Common Causes of Family Business Conflict & What to Do About Them.
Family Business Mediation Video No 42. Family Values.
By Jon Kenfield. Solutionist.
• Values are what drive us to do what we do, the way we do it.
• Family values are the values honoured and shared by a family, and taken into their business.
• Even highly conflicted families usually agree on most of their important values. This often helps to re-humanise everyone in family mediations – they’re actually all about the same things.
• When values are in conflict people are in conflict. It means they’re not on the same page, and are unlikely to get there if the differences are fundamental.
Solution
• Values differences are almost impossible to reconcile because people are being driven by fundamentally different things.
• If they’re working together in a family business, unless differences can be reconciled through skilled mediation, the best thing is probably separation – to preserve the family by avoiding making the business a battleground.