Observations
Business families are notorious for taking shortcuts and following paths of least resistance when it comes to recognising and dealing with unpleasant tensions between family members. The unconscious driver is: “If we don’t talk about it, maybe it will go away.”
But in business families, problems don’t disappear. They go underground to ferment, strengthen, and bide their time — waiting only for a catalyst to burst back onto the scene.
Family relationships evolve over lifetimes and generations to be layered with promises and expectations, positive and negative emotions, warm and deadly relationships, trust and mistrust, the family’s story, and so many other factors. Add in a family business with all its temptations, pressures, and rewards, and you have a potent brew.
It’s no wonder that wilful avoidance and denial leads to a slow poisoning of the family — which often leaches into the family’s business — and thereby qualifies as a common cause of conflict in family business.
Avoidance
Avoidance is knowing there’s some sort of issue or problem, and steering around it rather than dealing with it.
It happens when family members sense there’s something wrong, and choose not to address it by changing the subject, postponing discussions, or quietly working around the issue — or the person.
Avoidance requires an active decision to not engage with the problem. It often shows up as:
- Steering meetings away from sensitive topics: “Let’s not do succession stuff today…”
- Delaying performance conversations because they may get uncomfortable
- Avoiding one-on-one conversations with particular relatives
- Excluding topics from agendas because “it will only make things worse”
- Telling everyone “it’s fine” when it clearly isn’t
Avoidance is driven by fear. Fear of conflict, fear of hurting someone, fear of consequences, fear of emotional backlash. Ironically, avoiding these conversations almost guarantees things will get worse.
Denial
Denial happens whenever a family member refuses to recognise or acknowledge that a problem exists. They may minimise and rationalise it away so convincingly that they start believing their own story.
Denial is a form of emotional self-protection, often disguised as blind optimism or “logic”, but to outsiders it often looks like ostrich behaviour.
Common forms include:
- Minimising seriousness: “It’s just a small disagreement — nothing to worry about.”
- Discounting patterns: “Yes, we had a blow-up at Christmas, but that always happens.”
- Reframing structural issues as personal issues (or vice versa): “It’s not ownership or roles — it’s just personality.”
- Dodging emotion by calling it business logic: “I’m not angry — I’m just concerned about strategy.”
- Defending outdated practices: “We don’t need governance systems. We’ve always trusted each other.”
- Believing time will fix it: “Give it a few months and everyone will calm down.”
Denial denies the family the opportunity to fix things because, in the mind of the denier, there’s “nothing wrong.” Meanwhile everyone else is forced to live with the consequences.
Consequences of avoidance and denial
1) Small issues become symbolic
When families avoid uncomfortable conversations, trivial issues start carrying heavy emotional weight.
A son’s consistent lateness becomes “he doesn’t respect me as a boss or as a father.”
A daughter not joining the business becomes “she doesn’t care about what I built.”
A father’s reluctance to delegate becomes “he’s never believed I’m good enough.”
When real concerns don’t have an outlet, they get projected onto normal behaviours. Then they stop being small — because they’ve become symbolic of something much larger.
2) Unspoken expectations create parallel universes
When families avoid the hard work of building shared truths, people invent their own truths to fill the certainty gap.
Common assumptions sound like:
- “Everyone knows I’ve been underpaid for decades — that’s my sweat equity.”
- “Dad knows everyone expects him to retire before 75.”
- “Everyone understands dividends will stay low because we need to reinvest.”
In the absence of open forums where these expectations are tested, they calcify into “facts” in people’s minds. When reality contradicts them, shock becomes anger, and anger becomes conflict.
3) Issues don’t vanish — they gather force
Avoided issues don’t dissolve. They mature. They quietly build pressure until an external trigger sets them off: a health crisis, a death, a new spouse, a sale opportunity, a succession deadline, a major financial downturn, or a new generation finally refusing to comply.
This is why avoidance is not peacekeeping. It’s conflict postponement.
4) Emotional leakage from family to business
Unresolved tension doesn’t stay private when there’s a business in the mix. The business gets weaponised into a forum for playing out personal angst, especially between siblings and generations.
It surfaces as:
- “Strategic disagreements” that feel personal
- “Performance concerns” that are really old resentments
- “Not ready” succession excuses that conceal fear and control
- Passive resistance, sabotage, faction formation, corridor conversations after meetings
Staff get pulled into family cliques and power plays. Their loyalties get tested. Sometimes they are forced into the role of referee — which is damaging to culture, stability, and trust.
5) Business structures amplify personal weaknesses
Family businesses often distribute power unevenly and sometimes irrationally. Age, ownership, leadership status, family influence, unearned roles, emotional dependency, and financial dependency can combine into a volatile mix.
Avoidance and denial intensify this volatility by:
- Encouraging entitlement in some individuals
- Creating exclusion and resentment in others
- Failing to address the fears of incoming and outgoing leaders
- Allowing over-dependency on elders to continue unchecked
Eventually, the emotional system overwhelms rational business decision-making.
Why do families avoid or deny problems?
It’s rarely laziness. It’s usually a lack of courage to do what’s right — and a form of self-protection dressed up as “keeping the peace.”
Families avoid hard conversations because they fear they will:
- Hurt people they love
- Rock the boat (at least it’s upright for now)
- Trigger old memories and war wounds
- Hear something painful they’d rather not confirm
- Damage the family or the business
Ironically, instead of preserving harmony, avoidance and denial slowly destroy it.
Strategies and solutions
Avoidance and denial are cultural outcomes. They reflect how the family actually behaves, not how it prefers to describe itself. Changing that culture is hard — especially when people fear they won’t look good once the truth is spoken aloud.
The goal is not to create conflict. The goal is to create enough clarity, structure, and safety that conflict doesn’t need to erupt in order for truth to be heard.
1) Build a safe culture for constructive communication
To speak honestly, people need psychological safety. They need explicit permission to discuss what matters, using simple meeting rules that protect respect.
Constructive communication supports planning, collaborative problem-solving, and relationship repair. It is a foundation skill for business family continuity.
2) Create agreements, not assumptions
Written agreements eliminate the “I thought…” syndrome and replace it with clear commitments and rules.
Topics that benefit from explicit agreements include:
- Roles and responsibilities (family and business)
- Entry and exit criteria
- Employment expectations and performance requirements
- Remuneration and benefits policies
- Decision-making rights and processes
- Ownership expectations
- Succession plans
- Dividend distribution policies
The workshop process used to create the agreements is as valuable as the document itself, because it forces alignment through discussion.
3) Establish governance bodies early
Family governance is not bureaucracy. It’s professionalisation. It creates clarity over plans and reduces the risk of conflict.
Effective structures often include:
- A Family Council for family issues (relationships, education, shared values, investments, next generation development)
- A Family Forum for broader family dialogue
- An Advisory Board to add objectivity and mentor family members (especially through external advisers)
Governance also requires capability: council members need the skills to develop, implement, and enforce decisions.
4) Teach your children well
Families who take emotional intelligence seriously teach EQ early. When emotional literacy is normalised, avoidance and denial have less room to take root as the family culture.
5) Role clarity reduces fear
Clear roles, authority, and accountability reduce anxiety and confusion. When people know who decides what, who is responsible, and how issues are raised, there is less need to avoid difficult subjects.
6) Be proactive, not reactive
Advisers are most valuable when they help families avoid trouble, not just fight fires.
Strong family business advisers can:
- Facilitate family meetings and planning
- Establish governance structures and train people to operate them
- Create realistic succession pathways
- Support next generation development
- Defuse tensions before they harden into conflict
Ideally, advisers act as architects, not firefighters.
Taken from the up coming book:
Making Sense of “Family Business”
(60 Common Causes of Family Business Conflict, and how to deal with them)
