Healthy disagreements

A research study tests whether open conflict undermines teamwork and spoils the fun in a family business.

By Kenneth Kaye and Catherine McCarthy

Problems among people who work together don't go away when ignored or sidestepped, especially when those people are linked by bonds of kinship, affection, and economic incentive. Nor do the problems just continue to simmer. As when you put a lid on a simmering pot, the confused medley of grievances, anger, and hurt feelings within tend to boil up and scald somebody.

At least that is what we psychologists believe. What actually happens in business-owning families?

In the 1994 Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance study of 1,000 family owned companies in the United States, 54 percent of respondents said they rarely or almost never have conflicts among family members. However, these findings may be deceptive. The experience of conflict may depend upon whom you ask in the family. For example, members of the younger generation may perceive great tension while their parents report that the family is free of conflict.

Conflict is not always overt. It may be a standoff between two or more family members, or a gridlock caused by a lack of communication, or just the stifling unhappiness felt by one family member whose grievances remain unexpressed. We know that many family firms prefer to avoid open conflict or deny that it exists in order to prevent explosions. But is avoiding conflict a mistake, or is it the only way to maintain teamwork? We conducted a research project to find out.

With the collaboration of eight other established consultants, we interviewed 65 members of 31 family businesses from several areas of the United States (48 men and 17 women). The majority of the sample were college-educated men. Most were in their 30s and members of the second generation; the parents of almost half of them were already retired or semiretired from their family firms. Forty-eight percent of the firms were in the manufacturing sector and 38 percent in the service sector. Every business had been in the family for at least two generations, and most employed three or four family members at the time of the interview.

We asked the consultants to refer two different types of firms for the study. The first group were families that they had concluded have adequate communication, trust, and teamwork. These families, in their opinion, were able to resolve conflicts constructively, discuss new information freely, make adaptive decisions, and plan for the future. The other group consisted of families with whom the consultants had run into serious, business-endangering, family-endangering conflict.

We were not to be told which families were which until the interviews were completed and all the data from the study were in. In almost all cases we were able to interview at least two members of each family, by telephone. The participants were asked to rate their degree of agreement, on a scale of 1 to 4, with statements about sibling rivalry (such as, "My siblings and I compete for our parents' attention or juggle for position or power in the family or the business") and statements about trust ("I feel that my siblings are generally honest with me regarding family and business matters").

Second, we sent them two standardized questionnaires to complete: the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES) and the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory (ROCI).

Through a similar rating system, FACES assesses people's perspectives on their family's adaptability (for example, "Different people act as leaders in our family") and their family's cohesiveness (for example, "Family members like to spend free time with each other"). By asking them to answer each question once for their ideal family and again for their actual family, this instrument provides a measure of the respondents' level of satisfaction with their families: The closer those sets of scores are, presumably, the greater their satisfaction with their family. The further apart the two scores, the lower their satisfaction.

The ROCI is designed to assess people's perceptions of their own conflict management strategies in organizational and social settings. It asks them to rate how often they utilized four styles of handling interpersonal conflict: avoidance (for example, "I avoid an encounter with my child/sibling/parent"); compromise ("I try to find a middle course to resolve an impasse"); domination ("I use my authority to make a decision in my favor"); and obliging accommodation ("I generally try to satisfy the needs of my child/sibling/parent").

Those respondents who said their preferred mode of dealing with problems was to avoid confrontation were the very ones whose consultants had found them (and, by and large, left them) locked in chronic, unhealthy combat. As one consultant said: "The parents' unwillingness or inability to address the intense competition between their sons left me feeling like my hands were tied."

In addition, those individuals who avoided conflict scored significantly lower on family satisfaction, and also reported significantly more sibling rivalry and significantly less mutual trust among family members.

One participant in the study reported: "Most of the fights between my older brother and father always end up the same way: Both of them retreat to their own corners and avoid the other. It makes it impossible to get anything done in the business because they stop communicating and you can cut the tension around here with a knife." Another participant stated, "Nothing makes you question your trust of someone more than when you feel like they are sidestepping difficult or sensitive issues. It makes you wonder whose side they are on."

To summarize our results: Respondents who were avoiding conflict more, enjoyed their involvement in the family business less. We didn't find out how many of those who said they faced conflict "rarely" or "almost never" were really in denial. But the evidence does support the point that people who think conflict-avoidance is the best policy in a family business are mistaken. The moral: Learn to address conflict, welcome it, use it as an opportunity to grow. Remember that two (or more) heads are better than one only if they can disagree.

 

Kenneth Kaye of Kenneth Kaye & Associates in Chicago specializes in conflict resolution for business owners. He is the author of "Family Rules" (St. Martins, 1990) and "Workplace Wars and How to End Them: Turning Personal Conflict into Productive Teamwork" (Arnacom,1994).

 

Catherine McCarthy is a consultant with Kenneth Kaye & Associates. She did her doctoral research on sibling relations in family firms. The consultants who collaborated with this study were John Atkinson, Chris Eckrich, Dean Fowler, Mike Henning, Jane Hilburt-Davis, Cindy lannarelli, Stephen McClure, and Joe Paul.