In my last Blogpost named the Elephant in the Room in Family Business I referred to the common occurrence in family businesses wherein the evident presence of personal issues and feelings, or possibly hidden agendas in the boardroom are ignored in an attempt to avoid conflict.
The natural consequence of ignoring the elephant in the room is a building feeling of severe frustration especially for those members who feel they are on the suffering end of whatever issue it is that is being deliberately avoided to stay away from confrontation.
Well the bad news is – ignoring the elephant in the room won’t make it disappear, it will only make it worse and transform it into something even more detrimental to the business.
What typically follows a period of ignoring the elephant in the room is what i refer to as the boardroom “blame game” , that situation where family members are constantly on the lookout for mistakes of others in order to be able to point fingers to try and bring to light matters that nobody has the courage to approach. Once one member starts the blame game it will totally spiral out of control until what happens next is surreal – all sorts of excuses will start to be found by everybody not to meet in the first place.
It is not uncommon that I am called to assist a particular business for me to learn that there have been no board meetings or general meetings sometimes even for years. Obviously, I never get told that these don’t take place because everyone finds them unbearable but most often because “we meet every day anyway, so you know, we discuss matters on the job”. That is obviously pure nonsense because only urgent matters are discussed on the job. This automatically excludes any form of discussion on the important matters, especially those external to the business, such as market dynamics, changing industry structures, competition that is eating away our market share and others.
With avoidance comes further pain and frustration at not being able to bring out those feeling that are causing the frustration, and a vicious circle ensues. When someone is on the edge of eruption, the natural reaction is one of fight or flight, but in business both bring disaster.
Logically, character and personality play a part too, some are extroverts, others keep it inside until they erupt.
The good news is that the vicious circle is quite easily reversed, as long as the people involved are willing to accept a few compromises. The biggest enabler is a deliberate discussion about feelings. This seems to be quite a sore topic in boardrooms. We are at work, we should discuss the work issues not ‘feelings’. “Feelings are discussed with a therapist”, is a common reaction. Yet, we need to accept that a peculiarity of family business is the inevitable intertwining of feeling with work issues. Frustration is a feeling and must be addressed as such. The improvement in communication and performance that can be achieved through a few moderated sessions of candid talk is unmeasurable. The advantage of having an external advisor conducting the meetings is that through the experience gained over numerous sessions the advisor can lead the discussion where most desirable, especially away from the sore family stories.
And for the business leader? How does he overcome the loneliness that comes with the post? Stay with us for a blogpost on the topic in the coming days.
