family business/family boundaries. A Powerpoint to share.
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family business/family boundaries. A Powerpoint to share.
- 1. Boundaries (and Boundary Issues in the Family Business Jane Adams Ph.D
- 2. Boundaries are the building blocks of all human relationships They separate us…and attach us.
- 3. The Human Dilemma: How to be both separate & connected
- 4. Family Boundaries keep Parents and Children Attached Until Children Can Separate and Care for Themselves
- 5. Boundaries determine how we interact with others. They change according to context, role & relationship.
- 6. Aspects of Boundaries Flexibility Permeability Complexity Open Closed
- 7. When Good Boundaries Go Bad……. The line between us disappears and we lose our individuality…. Or becomes so impenetrable we can’t connect at all.
- 8. Every family has a unique boundary style. enmeshed differentiated
- 9. When family boundaries dysfunction… TOO ENMESHED No one feels entitled to own thoughts,feelings One person speaks for everyone Individual privacy impossible Ambitions beyond family disloyal TOO DIFFERENTIATED No unifying hopes, dreams, values Little sense of belonging Feelings denied Appearances important Minimal communication
- 10. Every family business reflects the family’s boundary style.
- 11. Family Rules Thou Shalt Not Speak Unless Spoken To Thou Shalt Not Question Authority Thou Shalt Not Disparage Us to Others Thou Shalt Not Rock the Boat. Etcetera, etcetera
- 12. Roles Family
- 13. Boundaries in families and businesses determine… How responsibility and authority are allocated Whether initiative is rewarded or restricted How achievement is recognized With whom information is shared How participation is limited or encouraged How authentically “themselves” people are allowed to be How adaptive and responsive they are to inner and outer needs
- 14. But the needs of a BUSINESS and a FAMILY aren’t always the same.
- 15. In the BUSINESS In the FAMILY Needs of the family come first Decisions based on emotional issues Unity highest priority Family rules & roles apply Needs of the business come first Decisions based on rational facts Profitability highest priority Organizational principles apply
- 17. The Family Boundary Quiz
- 18. When Family Business Boundaries Are Too Weak….. Childhood roles, expectations, behavior are perpetuated in the FB Family baggage overburdens the FB FB becomes sole focus of family attention Family needs are routinely neglected Non-working family members treated like outsiders Founder’s dominating behavior poisons relationships FB used to placate or buy peace among kids Problems in both family and FB go unaddressed
- 19. The conflicting tugs of work and family life affect both…. …and change in one domain threatens the stability of the other.
- 21. “Fair” and “Equal” Mean Different Things in the Family and the Business
- 22. Dual and Plural Roles In Family Parent Child Sibling In-law Spouse Cousin In Business Owner Manager Employee Partner Shareholder Board Member
- 23. Family Past Influences Present Perspective
- 24. The Balancing Act Quiz: What Do You Believe?The Balancing Act Quiz: What Do You Believe? What Do YOU believe?
- 25. . Balances individual needs and business needs . Maintains personal and interpersonal privacy . Eliminates burdensome family baggage . Avoids domain “spillover” . Adjusts to change in either domain . Meets personal needs for attachment and connection . Resolves conflicts in appropriate domain . Promotes growth, stability and success of family business
- 26. .The business must be kept intact and handed over to kids. .Family members are paid equally. .Children work elsewhere before they enter the business. .Hiring is strictly according to business, not family needs. .Business roles are gender and birth-order neutral. .Best interests of business always take precedence over family’s desires. ,In-laws and spouses always consulted in business matters. .Oldest generation still has all the power. .Long-conflicted siblings work in or have ownership in business. .Business advisors are old family friends. .Everyone in FB, family or not, earns prevailing market wages and perks for work they perform.
- 27. The Elements of Boundary Intelligence
- 28. Using Boundary Intelligence to Solve a Problem Privacy Domain Spillover Family Baggage Balancing work & life Resolving conflict Coping with change
Editor's Notes
- Brainstorming – Different relationships you’re involved in – i.e., best friend, employer, employee, father, mother, founder, spouse, sibling, co-worker, supervisor, supervisee, child, board member. – Significant contact – Which roles do you have the most and least control over?
- Separate where you and I begin and end.
- Need for autonomy and intimacy
- Society’s solution to survival. Express roles and relationships within the family and between family & world.
- How safely, openly and honestly we interact -
- High flex – able to regulate Bstyle according to person, context and relationship. open and closed. Relies on cues from self, context, environment to open or close. Medium flex – adjusts Bs according to rules governing relationshiop.- relies on feedback from others Low flex – stuck in open or closed position. Permeable – how thick or thin Complexity – how many levels you connect on – I can relate to some parts of you but not all. I AM my relationships vs. I HAVE them
- When safety, honesty and openness are at risk.
- Shaped by interactions between parents and kids and among siblings, between family and outsiders, and also by Family Rules.
- Imagine boundaries in your family of origin. – are yours the same or reactive in your own family? As adults, we tend to seek out partners with similar levels of enmeshment or differentiated. In enmeshed family system parents project own feelings and desires on kids who must feel, act, think the same way or are considered disloyal. In second generation, must be equally passionate about business as founders.
- Either similarly controlling or overly accommodating. Too Strong a boundary between family and business may be so brittle and inflexible that severe stress in either domain causes a breakdown Too weak or enmeshed make it difficult to separate business from family, relate to each other appropriately in either or both domains, allow one to dominate in personal as well as professional life, make others feel like outsiders. Often reflection of dominating founders who make kids into non-persons or yes men and diminish kids confidence and decision making skills
- Transmitted explicitly and implicitly Reflect family’s beliefs, values, roles, obligations, identifications, expectations Constituted by gender, culture, generation, education, class, ethnicity
- Multiple identities in family – Thinker, doer, drama queen, enforcer, pleaser/placater. Crown prince/princess, truth teller, con artist, salesman, slacker, historian remembers everything, tattler, diplomat. Labels often stick in FB.
- Every FB has its own boundary style on its own continuum. In organizational dynamics it’s expressed as closed to open or punitive to empowered.
- A healthy family system promotes individual and collective growth, with leadership and decision making shifting according to situation. Effective business system operates differently and includes elements that arent part of family system – accountability, evanuation, formal system of reward and punishment. In business, its needs come first and personal needs second. In FB, reverse is often true. Business is vehicle to serve family’s needs, ie, find a daughter’s husband job where he cant do any damage, help grandchildren develop work ethic, fund projects with no benefit to FB except vanity or make-work, pay dividends to non-working family members when money should be reinvested in company.
- Giving control of FB to less qualified son rather than more qualified daughter, concentrating all authority in one person (founder or sib)rather than allowing others to make decisions
- Research into conflicting tugs of work and family indicates that spillover from work contributes more to prediction of family stress than spillover from family does for work and that work interferes with family life more often than family life does with work. In FB, the relationships are reversed – the effects of family stress reverberate thru the workplace and family life interferes with work more frequently than it does in non-family business.
- This quiz was designed to help you determine whether some relationships with family members are more or less enmeshed than they are with other family members. Only fill out the columns that pertain to those with whom you actively work in the family business.
- Childhood roles- Roles, beliefs, expectations and behaviors from childhood perpetuated in FB –elder son favored over more competent younger sib, problem child is problem adult in office, baby of family treated that way – or when founder’s expectations are unreasonable. (Kids cant work together so I’ll mediate until I retire and hope they can get it together) Baggage – Conflicts, favoritism, resentments, appeasement, triangulation, sibling rivalry, over-emotionality, a sense of entitlement. You always loved the other one best. If I give him a fancy title and enough money it’ll help his relationship with his wife. I’m just as entitled as they are to a piece of the business. You owe me. FB focus of attention – I did it all for you, to family, when you did it to please your father. When I needed him, the business needed him more. I matter, too, even if I don’t work in the FB. You’re more loyal to th company than to me. I never felt I really had a chance to do something different with my life. The autocrat at the breakfast table. The from-the-ground-up guy disappointed that his kids don’t have the same drive./persistence than he did. Who didn’t come to lose and who’s still competing with his chosen successors. Give them a job to keep them from asking me for money. Buy them whatever it takes to make them happy. Fire your key man because he and your daughter are divorcing. Noone wants to rock the boat even if it’s sinking. Turn a blind eye to family member who’s stealing. Addicted family member’s disease ignored. Relationships operate on surface level or wither away. Founder refuses to plan for succession or call in expert outside family when one is needed.
- Neither the family or the business is flexible enough to adapt to new circumstances, strong enough to survive hard times, divorce and remarriage, death or other crisis in family, departure of key individual, change in ownership or management, lawsuits, losses or other adverse circumstances.
- As parents you want to treat them fairly but often confuse it with equally. All deserve same opportunity to succeed in FB but if not equal in ability, circumstances, ambition or potential, don’t merit same promotions, salaries, titles. Fair in Family=spending and allocating its assets thoughtfully so your kids and their family’s needs, ambitions an d talents are honored and encourages in ways you and spouse agree they should be. Fair is handing over control gracefully. Stepping aside so successors you’ve groomed can take over and groom their own. Fair in FB is deciding on your new role and getting used to it – senior adviser, chair of board, director of family foundation.
- Both family and business roles mean multiple opportunities for boundary issues to arise. Conflicting loyalties – the family or the business? different individual goals – sell the biz or keep it going? or unresolved conflicts in one realm that seep into the other and continue to fester in both.
- Family history influences how family members are seen or treated in the business today, whether or not they’re accurate. Struggles for dominance, authority, attention,- competition among siblings – favoritism – hard to drop an outdated role or label , when parents, siblings and even long-time employees view you that way. Hard for parent to acknowledge they may not know child as he is today rather than as he was, or that they have talents or skills in business that werent evident in family. In enmeshed families boundary between then and now is barely discernible. If your perspective on your grown kids or siblings, your sense of responsibilty for them, and the boundaries of your relationships with them havent changed to accommodate the adults they’ve become rather than the chuildren they were, your family may be falling apart. And if they work with or for you and it hasn’t changed there either, the FB may face the same bleak future..
- The purpose of this quiz is to help you gauge how thin or permeable the boundaries are between your personal life and your family business. Is the business always or usually the uninvited guest on family occasions or the family dynamics always an issue in the company? Burnout, stress and overload are the result of family business boundaries that are unclear both at home and at work.
- The key elements of any boundary, especially the family business boundary, are that it promotes safety, honesty and openness.
- In creating a statement of your family business boundaries, be aware of beliefs or behaviors that may promote, inhibit or hinder effective functioning and good relationships in both the family and the business.
- Boundary intelligence is a capacity we all have, but don’t often exercise, especially with our closest colleagues and family members. Boundary invasions or trespasses are a fact of family life, but they don’t have to be a fact of life in a family business. Applying boundary intelligence to situations that engender a feeling that either a family or a business boundary has been ignored requires awareness that that’s what’s happening; forming an intention of what you want to accomplish by calling it to other’s attention; taking an action to stop it from happening again; and resolving conflict without burdening or damaging the relationship.
- Here are six areas that encompass most boundary issues in the family business. Break into groups by counting from 1 to 6 – all the 1’s in one group, 2’s in another, etc. Take one of these areas and create a scenario to illustrate it. For example, privacy: A family member has a substance abuse problem that affects the FB . How is it addressed? Domain spillover - The FB is the primary topic at family events. Family baggage – sibling rivalry is affecting the business. Resolving conflict – keeping the family out of a business problem and/or keeping the business out of a family problem. Balancing work and life - Family demands interfere with the business, or vice versa. Take 15 minutes to create the scenario and address it by using the elements of boundary intelligence. Have one person speak for your group and report the solution. Is there a “take-away” from this exercise that can help you frame a workable boundary statement for your family business?