As a striving entrepreneur, no word is more common to you than “challenges.” However, if you own a family business, you may face unique conflicts that may even turn into threats. If not controlled quickly, these threats can even create a disaster for your business.
The good news is that you can get rid of family business conflicts by devising and implementing the right strategies.
Not sure which conflicts may harm your business the most and how to avoid them right from the beginning?
Let’s explore each one in detail.
- Personal Rivalries Can Be Dangerous
Ever heard how family feuding can ruin your business relationships? If it exists within your organization, you’re probably unable to create a fine line between your personal and professional relationships. For instance, if you’re not compatible with a cousin, there are chances that you’ll end up breaking a promising business deal in an instance.
Does this mean losing a business opportunity of thousands of dollars? Sadly, yes.
How to avoid this conflict: While going to work, leave personal rivalries at home. A family business will prosper only if you let go of personal egos and respect others’ opinions at the workplace
- Working Remotely Can Create More Hurdles
You’ve just started out, it’s a normal phenomenon that you lack the capital to invest in setting up a full-fledged office. Instead, you’ve managed to find a solution: a home office! But will remote work do justice to your family business?
What if your family members just don’t have that mindset to work from home? And even if they do, they may find it difficult to deliver tasks within the specified deadlines because the concept of working remotely is still new to them. This is what may hinder performance. Besides, this barrier may increase delays in task submissions, hence directly affecting business revenue.
How to avoid this conflict: Besides communicating with them, know how to manage your team remotely. Introduce a few remote working tools such as Clockspot so you can easily track each employee’s time and prepare payrolls accordingly.
- Favoring a Family Member Diminishes The Outside Talent
A family business has its delicacies. Since you’re the boss, you’re expected to create and maintain a balance for all employees (this means not only the family members but the outsiders as well).
Let’s take this case in point: a family member is in dire need of a salary increment but an outsider employee deserves it the most because his abilities and merits are better than that of the family employee.
If you accept the salary increment request of the family employee just because you share a familial relationship with him, the outsider employee will immediately form a negative opinion about your company. This is when things will go against you.
How to avoid this conflict: Form a company culture that offers equality to all employees. To know how, visit Weiss-Aug.com and see how this company creates an environment by retaining the staff members who possess technical expertise in carrying out manufacturing tasks.
- Emotions Do Interfere With A Family Business
Emotional decisions are way more intense than business decisions. But the truth is that nothing can be more destructive than giving your emotions the empowerment to run the family business.
Emotions may ruin a lot of things in business. For instance, it’s difficult to provide a negative feedback to a family employee. And even when you prepare yourself to do so, you’ll keep worrying, “What will he feel about this feedback? Oh…how can I hurt him with this negative feedback?”
Such resistance may often cause biases towards family employees.
How to avoid this conflict: While you’ll still be the one watching everyone deliver their assigned tasks appropriately, you can designate an outsider to provide feedback to all employees. This way, you’ll be able to let go of your emotions. Plus, the family employees will not create issues even if they receive a negative feedback because they’ll be directly receiving it from an outsider.
