Observations
Every family has its own culture – which determines how it rolls. Some family cultures are based on strongly traditional religious and/or ethnic guidelines and directives, while others are more modern and laissez-faire. All family cultures exert powerful influences on personal values, expectations and behaviours – in the family, and often in its business activities.
By definition, an ethnically-based culture is grounded in historic traditions imported from one of many diverse geographic locations. As a result they’re anchored in and by the past – from other times and places. They’ve usually been created, and have evolved, under very different living and working conditions to those prevailing in Australia.
These cultures make little sense, and often have even less appeal, to “new Australians” who didn’t grow up in their family’s home of origin environment, and who have strong desires to associate with, and assimilate into, the predominant socio-economic culture of their new world. This applies to many first and second generation migrant families – whose parents’ childhoods and early adult lives were shaped by religious education and ethnic practices that contrast strongly with the diversified and relaxed environments their children experience, in modern Australia.
Family culture describes how things are actually done in a family unit, mainly as a result of individual and collective thought processes and behaviours resulting from character and personality traits influenced by social and environmental conditioning, and shaped by religious, educational, and ethnic norms.
The profound cultural divides that arise between adjacent generations in a Business Family who’s history spans very different geographic locations, with sharply contrasting behavioural norms and expectations, is a common cause of conflict in Family Business.
When “old-school”, ethnically influenced decision-making produces business decisions that are seriously out of step with “modern/normal/rational” commercial thinking – over anything from business leadership, to succession planning, to treatment of family members, to staff relations and business investment – cultural differences feed generational tensions, to create frictions that readily turn into conflicts. The human and commercial consequences can be quite extreme.
Solution
Acknowledge: the root causes of the family’s cultural differences. In all likelihood, nobody started out intending to do anything malicious to anybody else. Adopting this mindset makes constructive discussion a possibility.
Validate: the root cause of the conflict lies in objective reality, rather than personal bloody mindedness: different generations of the family come from vastly different backgrounds which, inevitably, produced huge differences in personal development, world views, belief systems, thought processes, and individual values. Accepting that the conflict is the result of circumstances, rather than a personal attack, makes constructive discussion a more real possibility.
Accept: the cultural programming that drives a person to think and/or behave in a certain way (eg: my oldest son must inherit my business), is so deeply embedded in their psyche it renders them incapable of participating in “rational negotiation”. The instrument they’re playing can only produce one tune.
So:
Empathise: when other family members are hearing emotionally, rather than rationally, because they’re prisoners of their own cultural programming, you need to complete an emotional conversation (to understand and respond to where they’re coming from) before commencing the rational conversation you’ll eventually need to have with them to achieve your objectives. Accept their position on the core issue, as a working proposition, and work out how to change their perspective(s) so you can reach agreement without requiring them to surrender a “baked in” position. In psych terms this means start with lashings of empathy before turning up the screws of your assertiveness.
Invent: after reconciling yourself to provisional acceptance (suspending your disagreement) over the core stuck issue (as presented), develop an alternative work-around that allows everyone to: (a) save face, and (b) achieve a mutually acceptable, alternative solution that delivers what everyone needs, and thinks they want. This uses understandings developed during the empathising process to create “yessable” options (ie: options others can say “yes” to).
Agree: obtain express, and preferably written confirmation of everyone’s agreement to the resolution of whatever it was that was causing conflict in the first place. Given this is a family thing, even a formal deed, signed, sealed and delivered, shouldn’t be considered bulletproof, but it’s the best you’re likely to get and it will be honoured if you’ve effectively addressed core emotional, as well as rational commercial, needs.
Nail It Down: activate the agreed actions (ie: get the process started) to maximise the likelihood of it being fully executed.
Breathe! Get ready for the next clash. You know it will happen.