Conflict Management

The Positive Conflict Model™ is integral to creating a safe environment for family businesses to communicate and manage conflict and change. Through the use of tactics associated with this model, we can successfully guide families in business through the conflict that comes with change or conversely, introduce change in a positive way when conflict avoidance can lead to stagnation.

Communication and Organizational Structures

Unproductive avoidance or inability to deal with conflict is often a result of poor communication.

We can help your family business design and implement formal structures and policies that facilitate communication, expedite decision making and increase accountability so that miscommunication and unresolved issues do not lead to conflict that cannot be managed. Our consulting services will help you design and Family Business Charter, create management meeting guidelines, Board of Directors or Advisors, performance standards and review systems, family participation policies and other policies and structures that will help your family make change a positive force in your business that will not lead to destructive conflict.

Facilitation and Mediation

Our skilled facilitators can help avoid problems down the road by helping your family business come to decisions in the present to avoid problems down the road, whether they involve management succession, inheritance or strategic business direction. Our client is the family business system, not any one individual or entity. This allows you to focus on the best interests of the whole and avoid adversarial approaches to decision making.

In the case of a significant dispute that needs resolution, we can provide truly neutral third party mediation. Our model of mediation seeks to resolve conflict by enhancing understanding. Disputes in a family context can be resolved with all concerned not only continuing, but also enhancing their interpersonal relationships. It would be tragic to simply resolve a conflict where the economic issues are agreed to, but the family members stop speaking to each other. Disputes that lend themselves to our approach include inheritance, business sale and business control issues.