Use a coach to bridge the gap.

15th February 2011

Being a business coach and working very often with family businesses, one of the things I come across all the time is inability of family members to communicate with one another. You might imagine that having lived together for many years that husband and wife partnerships, or parent/child/sibling enterprises would be the ones where information was most readily passed from one to another, and where there are least likely to be misunderstandings. However, this is far from the reality.

In fact in these situations, a coach can often be invaluable purely as an “interpreter”, or go-between. How often have I heard a husband or wife tell me that they have been urging their other half to do exactly what I have just got them to do, for years and years? Yet because I am the outsider, some how I must be right, whereas the familiar face either can’t be, or they don’t want them to be.

Likewise with parent/child relationships, the child will seldom listen or do what their parent wants them to, because of their close relationship, and the perverse nature of most children, to deliberately ignore or disbelieve anything their parents say. Once again the coach can become an extremely useful tool in these situations, to be used as the conduit for parents to get their children to do what the business needs. The frustration I experience in all these situations is enormous. “Why won’t they listen to me, but they immediately take on board everything you say?” is often quoted at me. I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that, (human nature I suppose) but if you want to do something about it, why not get a coach to give you a hand.

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