7 Handy Tips for Working with Family Members
Working with family members can be fun, but it can also turn sour soon. It can be a challenge because it can become difficult to separate personal and professional lives, and grudges may be carried on towards the personal sphere as well. For the same, here are these 7 handy tips for working with family members:
1. Don’t Talk Personal
When in business conversations, don’t talk any personal matters. At your workplace, you have to be strict regarding the work itself. Intimate your family members regarding the same so as to have more seriousness around the topic. It is important to stick to the topic because personal talks can make you meander along a different path and waste precious time.
2. Don’t Do/Expect Work for Free
Money matters can get worse when working with family members. Don’t do or expect anyone to work for free if you’re doing any assignments for them. Charging nominal for services is acceptable, and agreeing to that beforehand and maintaining proper records can help in tough times.
3. Manage Proper Deeds
When working with family in business and longer projects, it is important to get partnership deeds and other important agreements and documents. Money problems can ruin families and not just businesses, and therefore this is the first logical step to ensure that there is no bad blood in between the family.
4. Don’t Talk Business on Dinner Table
As it is important not to discuss personal stuffs in office, it is also important not to talk work during personal and unofficial interactions. Dining table is a place for the family to sit, eat and have a chit-chat together. This is no place for business or work related interactions. Maintaining this gap will help in the long term relationships for all the people involved in the family business or business contracts. When the margins start overlapping, the trouble starts brewing up.
5. Get a Mediator
If you sense any trouble brewing up, or the possibility of one, getting a mediator to avoid the conflict before it starts is much easier than getting it sorted out later, which can be a lot of mess, as well as create some bad blood between families. It has the potential of destroying several relations as we have witnessed in history.
6. Keep Spouses and Kids Off the Business
Not involving spouses and kids in the business is one of the most important aspects of working with the family. Even in case of disputes, they should be left out of these matters and their normal relationships should be allowed to continue without any hindrance due to the business side of things. It is another way of protecting relationships.
7. Intimate Elders and Involve Them
If fit, elders can be the best mediators, and also can put a check on troubles and conflicts that keep brewing up time to time. Elders offer their advice from an unbiased perspective, and also carry the authority of reprimanding the juniors. This also helps in case someone strays off the track.
