A Matter of Faith
Maybe I got the session off on the wrong foot by using the word evolves. “You don’t have to think of everything in advance,” I said. Your Family Council will evolve over time, the way species adapt to environmental constraints. What you’re creating now is just a starting place.” I could have used the American Constitution as another example, a living document subject to each generation’s interpretation and review. But that would have been almost as unpopular an idea as the evolution of species was in this family.
They silently dismissed my tactless use of the e-word, and we moved on to discuss the elements of an Edens Family Mission and Values Statement.
Dad was a spiritual presence in the room. The family members were still in the process of mourning, as well as struggling with their mixed feelings: gratitude and resentment. Those feelings were complicated by Jennette’s self-appointment as guardian of his values.
Jennette was the founder’s daughter-in-law. Her husband, Eddie, second of the four children, was currently President and designated successor to the non-family CEO. Suffice to say that there were issues among the siblings about her husband’s exalted status, his huge salary, their personal use of the company plane and a string of lesser offenses. Their mother, Louisa, blamed daughter-in-law Jennette’s social climbing, pressuring Eddie for more and more disposable income.
Then there was the problem of Jennette’s attitude about her faith.
They were all, including the in-laws, Christians in the broadest sense. But Louisa and the four children hadn’t made religion the center of their lives. The children were already adults when Dad accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior. Then Jennette had brought Eddie into her family’s conservative Bible church, where he, too, had been born again. He told me he tried to respect his family’s right to make choices in their own lives. He didn’t share Jennette’s disdain for the fact that his brother, Jim, “lived in sin” with his fiancée, Cheryl.
The family loved Cheryl. She was bright and enthusiastic, caring and considerate—the sooner Jim married her the better, but in the meantime it was unanimous that she be included in our meetings.
It was Eddie and Jim’s sister who suggested they include the phrase “a Christian family” in the Mission and Values. One or two people nodded agreement, no one dissented—until Jennette said, “But we’re not all Christians.” For a moment I optimistically imagined she was celebrating some diversity within the family, but they caught her meaning even before she explained: “Jim and Cheryl aren’t Christians.”
While I sat there with no idea what to say, Louisa suggested they drop the word Christian in favor of listing the family's specific shared values. She clearly wanted to avert a fight, knowing that while Cheryl was too stunned to lash back at Jennette, Jim might. He already barely tolerated his sister-in-law.
I, too, sensed that if Jim said what he was thinking at that moment, the meeting—for which I’d flown half way across the country—would blow up, along with the hope of a Family Council in which to address the controversial family employment and other issues. Relieved at Louisa’s intervention, I let the insult and hurt feelings go without discussion.
Big mistake. Although we got through the day, Jim and Cheryl blamed me for allowing Jennette’s “personal attack,” while Jennette herself, chastened afterward by her husband, declared she wouldn't attend any future meetings. Louisa took me aside before I left and said, “The reason we hired you was to prevent the kind of thing that happened this morning.”
What could I have done?
copyright reserved 2006, Kaye Family Business Associates, Inc.
They silently dismissed my tactless use of the e-word, and we moved on to discuss the elements of an Edens Family Mission and Values Statement.
Dad was a spiritual presence in the room. The family members were still in the process of mourning, as well as struggling with their mixed feelings: gratitude and resentment. Those feelings were complicated by Jennette’s self-appointment as guardian of his values.
Jennette was the founder’s daughter-in-law. Her husband, Eddie, second of the four children, was currently President and designated successor to the non-family CEO. Suffice to say that there were issues among the siblings about her husband’s exalted status, his huge salary, their personal use of the company plane and a string of lesser offenses. Their mother, Louisa, blamed daughter-in-law Jennette’s social climbing, pressuring Eddie for more and more disposable income.
Then there was the problem of Jennette’s attitude about her faith.
They were all, including the in-laws, Christians in the broadest sense. But Louisa and the four children hadn’t made religion the center of their lives. The children were already adults when Dad accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior. Then Jennette had brought Eddie into her family’s conservative Bible church, where he, too, had been born again. He told me he tried to respect his family’s right to make choices in their own lives. He didn’t share Jennette’s disdain for the fact that his brother, Jim, “lived in sin” with his fiancée, Cheryl.
The family loved Cheryl. She was bright and enthusiastic, caring and considerate—the sooner Jim married her the better, but in the meantime it was unanimous that she be included in our meetings.
It was Eddie and Jim’s sister who suggested they include the phrase “a Christian family” in the Mission and Values. One or two people nodded agreement, no one dissented—until Jennette said, “But we’re not all Christians.” For a moment I optimistically imagined she was celebrating some diversity within the family, but they caught her meaning even before she explained: “Jim and Cheryl aren’t Christians.”
While I sat there with no idea what to say, Louisa suggested they drop the word Christian in favor of listing the family's specific shared values. She clearly wanted to avert a fight, knowing that while Cheryl was too stunned to lash back at Jennette, Jim might. He already barely tolerated his sister-in-law.
I, too, sensed that if Jim said what he was thinking at that moment, the meeting—for which I’d flown half way across the country—would blow up, along with the hope of a Family Council in which to address the controversial family employment and other issues. Relieved at Louisa’s intervention, I let the insult and hurt feelings go without discussion.
Big mistake. Although we got through the day, Jim and Cheryl blamed me for allowing Jennette’s “personal attack,” while Jennette herself, chastened afterward by her husband, declared she wouldn't attend any future meetings. Louisa took me aside before I left and said, “The reason we hired you was to prevent the kind of thing that happened this morning.”
What could I have done?
copyright reserved 2006, Kaye Family Business Associates, Inc.
8 Comments:
This is a great scenario that evokes, for me, ideas from psychoanalytic group therapy. The most salient observation was your subjective response to the situation as it unfolded (evolved.) First, you felt like an outsider having stepped into the middle of it with the "e-word" but feeling it was best to supposedly let it pass. Then when the crisis emerged you again felt helpless. I would have understood the first experience as reflecting an unconsious awareness that your role in the group was to be expelled -- certainly disqualified from speaking about Christian issues. In other words you are brought in with the specific, though probably unconscious idea that you will not be qualified to address the battle that you are supposed to help solve. The intensity of your feeling of not knowing what to do and your wishful thinking that the problem would go away when it broke out overtly would have been understood by the psychoanalytic group therapist as an awareness of the family's demand that you do something about what Bion calls a "couple group," a group whose functioning centers on responding to the actions of two of it members. From a group relations point of view this would have been an excellent time to point out that such a demand was being made on you in a context where you had already been disqualified from responding. You would have been touching on the problem that while they consciously wanted to work together toward a shared goal, they somehow arranged things to make this difficult. I would see as very useful the untangling of this difficulty, first by identifying it in the relationship to the consultant and then by showing how it impeded all other work. It is precisely by calling their attention to such self sabotaging that you can be most helpful.
Actually the description did not sound like you. I would have thought you would have addressed the antagonizing remark rather than get on with the meeting. Clearly this was something that would rear its head again and again and should be addressed before continuing. You certainly can go back to address this issue with them.
Hindsight is 20/20, and many options can be suggested. One might be to do an "intake" to find out what sensitive issues might arise before entering the engagement. A quick stock-take of family values prior to engagement might also help to orient the kinds of metaphors a consultant might use, and how to use them without fear of coming across as offensive. ... I might suggest engaging a theologically trained family therapist to do some mediation-like work between the children, in-laws and also within couples -- that is, a born-again Christian therapist who both embodies and defies the stereotypes, and who is comfortable navigating within and outside of conservative ideas. ... Chances are, only after the parties have felt heard and understood by each other will they be able to move towards the working goal of developing a shared mission & values statement.
I think it is quite unfair for Jim, Cheryl and Louisa to blame you for the outcome. It was their responsibility, not yours, to respond to Jennette's insult if they were offended by it, no matter what the feared impact might be of doing so, or to take the consequence of failing to do so. And it doesn't appear that they have given enough credit to Eddie's courage in expressing his disagreement with his wife's behavior (even if done in private after the meeting) as a validation of the family's cohesiveness and sense of fairness.
As for your question about what you could have done (and, if its not too late, might still be able to do): I strongly disagree with those who suggest that you inject yourself into the religious debate. In my experience, that subject is an irrational quagmire that can only distract the group from the essence of their work. Rather, I would pose the key process question whether the other members of the Family Council--especially Eddie--would be willing to continue to meet even in the face of Jennette's refusal to participate. The goal is to help them see that anything short of an affirmative answer to that question in effect gives her inordinate power to undermine the group's functioning. And, in as non-defensive a manner as you can muster in the face of the blaming, you might gently suggest to them that it is their job, not yours, to figure out how to function constructively as a group, since you're there only temporarily.
What could you have done?
It seems to me that some information is missing to answer the question: In your description you fast-forward from Louisa’s intervention to the end of the day.
But what happend in the meantime?
Did they actually talk about their individual values?
Perhaps decisive for the outcome of the process is the attitude of Jennette (and her husband) towards the business: Is it conceivable for them to remain part of a family firm in which not everybody lives up to their own faith standards?
If it is not, how would they want to go about dissolution?
If it is, it seems that Louisa’s suggestion needs to be followed and the values worked out one-by-one. Maybe a way of doing this would be to ask everyone what they believe everybody else`s value-based prerequisites for continued cooperation were, and then give everybody the opportunity to respond and clarify.
What do you think?
I think that's a good suggestion in general. All of the comments above seem to sense, correctly, that in the actual situations I was recalling as I wrote this fictionalized vignette, families were effectively disqualifying me from challenging their fundamentalist Christian beliefs. I have to acknowledge, though, that the reference to evolution was probably (though unconsciously) antagonistic on my part--a defensive reaction to self-righteous remarks in earlier sessions.
When there's an indication that some family members are very religious, I've learned to ask prospective clients at the outset whether religion is part of their conflict with one another. If so, I'm the wrong guy to work with them.
Great story, Ken, I appreciate hearing it.
Would rules help? Our family forum hears the rules at the start of the day:
Listen respectfully, don't interupt.
Focus on issues, not people or personalities.
Avoid making attacts: offer feedback with consideration and kindness.
There are more but you get the idea. Upon hearing "We are not all Christians" the facilitator steps in, announces that the meeting has approached the boundary of the meetings rules, and that there will be a ten minute break.
Maybe that isn't enough, but at least it gives you a breather to consider your next move.
Good point, Larry, ground rules are a big help to the family as well as to a facilitator in situations like the one I described.
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