Cooling Down Conflict in Your Family Business

Being in business with your family can bring lots of rewards, including financial security and personal pleasure in working with people you know well and love. But it can also be the source of misunderstanding, antagonism and painful conflict. The show looks at common causes of conflict in family businesses and how that conflict can be resolved and even prevented.

Join us as we talk with Jim Lea , a writer, speaker and advisor on family owned and closely held business. He’s the author of Keeping It In the Family: Successful Succession of the Family Business, a syndicated print and online family business columnist, and author of numerous articles. Jim advises family owned companies in the United States and other countries on human performance and relationships issues in management, including identifying, understanding and resolving causes of conflict. He is frequently invited to speak to trade and business groups. He’s a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Listener Assignment

With your business partner, sit down and discuss any one of the following questions:

1. What really important family and business values are being affected by the conflict?

2.  What's the real cause of the conflict? (Be honest. Drill down past the obvious.)

3.  What's the cost of continuing the conflict? Cost to the business?  Cost to the family?  Long term cost?

4.  What's the first step we can take toward healing and reconciliation and who's big enough and wise enough to take it?