most people will be envious of anyone in this position, but that doesn’t mean that they have necessarily solved all of their problems either.

So what does change, and what problems are you now faced with if you are the person at the center of this?

I will focus my comments on a “plain vanilla” family business situation for simplicity’s sake, but keep in mind that things can be much more complicated these days, with complex family structures that sometimes seem to be the norm with reconstituted families.

Let’s look at just three aspects of the new reality this person would face in the months and years after the business sale: the money, the person, and the family. Let’s call the person “Pat” for the sake of gender neutrality.

The Money

So Pat was recently running a business worth $50 million, and was probably doing a pretty good job, seeing as a company that size doesn’t typically run by itself. Good job, Pat. In comparison, running a $50 million pile of cash should be a walk in the park, right?

Well maybe yes, but not necessarily. The company surely had lots of qualified people looking after different departments. Money is certainly more straightforward, but it doesn’t manage itself either.

Pat may be surprised by how many new “friends” show up with great opportunities to invest part of that money, as well as how many experts materialize all of a sudden, each insisting that they are the best person for Pat’s particular situation.

Take your time, Pat, there is no big rush. Yes, you probably want to get your capital working for you, but taking a few weeks or months to figure out just how you want to manage your wealth is highly recommended. If any potential advisor tries to rush you, that is likely a sign that they are more interested in how your wealth can help them, and not you.

The Person

So Pat, what do you want to do? Travel, play golf, great. But what else?

Is there enough there to keep you challenged? People who work for someone else are often satisfied to no longer have to work for some A-Hole boss after they retire, and they can often be found on the golf course.

But Pat, you built a company, and now you sold it. I sure hope you already have some ideas of what you want to do with your time, some kind of projects, to replace the “work” part of your life.

Take a break, recharge, yes, great. But then what? I hope you will try a few new things and keep going until you find something that keeps the drive alive. Or better yet, you can find a few different “somethings”. Hint: Try volunteering. Plenty of good causes need good help.

The Family

Now this could be the toughest one of all.

Assuming that you have children, some of whom may have worked in the business, things have now changed for them too. Depending on whether or not they saw this coming, whether or not they remain with the company for some period, and whether or not they have marketable skills to find a similar job elsewhere, this is not something to dismiss lightly.

Please take the opportunity to share your thoughts with each of your children, individually and together, on how this sale changes things for them too. An attitude of “well, that’s their problem” is not very helpful.

If you have spent most of your time focussing on the business at the expense of spending time being a parent, maybe you can start to make up for that now?

When I wrote “share your thoughts” with your family, I wasn’t talking about a one-time event here, but regular contact. Get to know them each a bit better, treat them fairly, be a good parent, and help each of them become the best person they can be. Now there is a worthwhile project.

 

Steve Legler “gets” business families.
 
He understands the issues that families face, as well as how each family member sees things from their own viewpoint.
 
He specializes in helping business families navigate the difficult areas where the family and the business overlap, by listening to each person’s concerns and ideas.  He then helps the family work together to bridge gaps by building common goals, based on their shared values and vision.
 
His background in family business, his experience running his own family office, along with his education and training in coaching, facilitation, and mediation, make him uniquely suited to the role of advising business families and families of wealth.
 
He is the author of Shift your Family Business (2014), he received his MBA from the Richard  Ivey School of Business (UWO, 1991), is a CFA Charterholder (CFA Institute, 2002), a Family Enterprise Advisor (IFEA 2014), and has received the ACFBA and CFWA accreditations (Family Firm Institute 2014-2015).
 
He prides himself on his ability to help families create the harmony they need to support the legacy they want. To learn how, start by signing up for his monthly newsletter and weekly blogs here.
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Transition with Purpose

This past week I was in Toronto for a few days, where in addition to meeting with various interesting people, I also attended an event put on by IFEA (Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors – ifea.ca) where I gained some insights into a subject that is beginning to affect workplaces and families everywhere.

The presentation was entitled “The Multigenerational Complexities Business Family Succession” which sounded like it was going to be right up my alley, but made me almost feel like I would not be learn much of anything new. I am happy to report that I was wrong on both counts.

The presenter, Lisa Taylor, founder of The Challenge Factory, started off by asking a few questions about retirement age and life expectancy, and as soon as I heard the first few answers, I had a good idea of where this talk was going. But I had no idea how eye-opening it would be.

Let me summarize a bit by saying that when 65 became the “official” retirement age, life expectancy was 62. The fact that many people continue to operate from a paradigm of “65 = retirement” is pretty befuddling in that light.

What ensued was an in-depth discussion about how increased (and increasing) life expectancy has affected workforces everywhere, as many people who are approaching 65 are not interested in retiring, and instead wish to continue working, for a variety of reasons.

Taylor used an analogy of riding up an escalator, and looking up ahead of you, when all of a sudden the person nearing the top decides not to get off, but instead takes a step backwards in order to keep the ride going just a bit longer. (You can watch a brief video of Taylor talking about the escalator analogy on her website at challengefactory.ca)

It does not take long for that one person at the top of the escalator, taking steps backwards, to begin to have adverse and dangerous effects on everyone else trying to ride to the top. This occurs in family businesses all the time, but also in many other kinds of workplaces.

In fact, the talk did not focus much on family business at all, but was actually quite interesting from a societal perspective, as longer life expectancy has created new realities for everyone, even if many people have not really noticed or begun to change their views of work lives.

On one of her slides, Taylor illustrated the difference between a typical career path using the “retire at 65” model that had prevailed through the second half of the past century, and a more recent variation that is becoming more prominent nowadays.

What struck me was her use of the expression “Transition with Purpose” that can occur at a couple of junctures in one’s work life, with a notable one (for me) around age 50. It seems that many people feel the need to make some sort of career transition at this age, and seeing this makes me feel more “normal”, as it really “fits” my reality.

If we had had more time during the discussion, I would have liked to talk about the concept of “Transition with Purpose” as it could benefit many business families.

What I am getting at here is the problem that many family businesses face when the founder keeps stepping backwards on the escalator, which results in many complications for the rest of the family and the business. My feeling is that if more time and effort is made in helping the founder find his or her “Transition with Purpose”, we would go a long way to minimize the number of these situations.

If we look at each of the two main words in the expression, I think that “transition” is the part that most people “get”, as the realities of aging and family life cycle mean that we go from one role to another over the course of a lifetime. But it is the “Purpose” part that seems much more elusive, and therefore requires more effort.

Every effort made to discover a worthwhile purpose is well worth it in the end.

 

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Do Differences Make a Difference in Family Business?

In any Family Business, and in any Business Family, there will always be a lot of agreement and “sameness” but also a great deal of difference. One of the keys to success is to make sure that any difference of opinion does not result in “irreconcilable differences”.

This topic came to me this week as I checked the discussion board of the Governance course that I am currently taking through the Family Firm Institute. There are about a dozen of us enrolled, as part of their Advanced Certificate in Family Business Advising (ACFBA) accreditation program.

Our instructor, Dennis Jaffe, asked us to share some thoughts on whatever topics we wanted to discuss, and I found a post from Krishnan Natarajan from India to be quite interesting. Now the fact that I met Krishnan a few months ago might have had something to do with the fact that his post grabbed my attention, but not necessarily.

Here is an edited version of what he posted:

Some of the family challenges that we face are as follows:

Addressing differences at an early stage. (Non-Alignment if not addressed leads to Differences; if not addressed leads to Conflict; if not addressed leads to Incompatibility)

I took the “extra” repeated words out to simplify it into a better visual, and came up with this:

Non-Alignement => Differences => Conflict => Incompatibility

I thought that it was a good representation of a spectrum, showing how things can flow from small issues, into much bigger ones, if they are not addressed early.

Rather than re-writing my thoughts, here is the cut’n’paste of what I wrote back to Krishnan on the discussion board:

“If you can align people, they will have less difference, less conflict and more compatibility.”

“Conversely, if you have incompatibility, it is likely rooted in some conflict, which, in order to sort through, you need to figure out where the differences come from. Once you find the root of the differences, hopefully you can re-align the people.”

“This is clearly a case of “an ounce of prevention” being far better than “a pound of cure”.”

“If you know you have differences, you can explain to the family the importance of resolving these before they become conflict, and where you have conflict, you can explain to the family the importance of figuring out their differences.”

After writing this on the board, it struck me that this model seemed so well thought out, that perhaps Krishnan had seen it or read it somewhere, and since I planned to write a blog about it, I figured I needed to verify this with him.

It seems that it just came to him during a discussion with a client, as he was attempting to convince them of the importance of dealing with their differences early on.

Allow me to add my customary advice here, about the importance of communication. If you are looking to get everyone aligned, and keep them aligned, it is imperative to keep them “in the loop”, so that they at least have the opportunity to hear what is going on, and why.

It helps, of course, if this communication is truly two-way communication, with the opportunity for questions and clarifications. People can become mis-aligned due to lack of communication about what is going on in the family and the business, but it can be just as bad if there is communication but it only flows in one direction.

If you find yourself in a situation where a family is not getting along, I think that this model at least gives the advisor a way of talking about the situation with the family in a way that clarifies just how far along the spectrum they are, and what areas they need to look into to find a resolution.

I know that I expect to refer to it again, and I will have my friend Krishnan to thank for it. Please feel free to use it yourself with your family or your clients.

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Communication: In Curling, and in the Family 

(Editor’s note: This post is a translation of last week’s post in French)

Hockey is generally considered to be THE Canadian sport, in which our national teams often win the biggest tournaments, on both the men’s and women’s sides. But there is another winter sport where Canadian teams win gold medals even more often than our hockey teams do.

Thanks to the title of this blog, you have probably already guessed that I am talking about curling. This sport has intrigued me for forty years or so, and since my entire family is not heavily involved in it, I continue to follow it closely.

Both of my kids play on the provincial juvenile curling circuit, and my wife is the coach of our daughter’s team, so every winter I get to watch a lot of bonspiels (tournaments). And when there is curling on TV, you can be sure that at least one of our TV’s will be tuned to TSN to watch the games.

Now you may be wondering what curling could have to do with communication, and even more so about family communication. Just stay with me, I am getting there.

If you are already a fan of curling, you know that communication between the four team members is really important. Each player throws two stones per end, while two teammates sweep (or not) in front of the stone, while the skip waits in the house and yells out instructions.

You can observe this during any curling match, from a recreation league game at a local club, through the juvenile circuit, and all the way up to the best teams in the world.

In any family business, there is also some common basic communication going on, but instead of the skip yelling out instructions, it is usually Dad telling everyone what to do. This goes on in just about any family, from one that owns a simple restaurant, through those with a few hundred employees and who are in the second or third generation, all the way to dynastic families.

But now, let’s start to look at some nuances. The team playing in the weekly rec league for the fun of it probably doesn’t communicate any more than necessary, and it will usually be the skip (the one with the most experience) who gives most of the instructions to the others.

A small family business probably acts in much the same way. No more discussion than necessary, and the boss is the one that runs things, his way.

But when you watch national championships on TV, you can see that curling is truly a team sport. Yes, you can still hear the skip screaming instructions to the sweepers when he/she wants the sweepers to sweep harder, or else the shot will be missed.

Curling became the best televised sport when they put microphones on the players may years ago, giving fans the ability to hear all of the discussions between the team members.

Imagine if you could watch and listen to the Rockefellers, the Desmarais’s, the Irvings, the Molsons, as they communicate about the decisions surrounding their families and their companies. Now THAT would be interesting.

As for curling, I can state unequivocally that the best teams at the highest level are successful in large part because of the way they make decisions and how they communicate with each other during games.

These teams have understood that they win or lose as a team, and that no one person has a monopoly on decisions, and certainly on the information that needs to be exchanged among teammates while the rock is in motion.

I watch my kids play and I am proud to say that they are making the effort to communicate better and more frequently on the ice, and they improve with each game.

Could entrepreneurial families learn something about the importance of communication by watching curling? Maybe so.

 

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La communication: au curling, comme en famille

Le hockey est généralement considéré comme LE sport canadien où nos équipes nationales gagnent souvent les plus grands tounois, tant chez les hommes que chez les femmes. Mais il y a un autre sport d’hiver où nos équipes canadiennes gagnent la médaille d’or encore plus souvent que nos hockeyeurs.

Grâce au titre de ce blogue, vous avez sans doute deviné que je parle du curling. Ce sport m’intrigue depuis une quarantaine d’années et, puisque toute ma famille y est présentement très impliquée, je continue à le suivre de près.

Mes deux enfants jouent sur le circuit provincial juvénile, et ma femme est entraîneur de l’équipe de ma fille, donc au cours de chaque hiver, j’assiste à plusieurs bonspiels (tournois). Et quand il y a du curling à la télé, vous pouvez être certain qu’au moins une de nos télés est allumée sur TSN pour regarder les matchs.

Vous commencez peut-être à vous questionner sur ce que le curling pourrait avoir avec la communication, et encore plus sur la communication familiale. Restez avec moi SVP, j’y arrive.

Si vous êtes déjà amateur de curling, vous savez que la communication entre les quatre membres d’une équipe est très importante. Chaque joueur lance deux pierres par bout, pendant que deux de ses co-équipiers balayent (ou non) devant la pierre, et le capitaine (“skip” en anglais) attend dans la maison et crie ses instructions.

Voilà ce qu’on peux voir en regardant n’importe quel match de curling, d’une équipe récréative dans un club le mardi soir, en passant par les juvéniles sur le circuit, et même au championnat du monde.

Dans n’importe quelle entreprise familiale, il y a aussi de la communication de base, mais au lieu du skip qui crie ses instructions, c’est probablement le père qui dit à tous quoi faire. Cela se passe dans presque toutes les familles, de ceux qui ont un simple petit restaurant, en passant par ceux qui ont des centaines d’employés et qui sont à la deuxième ou troisième génération, et même dans les familles dynastiques.

Mais là nous allons commencer à regarder un peu les nuances. L’équipe qui joue dans une ligue hebdomadaire, pour le simple plaisir, ne communique pas beaucoup plus qu’il le faut, et c’est souvent le skip qui a le plus d’expérience, et c’est lui qui envoie la grande partie des instructions aux autres.

Une petite entreprise familiale agira probablement de façon semblable. Pas plus de discussion qu’il ne faut, et c’est le boss qui dirige.

Mais c’est quand on regarde les championnats de curling à la télévision qu’on voit que le curling est vraiment un sport d’équipe. Oui, ce qu’on entend le plus c’est le skip qui crie fort quand il veut que les balayeurs travaillent plus fort, mais sinon le lancer serait raté.

Mais le curling est devenu le meilleur sport télévisé quand ils ont mis des micros sur les joueurs, ce qui donne aux amateurs la chance d’écouter toutes les discussions entre les membres des équipes.

Imaginez si on pourrait voir et écouter les Rockefellers, les Desmarais, les Irvings, et les Molsons quand ils se communiquent concernant les décisions qui entourent leurs familles et leurs compagnies. Ça serait fort intéressant.

En ce qui concerne le curling, je peux vous dire sans équivoque que les meilleures équipes des plus hauts niveaux ont du succès en grande partie grâce à la façon don’t ils prennent leurs décisions et comment ils communiquent entre eux durant les parties.

Ces équipes ont compris qu’ils gagneront ou perdront en équipe, et que ce n’est pas une seule personne qui a le monopole sur les décisions et surtout sur l’information qui doit être échangée entre les co-équipiers pendant que la pierre est en mouvement.

Je regarde mes enfants jouer et je suis fier de dire qu’ils font de gros efforts pour toujours mieux communiquer sur la glace, et ils s’améliorent avec chaque partie.

Est-ce que votre famille entrepreneuriale pourrait apprendre quelque chose sur l’importance de la communication en écoutant le curling?

Peut-être que oui.

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Martin Luther King – Family Business Sage?

This past week it was Martin Luther King Day in the US. This prompted a number of comments and mentions on social media, some of which were very educational and enlightening.

I am always on the lookout for blog inspirations, but this one caught me by surprise. I know that Martin Luther King made lots of inspiring speeches and was instrumental in moving race relations forward in the US, even if a lot of work remains to be done.

What I had never expected was to read one of his quotes and instantly have an “A-Ha” moment relating to family business, or, more importantly, business families.

Here is what someone tweeted last Monday, along with a photo of MLK:

“We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools”.

I talk a lot about the importance of creating harmony within families, and it seems to me that his words “learning to live together as brothers” was intended to conjur up images of the prototypical “one big happy family”, even if such families are not really as common as one would hope.

The assumption is that within a family, strong bonds, based on brotherly love, should help everyone want to work together to remain a strong family. When one family member is sick or weak, the others pitch in, because they are family, and eventually they may need help and will expect the same.

Many business families take advantage of this “familiness” and use it to benefit not only their family, but also their business. Telling the world that your company is a “Family Company” seems to be “in” lately, and of course I applaud this concept.

But what about the second part of Dr. King’s quote? What is he getting at with “perish together as fools”? My guess is that with respect to the American people and the variety of different races represented within, if this great country were to be torn apart because they could not learn to get along, very few others would pity them.

When you live in what many believe is one of the greatest countries in the world, if you fall off your perch, few will feel sorry for you. In fact, they will likely look at you with derision, and assume that you must have been fools to “blow it”.

And what about business families, and their cousins, families of wealth (for lack of a better term)?

Are there any well known families that you know of where you are, who have been around for at least a couple of generations? When do you hear or read about them? Sometimes, it is when they do something good, like giving to a philanthropic cause. These types of news stories have a very short news cycle.

But what about family feuds, lawsuits, siblings suing each other, family vs. family court cases? They are often fascinating, like a car accident that you just cannot look away from. And they can go on for months and years.

What do we think about when we think about the members of those families? Fools? Why couldn’t they just “live together as brothers”?

When you “perish together as fools” there will be plenty of finger-pointing, happy lawyers on both sides, and enough fractured relationships to last a few generations in your family.

Not many people will feel sorry for you, because you were lucky enough to get to that high perch first.

Please try to put a bit more effort into the “living together as brothers” part of the quote. It will be well worth it.

When things start to go badly between family members, they rarely get better on their own. It takes work, and usually a neutral outsider, to help get things going in the right direction, to help create the harmony you need, to support the legacy you want.

Or you can choose to perish together as fools. It’s your choice.

 

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A small gallery

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University Case Competition: Family Business Style

Last week the place to be was Burlington, Vermont.  I happened to be right in the thick of it for the first couple of days, and my experience was nothing but positive. So what was going on there that was so special?

For the third year in a row, the University of Vermont hosted the Global Family Enterprise Case Competition (#FECC15) at the Burlington Hilton and on their beautiful campus. It is the only competiton of its kind on the planet.

When they say “global”, they are not kidding either. While about half of the teams came from North America (including 4 from Canada and 2 from Mexico) there were competitors on hand from Europe, South America, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and the UK, and I may have missed some.  Sixteen schools sent Undergraduate teams, and eight schools were represented in the Graduate league.

I have seen many business cases over the years, dozens during my undergrad and hundreds while doing my MBA, but I never read any cases like the ones used in this competition.  I was lucky enough to be a judge on the first two days, and I can say that the cases that the students had to present solutions for were like no business cases I had ever even imagined reading.

The competitors had a full seven days to prepare the first case, so they all had plenty of time to figure out what they were going to propose, how the were going to structure their presentations, and which teammates would be responsible for which sections.

The second and third cases, as well as the final on Saturday, were set up so that each team of three students would only have 4 hours from the time they received the case to the time they were required to present their viewpoints to a panel of “esteemed” judges.

But let me get back to the cases, because it can’t really be a family enterprise case competition if the cases are not situations that only a real family business would face.  I was only privy to the first two cases, but they were both fantastic examples of what successful family businesses face as they go from one generation of managers and owners to the next.

The first case was about a third-generation (G3) family who had been trying to write their family constitution for a few years already, without success, despite hiring a few consultants to help guide them. The four teams in the division that I was judging all came at their solutions in a different way.  Not only that, but each team brought up at least one issue that none of the other three had mentioned.

On day two, the teams were now faced with the time crunch of only having 4 hours to prepare, from the time they received the case until they had to begin their presentation.  But despite the fact that they had very little time, the solutions that I got to see and hear were quite remarkable.

This case involved a group of G4 siblings who were worried that their children (G5) were not showing enough interest in getting involved in the business. During the judges preparation meeting, I pointed out that the average age of the judges was likely close to the ages of the G4’s in the case, while the ages of the G5’s in the case was close to that of the competitors whose solutions we would be hearing.

It was a fantastic experience for me, as well as the judges that I worked with; I can only imagine how great the week was for those who came to compete.

The undergrad finalists included 3 Canadian schools and one from Chile, with Carleton U’s Sprott School of Business taking top spot in the final round over Dalhousie.  The winners of the Graduate section were from Jonkoping Unviversity of Sweden

I hope to take part again next year, at the 4th Annual FECC, in January, 2016.

 

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A Good Will Should Leave No Ill-Will

Sometimes when I come up with a blog topic, I end up spending a lot of time trying to get just the right title to make it sound intriguing. I have to say that the title above feels like it works.

Unfortuntely, though, sometimes the “right” title ends up being far from the original thought that inspired the blog in the first place. No problem there, as explaining the link between the spark and the title can be used productively as part of the story telling. Here goes.

I have written on the subject of wills in the past, and I invariably reference the work of Toms Deans each time I do, since his book “Willing Wisdom” is the best work that I have read on the subject, and not just because his thinking is well aligned with mine. Deans talks about a “collaborative will”, as in a document that is worked on together with the entire family.

In his speeches about the subject, he openly admits that his point of view is not shared by the majority of his audience, at least when they first hear it. He regales his listeners with stories of outright derision that he feels in his Q & A sessions, where people actually tell him that they think his ideas are crazy.

Let’s get back to the idea that originally sparked this blog post. I was actually watching my favourite reality TV show, Survivor, when it came to me. The show has been on since 2000, and they normally run two seasons per year, and they will be debuting the 30th season in the coming weeks. It has definitely stood the test of time.

What makes the show compelling is the element of human interaction and the way that people are forced to work together at first, but then eventually vote each other off the show in order to win the million dollar prize. The formula is superb, and results in fascinating TV for the whole family. We have been watching it as a family for many years.

For me the most fascinating part is the psychological component, as we get to see groups of people conspire together, planning to get rid of various opponents each week. As the numbers get smaller, people who previously worked together end up working against each other, but often on the surface they seem to still be working together.

These situations invariably end up with someone being voted out in what is always deemed a “blind-side”. In every version of Survivor, especially in the final 6 to 8 weeks of the season, several people are voted out in situations that they never saw coming.

The participants head off to the ritual of “Tribal Council” where they answer a few questions from host Jeff Probst, and then they each go and secretly write down the name of the person they want to vote out. This is normally preceded by a whole bunch of deception, double-talk, lying, acting out, arguing, crying, whatever.

In the early episodes of each season, the people voted out are not that surprised that they were selected, and they generally leave with their feelings intact. But as they get closer to the end, the ones voted out are often surprised, because they feel deceived by people they thought they could trust.

OK, so what does this have to do with a will again? Thanks for asking.

After you die, your family will go through the ritual of reading your will. Do you want your loved ones to be blind-sided? They probably think that they can trust you too. If they are surprised, they may feel hurt.

There are reasons why you have decided to leave things the way that you did, and they are (hopefully) good reasons. But, if you are no longer around to explain your reasons, and they are somehow misunderstood, you may leave someone feeling blind-sided. A good will should leave no ill-will.

 

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Put On your Own Mask First

Anyone who has ever been on a commercial airline flight will have heard the safety procedures over and over, to the point where some feel like they could repeat the demonstation themselves from memory.

Thankfully for me, I do not fly as often as I once did, and I have almost trained my brain to be able to tune the instructions out, especially since most of my flights originate in Montreal, so I get to hear the message repeated in English and French.

There is a nugget of wisdom in the standard message though, which applies to life in general, and not simply to what you should do in the event of a loss of cabin pressure.

Although I have yet to experience an incident in which those famous oxygen masks instantly drop from overhead, I am 100% certain that I would obey the directive that I first put on my own mask, before attempting to help others to put theirs on.

Quite simply, if you have not made sure that you are taken care of, you may soon be unable to help anyone else. Let’s look at some other areas in life where this is also the case.

One of my all-time favourite speakers was Zig Ziglar (1926-2012), motivator extraordinaire. I used to love to listen to his tapes, with his southern accent, going on about how motivation is important, but is not a one-time thing, like getting a vaccination. It was more like hygiene, something you need to do a little bit of, every day.

In one of the first lectures of his that I heard, he spoke about his need to lose weight, because he was about to become a motivational speaker, and he realized that his credibility would be very low if he got up on stage and everyone’s first impression was “what is this ol’ fat boy gonna teach me?”

I was also a big fan of the Sopranos TV series, where Tony Soprano often visited his psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi. I remember being intrigued the first time that they showed her visiting with her shrink. Hmm, the shrink has her own shrink, interesting.

Of course I also now understand that good coaches have their own coaches, and these relationships are sometimes symbiotic, and create a win-win situation.

There is an area that I am currently working on personally too, which is integral to my work with families, and it comes from Bowen theory. Dr. Murray Bowen (1913-1990) was an American psychiatrist who carried out some ground-breaking work in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

He began by working with schizophrenia patients, but soon found that his theories also applied to almost all families. His Bowen family systems theory is based on the premise that the person in the family who is deemed to be “sick” is best treated as part of the entire family system.

The “problem” does not reside “within” this person, but is more likely caused by the interactions of this person with the other members of the family system.

The term “systems theory” is used in many fields, notably in medecine, and is all about how changes in one area undeniably cause changes in other areas as well, since the entire “system” has many inter-related components.

I am currently half way through a course on Bowen theory, and I find it fascinating. I had an A-Ha moment during our December class on the family projection process, and I am still coming to terms with some of the things that I am learning about myself, and the way that I am, thanks to the relationships that I had and have with my family of origin.

I am working on better understanding myself, and it is a process, like everything. But that’s alright, as I am very much a “journey” kind of guy, as opposed to a “destination” guy.

I have put my mask on, and I am breathing normally, so that I can now help anyone else put on their mask too.

 

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