Many organizations proudly say, “We are just like family!” This is can be a great thing because it means who I am as a family member often comes to work with me. My family legacies and my role within the family arrive with me when I open the door to my office.

Bringing our family legacies to work with us can have benefits:

Our families are where we have learned to make connections with one another to build relationships.
It’s where we have practiced caring for others and receiving caring.
And it’s where we have developed communication skills and learned to deal with conflicts with one another.

6 Complexities Family Legacies Cause in the Workplace

But, Harvard Business Review talks about family ghosts in the executive suite. This is a great opportunity for us to stop and think about how the family legacies in our lives impact our leadership. For many of us, “family” brings a lot of complexities! Here are six complexities that are caused by bringing our family legacies into the workplace.

1. There is a right way to…

In many families, we’ve learned there’s just one right way to do things, and it’s often my way. In an organization, this tends to stifle creativity and new ideas because everything has to be done that one, single way.

2. My role is to…

Another complexity is when the role that we’ve had in our family comes to the workplace with us and we get stuck in that role. The different roles can include being the family peacemaker, family clown, little brother, or kid sister. These are all roles that can trap us within the organization.

3. Reliving old rivalries

Sometimes we relive old rivalries where everyone is a competitor and we have to win. Or we think of life as a zero-sum game: “If you get more of the dinner, I get less.” The good news is businesses don’t work that way, and we need to outgrow that trap.

4. We don’t talk about…

For some families, there is a notion of “There are certain things we don’t talk about.” And we learn to keep secrets or to avoid certain topics because we don’t want to upset someone. Imagine how difficult that makes a workplace environment when we have an unwritten code of things that we can’t talk about.

5. Fit it / Guilt

One that has been a personal challenge for me is the sense of “I need to fix things.” This can look like carrying around guilt that says, “If there is a problem in the organization, it’s my fault and I need to fix it. I need to make everyone happy. I need to make this situation better.” For me, that was a problem because I then became more isolated, closed the door, and said, “I will fix this, I will please others, and I will solve the problem myself.” That is no way to lead a company and no way to build a team.

6. We handle conflict by…

Families have patterns of how they handle conflict. For some families, it is avoidance at all costs; for other families, it’s domination; and for some, it’s fear. Whatever role we have played in our family relative to conflict will find its way into the workplace.

3 Steps to “Unpacking Baggage”

As leaders, we must recognize that both we and everyone on our team may have “family baggage.” These family legacies show up in the best of times, and under periods of high stress, they become more intense because they are some of our default behaviors. As leaders, we have to be aware that hanging on to family baggage can undermine your leadership and keep you and your team in unhealthy patterns. We have to be willing to think about how this family legacy and baggage impacts our leadership. Here are three steps to unpack that family baggage:

1. Open the suitcase = Get honest

For me, this means opening myself up to feedback and insights on how I am leading and how I might be repeating some of those family legacies. Then I can also set the pattern for other employees to do the same.

2. Try on new hats = Explore new roles

This means, “I can approach problems, conflicts, and new opportunities in a different way and invite people into my leadership.”

3. Create a new sense of “family”

By following the first two steps, we now have the opportunity to do this. In this new sense of family, we can try new ways of fixing problems, communicating together, and dealing with conflict in healthy ways.

Next Steps:

Take a fresh look at yourself and your team.
Embrace the complexity of trying to build a healthy sense of family in your organization.
Commit to growth as individuals and as a team.
Learn new roles and ways of doing things. One of the best ways to do that is to get executive coaching for you and your team.

What does family look like in your organization?

Paul Keisling is a Senior Consultant at The Center Consulting Group and has over 40 years of experience in building, leading, and operating organizations. His areas of interest and expertise are organizational health, leadership coaching, team development, conflict resolution, and succession planning. Paul serves on several nonprofit boards and was a founding board member of Chariots for Hope - an organization that oversees Children's Homes across the country of Kenya. He holds a Master of Social Work from Temple University, studied theology and counseling at Westminster Seminary, and is a Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner.