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Thursday, 04 April 2013 13:39 |
In families and in business, emotions can run high. Here's how you can cope.
By Scott Friedman and Eliza Friedman
Many companies in the automotive aftermarket are family owned businesses. Unfortunately, interfamily conflict and financial loss cause nine out of 10 family businesses to fail before making it to the third generation. This continually high failure rate suggests the need for a revised approach to achieving success within a family business.
Combining my nearly thirty years of family businesses advising experience with insights from positive psychology and evolutionary biology, I have developed an approach that could help ensure the success of family businesses from generation to generation. This article summarizes the approach and provides seven basic suggestions for implementation in your own family business. These planning strategies are discussed in more detail in Scott's upcoming book, Family Business and Positive Psychology: Planning & Counseling for Lawyers and Business Professionals, that will be released in 2013.
Evolution and its Impact on Family Business
The human brain evolved over thousands of years to react in fight-or-flight mode and aid our ancient ancestors in catching predatory animals and surviving dangerous situations. Despite all these years of evolution, our brains remain hardwired to react in fight-or-flight mode when faced with modern day forms of fear.
Unfortunately, family businesses often struggle because of their inability to efficiently manage these modern day forms of fear, including the fear of losing control of an opportunity, the fear of not making as much money as someone else, or the fear of not getting enough credit. In response to these (and other) fears, biology causes family members to experience stress, increased heart rate, rising blood pressure, and accelerated breathing in response to these perceived fears.
These fears and other innate biological instincts can cause frustration and tension between family members, ultimately destroying important familial relationships that are crucial to the success of a family business.
Positive Psychology and its Impact on Family Business
Studies in the field of positive psychology demonstrate a strong correlation between positive workplace culture and the success of an organization. These studies suggest the importance of seven strategies for combating the negative impact out evolutionary biology has on successful family business functioning.
1. Focus on Creating a Positive Culture
Studies show that employees perform better then they feel appreciated, motivated, and engaged. Family businesses can work to create a positive work culture by implementing policies that encourage respect, kindness, and compassion.
2. Promote “Fit” Over “Convenience”
Many family members work in their family business because of convenience and status. However, these positions may not suit the individual’s passions and strengths. Employment should be based on the existence of a job opening and a good fit.
3. Improve Communications
Effective communication is often challenging because we overestimate our own communication skills and misinterpret those of others. Accordingly, family businesses would benefit from improving traditional communication strategies such as active listening, maintaining eye during conversation, speaking respectfully, and repeating what was said to ensure understanding.
4. Establish and Commit to Core Principles
Family businesses would benefit from clarifying to all members a vision statement, mission statement, and statement of core values. This ensures that family members follow agreed upon rules and minimizes room for conflict.
5. Establish Governance Structures
Because humans are biologically inclined to be irrational, overconfident, and make snap decisions, family businesses would benefit from having non-family members serve as board members and advisors. Because of their position outside the family they are inherently less biased and can offer helpful perspective and feedback about important decisions.
6. Preempt Conflict
Instead of focusing on resolving conflict after it has happened, family businesses would benefit from preventing conflict from spiraling out of control. Examples include seeking advice from a respected family elder or a non-family board of directors.
7. Focus on Holistic Planning
All of these suggestions are intended to compliment traditional family business succession planning strategies. Instead of replacing traditional methods, there is an exciting opportunity to combine findings of positive psychology with traditional methods to optimize family business success.
Studies have shown that businesses are more likely to prosper when colleagues work collaboratively in a positive environment. The high failure rate of family businesses suggests that a new approach to working with these entities is necessary to ensure family business success. A positive culture, created using insights from positive psychology, creates family businesses more likely to succeed from generation to generation.
Scott Friedman is the Managing Partner at Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman LLP in Buffalo, New York. He consults with family businesses throughout North America.
Eliza Friedman, a law student at SUNY Buffalo Law School, is the Executive Articles Editor of the Buffalo Intellectual Property Law Journal.
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Last Updated on Thursday, 04 April 2013 14:09 |
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Monday, 01 April 2013 15:06 |
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The following article is an op-ed written in response to "Supporting the economy means supporting the trades," an op-ed by Ron Johnson, Chair of the Ontario College of Trades, that appeared in early March. You can see the original article at this link.
By Frank Notte, Director of Government Relations at the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association
Toronto, Ontario -- April 1, 2013 -- Ontario is facing a huge skilled labour shortage, with an estimated 100,000 new tradespeople needed in the next ten years. It is critical that we work to expand Ontario’s skilled labour force to fill that need. But I take issue with the assertion that we need to build a massive new bureaucracy to do it.
The College of Trades is Ontario’s newest bureaucracy that the government claims will promote skilled trades and increase consumer protection. In order to do so, the Ontario government is planning to tax both tradespeople and employers hundreds of dollars a year in “membership fees.” Does this tax give tradespeople better access to tools to perform their job? Does this tax help businesses more easily on-board apprentices? Does this tax help attract new people to the skilled trades?
No, it doesn’t. Tradespeople and business owners will still be doing the same jobs, with the same challenges, but with less money in their pockets.
I’ve heard lots of justifications for the College. Recently Ron Johnson, a former politician and head of the College, said its purpose is to attract more young people to the trades.
So let me get this straight: in order to attract more young people to the trades, the College is going to make it more expensive for them to apply for work by charging them a trades tax. Furthermore, the government will make it more expensive for businesses to hire them by charging a separate employer tax. Only the government would come up with a plan to create jobs by making it more expensive and difficult for people to qualify for a job.
Johnson has also compared the creation of the College of Trades to the Ontario College of Teachers, saying it is “industry-driven” by tradespeople and employers. But the truth is, the College will impact over 500,000 tradespeople and 30,000 business owners in Ontario, and 99 per cent of those people didn’t even get a vote on who leads the College or what the College does with their money. Furthermore, many, possibly even most, haven’t even heard of the College.
The most infuriating part for me and other small business is the huge amount of red tape the College of Trades will create. John Notte, my father, was an auto body repairer for 30 years. For 20 of those years, he owned and operated East Port Auto Body, a full service collision repair facility in Port Colborne, Ont. I grew up in the family business and saw first hand the huge red tape burden placed on his small business.
For my dad, dealing with the countless and sometimes ridiculous pieces of red tape and bureaucracy from three levels of government often took him away from his number one priority to running his business - fixing cars. Often, he would joke saying he felt like he worked part time for himself, and full time for the government based on all the time he spent dealing with red tape.
Automobile dealers and collision repair shops have numerous rules and regulations to comply with: The Motor Vehicle Dealers Act, the Consumer Protection Act, the Employment Standards Act, the Highway Traffic Act, WSIB, environmental regulations and countless others. The College of Trades and their supposed mandate to “protect the consumer” will duplicate many of these regulations. Rather than update or utilize existing legislation – the government thought it would be best to re-invent the wheel. And by extension – that means higher taxes on tradespeople, those who employ them and consumers to fund the College of Trades and their massive bureaucracy.
That is why the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association, and the 10,000 automotive technicians who are part of our association, support the Stop The Trades Tax campaign. I feel passionately that the College will only hurt tradespeople. The Stop The Trades Tax campaign represents 130,000 tradespeople – including 10,000 auto technicians. It also includes 8,000 small, medium and large employers from auto dealers to construction companies.
But this is more than just a tax on tradespeople. It’s a tax on families. It’s a tax on businesses and employers. It’s a tax on everything a tradesperson touches from haircuts to collision repair. The bottom line: it will make life more expensive. And that’s something we cannot afford.
The Trillium Automobile Dealers Association and our campaign partners are going to keep fighting to stop the trades tax, because we think it’s the right thing to do. We want to urge organizations and associations who have not yet taken a stand on this issue to do so. Stand up for tradespeople and join the Stop The Trades Tax campaign. Find out more at stopthetradestax.ca and view Trillium’s two minute video on the College at tada.ca.
Frank Notte is Director of Government Relations at the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association. He also works with the Stop The Trades Tax Campaign.
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Last Updated on Monday, 01 April 2013 15:48 |
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Wednesday, 27 March 2013 17:26 |
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Welcome to the second installment of "Investing in Staff Skills" a new regular feature in the CAR e-zine. The author, Ian Hope, is the Executive Director of the Alberta Automotive Recyclers and Dismantlers Association and in addition maintains a professional practice training others on highly valued people skills. He provides articles on topics that will help collision repair shops and auto recycling yards, among other businesses, to raise individual and team performance. To enquire about Ian speaking or training at your event, send an e mail to
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or go to his website at ianhope.com.
By Ian Hope
I went into a retail store on the weekend and in my usual way, offered an upbeat greeting to the young fellow at the cash register. “How are you today?” I cheerfully asked. His answer was anything but what I might have expected though… “I feel stuck” he gloomily responded, saying this with the plainest of faces, eyes cast down towards the floor. Pausing, I responded to him that I hoped he would soon find himself unstuck, while explaining by that I didn’t mean him getting fired, of course.
I see way too much of this lately and I am particularly concerned when I see it with young people who have got so much life ahead of them, so much to look forward, and so much that they can hope and work to achieve in their lives. To me, a lot of this boils down to attitude, and I wish that they could simply see how they have formed or adopted an attitude that really does serve to simply weigh them down, stopping them from all that could be good in their lives: better jobs, better educations, better physical conditioning and better relationships. You name it!
I ran into a short piece years ago, and can no longer remember who even wrote it or where I found it. But I have always thought the wisdom within what was written to be personal gold for anyone, and it was important enough that I have had it on fridge magnets for at least the past two years.
The article explained that attitude was more important than any appearance, any talent or skill; also that it would make or break a company, a church, a home, a marriage, friendship or any relationship for that matter. It concluded by saying that “nothing can stop the person with the right mental attitude from achieving his or her goal, and in the same way nothing could help the one with the wrong mental attitude.”
What is your attitude about what you do at work? How do you feel about your job and what you are achieving in life by doing it? How you feel and see yourself in your work is terribly important in so many ways. It’s important in terms of giving you a sense of satisfaction. Your positive attitude also allows you true enjoyment. Yes, even work is something that is best when enjoyed and when you can see how your efforts contribute to a better world. Sometimes people just don’t see how what they do makes a difference.
Let me illustrate with an example. There was a clever hospital administrator who had to meet with the janitorial staff for their quarterly meeting and wanted to raise their motivation and thinking about what they do. The administrator went through the usual information about the cleaning schedule, how well it was being handled and how the hospital simply sparkled. But then she thanked them for the marked contribution their work was making towards the survival of the hospital’s patients. She shared her vision about the hospital’s role in the community, its health goals and then tied their results in with the very low incidence in the hospital of staph and other communicable infections. The cleaning staff went away from the meeting with a whole new sense of importance and pride in what they do, not to mention increased morale and commitment to their employer.
All jobs are important, folks. If it wasn’t so, these jobs wouldn’t exist. In every job, the ways that your job counts are as numerous as the customers you serve. I encourage every employee to find that meaning in your job and also every team leader to help in that process.
So there you have it … your attitude can propel you towards success, and can give you enjoyment and satisfaction. But your attitude is what you choose it to be.
Be good to yourself and make the right choice. Happy thoughts to you!
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 March 2013 17:31 |
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Wednesday, 13 March 2013 12:08 |
Bullying: A sign of weakness
Welcome to the first installment of "Investing in Staff Skills" a new regular feature in the CAR e-zine. Written by Ian Hope, Executive Director of Alberta Automotive Recyclers and Dismantlers Association (AARDA), each column will discuss different workplace issues, and how owners and managers can empower their staff to be stronger, more confident and better than they were before. In the first installment, Hope discusses bullying in the workplace and the home, and the very real effects it can have on performance.
By Ian Hope, Executive Director of AARDA
I chose to refer to bullying as a sign of weakness because I am trying to goad people who bully others, by confronting them with something that may come as quite a surprise to them. Their bullying does not actually display to others their toughness or strength, but instead how insecure and weak they are.
We’ve all known bullies and we’ve all been bullied at one time or another. I’ve often thought about what happened to bullies from my past, including the ones I knew when I was a teenager in school.
The lucky ones came around and became decent people even though in some cases this took years to achieve. Many factors accounted for this. In some cases it was simply a matter that at some point, the school yard tough guy or girl almost invariably will run into someone bigger, tougher and meaner than they are. When they do, they very quickly find out how their victims have been feeling all along about their bullying practices! For the smart ones this eye-opener may actually represent a valuable life lesson, putting them on the road to being better people.
Sadly though, I’ve also known a number who never did change their ways and met with terrible consequences. Everything ranging from succumbing to gang-life, becoming addicted and part of the drug underground, and/or all the way to checking into a maximum penitentiary … and yes, I’ve known some as well who lost their lives unable to break away from the nasty pathway which, for them, started with intimidating and hurting others. Bullying and trouble inevitably become one and the same!
Having often pondered why bullying happens, I wish to share just a few insights about it from my own experiences. To start, it’s been my observation that most bullies were themselves victimized by someone along the way. The bullying that they themselves experienced was usually long term in nature and all too often, the negative example was provided by their own parents who treated the children in the home roughly and disrespectfully. For reasons such as this, it’s not surprising that the tendency to bully others can appear as a childhood trait, becoming part of that person’s character, and quite hard to change.
For children living in such a domestic hell, they sometimes cope and try to overcome their own feelings of helplessness by bullying others. In this way they may be acting out and restoring some of the power and dignity they feel they lose when they themselves are regularly mistreated … and the cycle continues.
I learned through my own life and work experiences that bullying has to be confronted. I always discourage simply looking away and hoping the problems sort themselves out. They don’t! Also, I stay alert to not only confront bullying that is happening to me, but also to speak out against bullying when I see it oppressing others. As I said earlier, bullies are weak and are themselves intimidated when they encounter opposition to their victimization, whether by their targeted victim or those nearby.
Most often of course, we think of bullying as something that happens in schools but another common place where it is rampant is in workplaces. Who hasn’t worked for a boss with a bullying style? More often than not I have found them to be people who are covering up their own feelings of incompetence and inadequacy. Self-serving people who tend to abuse any authority they’re given by the organization. Symptoms of this leadership style include raised voices, laying blame and using profanity and intimidation, all of which creates an environment of fear.
This is certainly not a style that will positively motivate anyone, improve team performance, workplace morale or loyalty to the employer. Again, this bully-manager or boss is headed for a career cliff. There will be many who will enjoy seeing the fall.
Going back to our kids, I don’t know the full answer folks, but I do know it is critical that children be raised in safe environments, and nowhere is it more important for children to actually feel safe than in their own homes and with their own parents. So parents clearly there is a lot that you can and should do in terms of demonstrating your very best people and “get along” skills in the home. Kids don’t learn the pattern of bullying from good and loving parenting.
Ian Hope is the Executive Director of AARDA. He can be reached at 780- 478- 5820 or by email to
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. For more information on AARDA, please visit aarda.com.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 13 March 2013 12:13 |
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