| March 11, 2015
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Voice Not Vote

Empowering the Next Generation to learn how to use their voice without expecting a vote

 

This concept probably should have been my first post because it is where I draw the title of the blog from, but some of those early concepts I thought were more important for people to think about prior to this one. In addition to that there is a conceptual flow that I’m following and now would be an appropriate time to explore the concept of Voice Not Vote.

The title of the blog is not to connote the idea that I want to Next Generation to rise up in protest and find their voice. I am in no way suggesting that the concepts of this blog are a battle between the young and old, and the next generation needs to find their voice in that battle. Actually the concept of Voice Not Vote is an empowerment offered by the senior generation to the next generation. We encourage the senior generation to offer the next generation a voice in decision making for the family, the business, or wealth transfers but not a vote. If you recall the Entitlement blog, my father gave my brother a voice around ownership of their business venture, but ultimately the vote belonged to my father because he owned the capital. There are multiple nuances at play for when a person get’s a vote, but we should explore first the need for a voice.

Let’s look at an analogy for a moment. Say you have a father and son driving in the car together; they drive together every day all day but the father always drives. The son has never driven the car; in fact he’s never driven any car because his father has always insisted on driving. Not only has the son never driven, but also the father doesn’t tolerate a backseat driver so he accepts no input from the son. One day the father says to the son: “I’m tired of driving, it’s your turn now.” The father hands the son the keys and simply wishes him well. Would you feel safe driving on the roads knowing this son was out there operating a vehicle…probably not. Interestingly enough, we’re not fine driving on the road with this person, but more often than not family businesses transfer from one generation to the next in this exact fashion.

In some ways this is a post for both generations. I’m not trying to upset the hierarchy of your household, so please don’t show this to your parents and say: “ha, I told you someone else thinks you need to listen to me.” What I’m saying here is that we have seen repeatedly this concept provide families with less anxiety, closer relationships, more productive dialogue, and a smoother transition of business or transfer of wealth. Recently my dad sent an email to the four of us (his kids) asking for time to do a conference call. None of us knew the topic (a conference call for our family is not weird) but we were all intrigued why he’d want to talk now. He was calling to discuss his estate because he had just started his estate planning. He wasn’t asking us what we wanted to inherit or even necessarily how we wanted to inherit things. He simply opened the conversation up to us to gather our opinions. The collective opinion was simply: “Dad we are grateful you’d even consider us, it’s your stuff and none of us expects anything in anyway, do what you want.” Now before you assume that our family is the Brady Bunch because our dad is a family business specialist that deals with family conflict on the regular, let me just tell you we are more like the Osbornes than the Brady Bunch. I tell this story to illustrate how a senior generation can invite the next generation into the conversation. My dad could have just told his attorney exactly how he wanted things to work, and on the day of his death we would find out how his estate transferred. But in that scenario, where is the opportunity for dialogue to promote closeness, and where is the opportunity for the four kids to learn how to plan an estate? Also in our family conversation my dad got to learn about his own children, the way we think, and our expectations around any inheritance we would ever see. Without a dialogue none of that information is unearthed.

For the next generation, once you’ve been given a voice don’t suddenly expect a vote. You MUST act with humility and grace; you have been given an opportunity to learn from your parents. You have been given an opportunity to grow closer to your parents. You have been given an opportunity to be heard and contribute value to the conversation. Do not take this for granted. I can remember growing up getting frustrated with every level of my education. I hated being treated like a child and still do. I remember the amazing feeling to have an adult value my opinion, to actually ask me what I thought. It didn’t mean they were going to do exactly what I said, but it was a data point they wanted to collect to inform their decision. That’s all your voice is here, but your voice is still an incredibly valuable piece of information.

Finally, I said you have an opportunity to learn from your parents. You’ve been given a voice, you’re allowed to be in the room to hear everything your parents hear. But you also get to watch them act. You get to ask questions about why they made THAT decision instead of doing something else. All I can say for the stage where you only get a voice is to learn EVERYTHING you possibly can from your parents. Some things will be valuable; others may dictate how you don’t act in the future. Either way learn all you can while you can. This concept of getting a voice and not a vote, like all of our concepts is a tricky skill based sport with a high potential for error. I don’t want anyone to read what I’m saying and to use this as a guidebook for how to transfer their family business or their wealth. All I want is for these concepts to raise conversation points. Next week we’ll deal with Communication, and how to communicate. What I’d like you to take away from this post is that there are options available to every family to successfully transfer wealth, transition a business, and remain an intact family. These decisions do not have to end in pain.

Good Luck

 

Practical Summary

 

  • Empower the voice of the next generation.
  • Don’t expect a vote when you’re in “the room”.
  • Until you’re given a vote learn all you can.
Category: At Work, Communication, Family Dynamics |
| March 4, 2015
Comments Off on Expectations

Expectations

What is expected of you if you work for your family, or you inherit wealth?

 

Have you ever had a conversation with your parents about their expectations for you? What was it like? Did they just come out and tell you what they expected, and there was zero negotiation? Did they describe a wish for you? Maybe they were really vague and only insinuated some of their desires. We will touch on the importance of the method later, but for now the important question is what are their expectations and how do you interact around them?

In order to illustrate my question allow me to first apologize for my absence from posting for the past two weeks. My wife and I welcomed into the world our second child and I took some time away from work in order to be with my family and aide in our transition from a three-person household to a four-person household.   I knew that when this child was born there wouldn’t be any expectation that I hurry back to work, even though we’re in the middle of a massive system of work. My father knows that my family is my utmost priority. Needing to return to work immediately was never an expectation I had to adhere to. However, getting an MBA, working for an outside company, and being willing to talk business at almost any moment (including while you’re in the hospital visiting with friends and family after the birth of your second child) are all expectations that I have lived with. The first two we actively discussed, the third we didn’t.

I remember back in college talking with my dad about working with him one day, never as a true reality but just a hypothetical. He said he wouldn’t hire me right away even if I wanted to work with him. As he put it, I needed to work somewhere else to learn corporate discipline before I tried working in a fragmented industry. He was right; in my first job I learned how to answer to a hierarchy of bosses, I learned corporate politics, and I learned how to be a small cog in a big system. If I started working for him right away I would have adopted all of the his bad habits that he’s accumulated over the years, and to be honest some of them would have seriously hurt me professionally. The MBA was a conversation we had after I started working with him. He said it seemed like a good idea, and it was something he really wanted to see me pursue. In dad lingo that’s his way of saying: “hey you’re getting an MBA.” I chose the school and style of program I wanted to pursue, but he was involved in the approval process to be sure I was getting what I needed from the degree. Finally, we never discussed the expectation that we could and would discuss business matters at any moment, it just happened. My dad and I don’t see one another very often, so when we do see one another we try and catch up on anything that needs to be settled in person. We have had work conversations in the hospital, at family dinners in restaurants, and even at my brother’s bachelor party. In this regard we have not done a great job creating boundaries around certain events, and this should have been a point of discussion from the beginning.

So why bring all of this up, what’s the point? The point is that unless you have a conversation about expectations at some point someone is going to violate what you expected and there is a place for friction and resentment to grow. If you’re dad expects you to arrive at work every day at 7, and you show up at 9 with the rest of the staff, in his mind you’re late to work everyday. All of the sudden he sees you as always being late to everything and has now created an attribution for you. That sounds absurd to some, but it’s happened with families that don’t communicate well. If your parents aren’t going to have a conversation about expectations prior to you working in the family business, or before you inherit a large sum of money then you need to initiate the conversation.

I mentioned earlier that we would get to the how your parents communicate expectations. This topic will be explored in great depth in a separate blog, but in this moment we have to talk about communication styles and principles. More often than not, when a child enters the family business or they’re given a large sum of money the parents TELL their kids what they want to see happen. This has several outcomes. The first is an inflexible linear pathway. If a discussion were opened around the expectations, perhaps multiple alternatives could be explored and a greater degree of performance achieved. The second outcome is possible resentment. Children seem to be born to resent their parents for something, and being told what to do and how to do it is typically a list topper. But there is a sure fire way to manage the communication environment; if you as the child initiate the conversation, you’ve already won points by showing you can take initiative for serious matters. You also have the opportunity to dictate the flow of conversation, and if you lead with questions like: “What is your wish?” “What is your optimal outcome?” and “Is our current path leading to that optimal outcome?” then you can get at the heart of real insightful concerns for your parents. You have also allowed yourself to avoid any personal resentment.

The purpose of this post is to start a dialogue. I can honestly tell you it’s so sad to see families arguing over personal items that actually could have been avoided with a transparent conversation around expectations. This conversation should always be focused on wishes and opportunities, and never on fears or worst-case scenarios. If you plan through fear all you will get is exactly what you’re afraid of. But if you plan through wishes, you will get what you hope for. My wish for anyone that reads this blog that you will be able to have conversations around wish and opportunity, and hopefully avoid some dangerous pitfalls as you enter your family business, or receive a large amount of money. Both situations have the potential for incredible success and family closeness, or disastrous splitting and cutting off. Hopefully you will work to achieve the former.

Good Luck

 

Practical Summary

  • If the conversation hasn’t been had about your parent’s expectations, it’s time for you to initiate.
  • Lead with questions; ask multi-level questions that get deeper each time to get to the heart of your parent’s fears and concerns.
  • Always stay focused on wishes and opportunities
Category: At Work, Communication, Family Dynamics |
| February 11, 2015
Comments Off on Entitlement

Entitlement

The internal tension between what you think you deserve and what you actually deserve

 

If you read the previous blog post you can imagine where I stand on the issue of entitlement. I am going to try and not sound too harsh with this post but this subject is very important and one that I’m impassioned about. All too often I get into conversations with next generation family business owners or future inheritors of wealth and they are constantly talking about what is owed to them and they are talking about the terms that they think they deserve. On the flip side I don’t have enough fingers or toes to count the amount of parents that have created terrible family environments because of the fear that they have around their children becoming entitled. So the message I have here today is for the next generation business owners and future inheritors of wealth on how to not be entitled and how to put your parent’s fears to bed.

The first thing I’d say is adopt the idea of merit being the basis for everything. Just like last weeks post this should be something you internalize. You deserve nothing, you get only what you earn. You may receive a bit more than you truly deserve because your last name is Smith or Johnson, but that is all just gravy. I suppose this point is for parents as well, your son or daughter should not be given the keys to the kingdom just because they are your son or daughter. Assess, or better yet have an objective party assess their skills and the merits for which they should be promoted. This concept becomes tricky when you aren’t dealing with a family business transfer, but simply a transfer of wealth. In that case I’d suggest to the parents to start a transparent conversation around why the family has wealth, what the money is intended for, and what your wish is for your kids surrounding that money. Hiding the fact that you have money and that will one day it will transfer to them, or withholding it for a long period of time will only breed distrust. The conversation though, will open up a forum for discussion that will inform your children about the wealth legacy you hope to leave. This is a powerful conversation that significantly diminishes the probability of entitlement.

The second reminder I have for the next generation is this: you don’t set the terms. For whatever reason my generation is rampant (I’m guilty as well) with young people that think they get to set the terms of negotiation. Honestly, who do we really think we are? Personally I think we see stars of our generation achieving success so early that we in turn think WE are special. That sounds a bit harsh, but the truth of it is when you think about what you’ve gotten away with in your lifetime thus far, wouldn’t you say you’ve been a bit bold? I know I have. I recall, and hopefully he won’t be upset with me sharing this, when my brother was attempting to start a new venture with my dad. My dad, being my dad, had a very pointed conversation with my brother about ownership before they even started. He asked my brother if any of his siblings would have any rights to ownership; my brother’s response was what anyone would have answered…No. He was doing all of the work; it was his idea, why in the world should his siblings reap the benefits? My dad’s response was simply, who is supplying the capital? My dad was, so he got to set the terms. If he wanted to make his portion of ownership a part of his estate, and the four of his children had equal claims to his estate then my brother should have been prepared to have three partners some way down the line.

I don’t share this story to embarrass or ridicule my brother; honestly I would have answered the question the exact same way. But my dad was right, it was his money and my brother had no entitlement to it, so my dad got to set the terms. I use this story to illustrate the point that even in a family that does not come from or have a lot of money, entitlement can still creep in. This story also is intended to illustrate that the person who is supplying the capital sets the terms, vary rarely is that the next generation.

The final point is this; if you want to work on placating your parent’s fears about you being entitled, just work. I mean really work hard. Work as if this is the job you were born to do. Don’t do it because they expect you to, and don’t do it because you know they want you to. Work hard and long because at the end of the day you’ll know you earned every dollar you made. You will remove any doubt about your intentions for the family business, or your intentions surrounding the money you may inherit. Work as if you don’t need what they are willing to give you because you would make it on your own. Don’t talk about how you’re not entitled; show them.

I’m hoping that at the end of this post I wasn’t too harsh, I can empathize with the feelings of entitlement because it’s something I battle against all the time. I challenge myself to go the extra mile always, and I never want to be handed anything, I want to earn it. My hope is that with this message you can see more clearly the fears your parents have, and how you can positively change their perspective with your own actions.

Best of Luck

 

Practical Summary

  • Merit is the basis for everything.
  • You don’t set the terms.
  • Work to placate your parent’s fears, by working.
Category: At Work, Family Dynamics, Legacy |
| February 4, 2015
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Siblings

How do we handle our siblings?

 

I have siblings, do you? I have three siblings, two older and one younger. It has been said of our sibling group that people have not met four human beings that came from the same parents that are more dissimilar. One way that we are all the same though is in our competitive nature, especially being competitive with one another. As it is with any family, when you have four kids close together in age they will tend to fight for attention. The scary part about kids fighting for attention is when it transforms from small children getting their parent’s attention in the kitchen to adult children getting their parent’s attention in the board room. The challenge I’d like to discuss here today is kids working for the family business and the impact that can have on sibling relationships. There are three points that come to mind when I think about siblings and family businesses, the first is different people get different things at different times, the second is merit is the only basis for employment and promotion, and finally be happy for one another.

The first thought about siblings is an age-old mantra from my father (that I hated growing up): “Different people get different things at different times.” I used to get so angry when I heard this, all I wanted was for my dad to admit it was unfair that my older siblings got to stay up later than me, or they got to go somewhere I didn’t. The fact is though this statement is not only critical for sibling relationships but for life in general. As human beings we’re constantly looking for greener pastures that always seem to be on our neighbors land, or we’re trying to keep up with the Joneses. This attitude can be incredibly dangerous when you encounter it in adult children in a family business environment. Parents don’t always make this better either, they try and split things equally which doesn’t always work and will almost always leave someone feeling jaded. So how do you combat this? You learn to internalize this mantra. Your time will come, maybe not at the same time and maybe not in the same area but your time for your thing will come.

Merit is the quality of being worthy or good so as to deserve praise or reward. Often times as human beings, and especially as siblings we can often doubt the rewards our counterparts receive. Did she really deserve that extra cookie mom just gave her, did her degree really prepare her to be hired at dad’s company, and did that client really mean she needed to be promoted to the VP of sales? Any of these thoughts sounding familiar yet? The point here is that merit is the only basis for any reward, and most importantly you are not the judge of who deserves anything. Learn to be happy for your siblings in their success, and sad with them in their failures. If you can internalize the mantra from earlier you will see how easy it is to be truly happy when your siblings are successful, or when they decide to go work for the family business.

I know at this point there are some people that are thinking that this is all so obvious, and how could anyone really be mad about their siblings working with their parents. Allow me for a moment to paint you a picture. Let’s say for example you have a family with four kids (no not mine) and you are kid #2. Your older brother and you both work in the company, your younger sisters both work elsewhere and have successful careers. You have worked tirelessly for the last four years to build your branch of the business and have succeeded at every turn while your brother has 18 appointments every couple days (he plays golf). One day your dad calls you and your brother into his office and says that he has begun his transition towards retirement; upon his retirement your younger sisters will both be financially compensated for 25% of the value of the company each while you and your brother will have equal parts ownership. Thankfully your dad has seen the success you’ve had and appoints you the future CEO of the family business.

This is a hypothetical scenario that actually happens all of the time, and a case could be made by any of the four kids that they were slighted in this arrangement. Rivalry between siblings surrounding money and business happens so fast it is scary, and the ferocity with which siblings interact when it’s family business is even scarier. If you are in a situation today where you can resent your siblings for something they’ve gotten, start now learning to internalize that earlier mantra. Learn to not judge their merit and truly and honestly learn to be happy for them.

Good Luck

Jonathan

 

Productive Summary

 

  • Internalize this: “Different people get different things at different times.”
  • Merit is the only basis for reward or employment; you are not the judge of merit.
  • Be truly and honestly happy for your siblings when they are successful, no matter what the circumstances.

 

 

Category: Family Dynamics |
| January 21, 2015
Comments Off on Parents in a new context

Parents in a new context

Viewing your parents through the world’s eyes

 

Do you remember when you were a kid and the way you looked at your parents? Your dad maybe was the strongest man in the world, invincible. Your mom could make anything delicious and no matter how badly you got hurt she made everything better. Slowly but surely as you grew up you may have become disillusioned to the mystique your parents possessed in your life. Perhaps even as you got older you began to grow annoyed at the little things your parents would or would not do.

Personally when I was a teenager I grew exhausted with my dad’s incessant life lessons and coaching when I didn’t ask for it. His apparent need to share the details of my life with random people as if he had no care for my feelings what so ever or the embarrassment he caused. As kids we laughed at him when we’d get lost in the car and he’d say: “we’re not lost we’re just meandering our way there”. Despite the perception that he had at home it never occurred to me to think about how he was perceived in his professional life.

Allow me for a moment to provide a little back-story. My dad is a former Presbyterian minister; he eventually transitioned from this line of work into an educational and consultative role where he worked with family businesses. When we were kids we were all for the most part too young to ever really see him preach, all we ever heard was that he was incredibly long winded. Only two of us ever really got to see him teach, my sister and I had the pleasure to take an elective course that he guest taught while we were in college.

I’ve said in a previous blog post that when I transitioned into this field the first articles I read my dad was cited eight different times. What I came to find out is that in my dad’s professional world he wasn’t a joke, or a family punch line. In fact people paid him for those life lessons I’d been receiving for free, and the stories he was telling about my life were a means to convey his personal trials as a parent to the families he worked with. In all honesty I never saw the man my dad truly was until I started working with him and watched him teach his graduate students. I sat in the back of a classroom captivated by the person in front of me, I couldn’t stop smiling. This wasn’t the same man at all that raised me, this man had a presence about him, this man was eloquent, and every word this man said was respected.

I saw my dad in a new context, I saw my dad on his stage and in his world. Some parents allow their kids to only see one side of them, some kids just get dad; sadly other kids only get the CEO or President. My challenge is to any kid that only ever saw dad, try as hard as you can to experience your parents in their other context. Revel in the experience and take in their presence as if you’re that little kid again and everything they do is magnificent and new. You may get the rare opportunity to see a wild animal in their natural habitat; it can be truly exhilarating.

I hope that I get the opportunity to continue doing this line of work forever. But if for some odd reason I was forced to change careers tomorrow, the few years that I’ve had to watch my dad work on his professional stage have been worth their weight in gold. I feel like I’ve gotten a glimpse into his life that was missing before this time. I cannot encourage you enough to open that door with an open mind and the same sense of wonderment you one possessed.

Enjoy

 

Productive Summary

 

  • Remember that how you see your mom or dad may not be how their professional world sees them.
  • Seek out opportunities to see them in another context, specifically as you may start working with them.
  • Enjoy the new side of them you see, get excited to alter the course of your relationship as you connect on a different level or in a new way
Category: At Work, Family Dynamics, Personal Identity |
| January 14, 2015
Comments Off on Degrees of Entrepreneurial Flexibility

Degrees of Entrepreneurial Flexibility

Balancing Personal and Professional Choices

 

After starting with decision and then exploring peership it was tough to decide which topic to cover next. I thought that if you have now decided to dive into the family business or even if you didn’t it might be a good idea to explore Degrees of Entrepreneurial Flexibility. This topic is actually one of my favorites because it is one that I’ve had many comical interactions with. I haven’t mentioned yet that my current business venture is not my first attempt to be an entrepreneur. At one time I attempted to start a construction management company; obviously I was not successful. At the outset of the project my dad was acting as an advisor and he was kind enough to have a very direct and honest conversation with me. The conversation we had was concerning degrees of entrepreneurial flexibility.

He said that if you dive into a new venture you have to consider how you limit your degrees of entrepreneurial flexibility. If you decided to get married, that’s a limitation. If you decide to buy a house, that’s a limitation. If you decide to get a dog, that’s a limitation. If you decide to have kids, that’s a limitation. He wasn’t saying don’t do any of those things just remember that each responsibility you add to your life is another thing you’re putting on the line with your new venture. You see at that point in my life I was a year out of college, I quickly paid of my debt, got engaged, got married, bought a car, bought a house, and got a dog. He was a dad and a smart business mind watching me make two paths of decisions and at some point I would come to a crossroad. In that moment I had to be prepared for the fact that what I wanted professionally may not be possible because of what I had decided personally and I might have to give something up. Thankfully that wasn’t my moment to be a wildly successful entrepreneur and I didn’t have to make that hard decision.

I’m not saying, like my dad wasn’t saying; don’t put your life on hold in order to take a leap for your career. The message here is to remember to enter each stage of life and each major decision with honest expectations. Imagine for a moment my business did start to take off, but the only place I could get the money to make that dream happen was to sell my house. If my wife isn’t okay with selling the house then I’ve got a pretty big problem don’t I? Monitoring your degrees of entrepreneurial flexibility in life will always be important, learn to weigh your options both personally and professionally. This might seem obvious to some but to others like me that believe they can always have their cake and eat it too it is an important life lesson.

 

Practical Summary

 

  • Listen to your elders with gracious humility, they have more years of experience than you could ever buy
  • Don’t be afraid to take a professional leap, just make sure your expectations are in line with your choices
Category: At Work, Personal Identity |
| January 7, 2015
Comments Off on Peership

Peership

Learning to engage your parents as a peer

The concept of Peership seems like gibberish and as I define it, it will seem unattainable to some readers. Peership is the relationship process where two individuals that are not technically peers (typically parents and children) learn to act and eventually function as peers. This concept to some seems totally foreign, you know where you stand with your parents and you are not a peer. Others are thinking, easy peasy, I got this, no problem, my parents are like my best friends and we communicate perfectly.

I can tell you from personal experience that for those who view this concept as unattainable there’s a solution for you, and for anyone that thinks they already have it together there’s always more to learn. Let me start first with those that think I’m bringing a concept from Mars; peership is hard to achieve and takes a lot of work. In fact in order to achieve a peership relationship you and your counterpart, have to both work as hard as you’ve worked towards anything else in your life. I have a peership relationship with my father, but it has taken us roughly 20 years to get there. My mother on the other hand thinks the concept of peership is “hogwash”; parents and children should always function as parents and children. She will never stop being my mother according to her. Her point is valid; at one level she will not stop being my mom. On another level though your parents should not treat you the same when you’re 5, 13, 18, 25, 30, 45, and 50 the relationship has to evolve and sometimes unfortunately they don’t.

I think in some ways my father and I working together has fast tracked our peership relationship, but even going into our professional agreement we were talking and treating one another with the mutual respect of peers. The conversations we’re capable of having as a father and son have baffled many people we’ve worked with. Even though we’ve managed to make this transition for the most part successfully we are still not perfect and require constant work on our relationship. This weekend for example we have a conversation scheduled to discuss his mentoring successes and failures towards me, our future working relationship, and future strategies for my business model and how it will impact his work. I know going into this conversation that we’ll walk out with a mutual understanding and a future game plan that we both agree on. I KNOW this, not I hope for this, or I wish for this, I KNOW 100% that our conversation will be a success for both of us. I know this because we have worked very hard on our relationship and our communication. He can give me feedback and stop me when I start to get overbearing and dogmatic. I can give him feedback and stop him when he gets dismissive and controlling. I can honestly say of the relationships where I don’t view myself as a peer, or I’m not viewed as a peer the only outcome I can predict is a negative one, other than that everything is an unknown.

The future posts here will describe in greater detail the ways that you achieve a peership relationship with the family that you work with. Practical application for today is simply this: if you want to be treated as a peer start acting like a peer.   Think of a hypothetical situation for a moment. If you’re working for your dad and you’re not being treated as a peer (according to you) have you done the things necessary to command the respect that comes with being a peer? Do you show up late? Do you dress professionally, and not professionally for Justin Bieber I mean professionally for Warren Buffet? Do you complain when you’re given dirty work? Do you ever volunteer to do the dirty work? The reason why I list these questions is not because I know that this is the work ethic that every parent values, I ask these questions because these are things that anyone would do to get ahead in their job if they weren’t working for their parents. I cannot change my mother’s view of peership, or force her to treat me as a peer. But if I still act like a 12 year old boy asking her to do my laundry, schedule appointments for me, and tell me how to do everything then what choice does she have but to treat me like a 12 year old boy. Instead I choose to act like a grown man, I accept her advice based upon years of life experience and include that data with all other data I have collected to make my decisions. I treat my mother’s advice as if I were receiving it from a more seasoned friend and give it no more power over my life than that.

I cannot emphasize enough that the concept of peership is critical to your success working with your parents or anyone that has had cause to view you not as a peer in the past. In order to reach a peership relationship with someone you both will have to work incredibly hard. The work starts with you though, and your commitment to act like a peer. If you don’t know what that looks like just ask the person who you’re trying to have that type of relationship with. Identify a peer in their life and ask what that person has done to earn the respect of your desired peer relationship. Try to avoid the question of “what do I have to do to be a peer”, I think you’ll find the response could be dismissive. Instead try and model your behavior after someone you’ve seen be successful at becoming a peer, the relationship will start to evolve on it’s own from there.

Best of Luck

 

Practical Summary

  • Peership takes a lot of work and effort from both parties
  • Peership requires constant communication and honesty to maintain a high level of mutual respect
  • If you want to be treated like a peer, start by acting like a peer
Category: Communication, Family Dynamics |
| December 31, 2014
Comments Off on Decision

Decision

Deciding to join the family business

The decision to enter your family business or industry can be incredibly difficult. No matter what you do everyone around you will have an opinion and very few will shy away from offering it. I remember at a very early age my mom saying to me: “I don’t want you to work for your dad, I want you to make your own career path.” I think she was afraid I would choose the easy route and my dad would just hand me an opportunity, I think she was and is afraid I will become just like him. Not that becoming my dad would be a bad thing, but he was always incredibly busy and he traveled a lot, that’s the nature of the beast when you’re a consultant. I think my mom also wanted her kids to make their own path, to find their own interests and pursue them whole-heartedly.

This decision is more complicated than simply choosing a career path. You have to weigh all of the concerns my mother was expressing in her fearful statement, as well as your own fears. What if I take over the business and totally screw it up? Will everyone around me look at me as the bosses kid, am I only here because of my last name? My dad is pretty tough on me when I don’t work for him, what in the world will it be like in the office? I want to be my own person and blaze my own trail, am I really doing that by just working in the family business? These questions and so many more run through your mind over and over and over again when you’re making this decision. At the same time there are so many positives to consider. I get to carry the torch after my dad moves on. I’m apart of a larger family legacy. I’ll finally understand what my dad does which is a large part of who he is (this one was huge for me). This business has given me so many opportunities in life, now I get to protect that legacy and pass it on to my kids. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the various nuances at play in this decision and you can already see that there’s more to it than anyone outside of you can understand. Most people around you will see that you went to work for dad as what you had to do, or what was easy to do. But there’s nothing that says you have to, and nothing easy about deciding to.

Personally I ran from the “family business” as often as I could, my actions didn’t show it but in my head I never wanted to do what my dad did. It seems looking back as if I was destined to be here. I started as a Psychology major (actually a perfect starting point for Family Business Consulting); then transferred to Entrepreneurship (again another great launching point). I worked as a property manager for a large real estate company for a while and tried starting my owner construction management company and when all else failed turned to good ole D. A. D. Even when I felt out of options I still never wanted to do this. I simply called one day asking if he knew of any job openings; he did. I won’t get into all of the gory details here, there are many more posts to come for that, but the transition wasn’t easy and even now years later it still isn’t easy. Remember, when I started out I still had my mother’s words ringing in my ear: “make your own way and don’t become your father.” While researching family businesses and family dynamics the first article I read quoted my dad 8 different times. How in the world was I supposed to make my own way following his legacy? Even if I wanted to, there was no way I could become my father.

Before I even started I let fear rule my decision. How can you ever expect to be good at anything if you’re being driven by fear? If my new opportunity weren’t better than my current situation (at that time) I probably would have never left. You cannot let fear rule your decision. You have to be all in or all out and ready to take the good with the bad. You also have to leave behind the idea that you will be or could be your father, mother, grandparent, uncle or whoever you are stepping in for. At the end of the day you have to still be you no matter what. If you can’t be, or people don’t want you to be then you already have your answer. Personally my mother was wrong, going into the family business has been one of my greatest decisions I’ve ever made and it’s something I’m truly good at; to miss this opportunity would have been a bad decision.

 

Practical Summary

  • Hear the fears of your parents, don’t own them
  • Don’t allow fear to rule your decision, learn to see opportunities and no pressure to make one choice vs. another
  • Joining the family business does not mean you won’t be making your own path, and won’t create your own legacy
Category: Family Dynamics, Personal Identity |
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