10/11/2017
Founder-Owner Damages Relationship with Daughter
Some families have highly enmeshed relationships between their family and their business: membership and status in the family is connected to how well one works and supports the family business. Gaining status in the family means gaining status in the business and vice versa. When such enmeshment exists, it can create serious relationship problems when new relationships are formed in the second generation.
In the Smith family, the parent-founders of the family printing company always expressed the value that whomever their four daughters married would be considered a full member of the family—just like a son. When the oldest daughter married, her husband was offered a job and a block of shares in the company. Two years later, the marriage ended in divorce, the son-in-law joined a competitor, and the family engaged in a lengthy legal battle to recover the outstanding shares. At that point, Mr. Smith approached his third daughter, who was planning to marry one of the company’s accountants. Mr. Smith told her that not only would he not be giving any shares to the new husband, but he wanted the couple to sign a prenuptial agreement withholding her shares from community property, and he would prefer it if the new son-in-law gave up employment with the company.
This caused a major conflict in the family, the cancellation of a formal family wedding, and deeply hurt feelings. Mr. Smith was feeding a lifelong sibling rivalry between the two sisters. The younger daughter had been proud that her husband and marriage were going to succeed where her older sister’s had failed, and that she would be proven more competent, loyal, and loving at last. Her father’s action felt like advance punishment to her; she had lost something due to her sister’s behavior. Her father, badly injured by the experience with his oldest daughter, could not understand how his younger daughter did not see the simple wisdom of his new policy.
What Mr. Smith should have done is separated the business relationships from the family relationships by not offering the eldest daughter’s new husband such a generous welcome into their family. He could have accepted her new husband as a "son" without having the business mixed into that relationship. Acceptance into their family should not have been tied to employment and ownership.
Second generation siblings should be able to marry and form nuclear families without the added pressure of considering how their choices may impact the success or failure of the family business. In other words, there should be a healthy disengagement between the family business and family relationships.
Conflicts that are simultaneously nested in family relationships and the family business can prove to be nearly fatal to both family and business relationships. This example illustrates a Founder-Owner who is too wrapped up in his own business and is unable to separate his business from his family.
Platinum helps family businesses resolve conflict, form healthy boundaries between their family relationships and their family business and assists with succession plans that help ensure family relationships survive in the near and long term. Contact me today, 952-259-3217 or bill.english@theplatinumgrp.com to learn how Platinum can assist your family business.
Bill English
