Edition 508 – Sibling Rivalry

If you have children, of any age, do any of these sound familiar?

“Stop annoying me”

“He’s teasing me”

“Don’t touch me”

“Stop telling me what to do”

I can certainly relate to them. Our two sons were like that, from time to time, when growing up. Occasionally, there’d be a rumble involved, mostly out of view of either parent. However, generally, they always got on well with each other, even though they’re completely different personalities.

I can further relate to them in another forum.  I’ve overhead them, in recent months, inside a family business that I’m working with. Two adult children, employed by the family business, have brought their nitpicking tendencies from the home environment into the workplace. And, that’s not good.

It creates frustration for the owners, their parents? They’re stuck in that twilight zone of being parents, and being employers, towards their own children.

It further creates frustration for other members of staff, all of whom are not related to the family. They’re not only frustrated with the, frankly, immaturity of the situation, but also the inaction of the owners of the business, to deal with it.

The biggest issue that I see, when I’ve observed this inside a business in the past, is that behaviour can scuttle a family business, because:

1. Parents don’t deal with the adult children in the workplace as employees, but as children (and not even adult ones).
2. Co-workers see a different way in which related employees are treated compared to the way non-family employees are treated.
3. It highlights the inability of parents to “step-up” into the role of business owner for one simple reason – would they accept similar behaviour, between two unrelated employees?
4. It shows why some younger family members need to venture elsewhere in the workforce, to see what it’s like to learn from, and live inside, another business.
5. Ultimately, it leads to non-family employees leaving, for they get caught up in the nitpicking that is sibling rivalry.

In this situation, I’ve offered to step in and have a word with each sibling, both separately, and together. For the moment, the owners of the business have chosen not to take me up on that offer. Time will tell, whether that changes. My hope is they don’t allow the situation to deteriorate to the point where an unrelated staff member, that is a valued employee, leaves, because they no longer want to deal with the BS of it all.

When you employ your adult children, leave your parenting techniques at the door, and deal with them, as you would any other staff member, both in a positive sense and a negative sense. Anything different, and you could not just scuttle the family business, but irreversibly damage your relationship with your own child.

This Week’s Tip

“It’s quite astounding, how late in life, some of these sibling rivalries occur inside of family business, and the detrimental effect it has on the success, or otherwise, of it.”