Sibling Rivalry – an Advisor’s Perspective

Listen to Harry Martin, a Family Business Advisor and Family Office Expert, share his views about the benefits of developing adequate governance structures to help manage potential conflict and tensions among siblings in the business family environment.

This family thing, you’re dealing an imperfect vessel, a family, which creates rivalry, and anger, and sometimes hatred. And then you impose on this family a common asset like running a big company where they’ve got to make decisions. And they, the mother has to see that little Johnny didn’t get the Vice-Presidency because he isn’t as able as brother Bill, her other son. And Johnny feels terrible and he comes to mother. Oh, what a killer. Mother goes to father, father says we’ve got to protect the company. All of the emotions, the sibling rivalry, all the difficulties which are so natural, create a perpetual conflict, which I think the advisor and the consultant should be dealing with. Because in families, how can you get away from how one brother feels if the other one was treated better when they were brought up? You can’t, it’s part of life. You can’t change the character and personality of somebody who is mature very well, and, particularly men. Men get frozen into their attitudes. They’re not as sensitive as women, for the most part, they’re not as willing to listen or change. So you get men in their 40s, 50s and 60s, you can’t change them. OK? But, you can create structures around them. You can say let’s do a Board of Directors, and let’s get 3 or 4 people from the outside who have done enough in the world so you respect them. Instead of the two of you trying to make decisions, where you have such a terrible time, because in many cases the brothers have different personalities, they were brought up at different times in the family. Maybe there was a second wife, who knows. So if you can’t change them so they can work together more effectively, you can create structures to alleviate conflict that is so destructive.