Setting up ground rules in family and business

Listen to François de Gaspé Beaubien explain how every family establishes a unique set of family rules and how these rules transcend into the business. When creating ground rules, it is important to consider that members in a family, as well as in a business, should be treated with mutual respect when expressing themselves. Clear rules that have been agreed upon by members of the family and of the business will help create a supportive work and family environment.

Dinner conversations, up until rules were set, my brother refers to it as akin to light sabers going back and forth, and we would love it, right, because you’d have this massive debate, and my mother was raised in that kind of a family, where her father would throw out debates, whether it’s Socrates, Plato, whatever, and the family would go at it, it would be like a big huge international debating championship, right, that’s what she was raised, and she loves it and feels comfortable with that. My father comes from a very different background, and my sister, didn’t very much enjoy it either, so we came to the conclusion that at family, and I say family meetings but it’s actually family dinners, whenever the family got together there was a meeting going on, clearly, family business, we came to the conclusion that we should have rules, codes, and what they all boiled down to was treat each other the way that you would the chairman of the Bank of Montreal, or the Royal Bank of Canada, treat each other with respect, let the person finish their comment. And it’s ironic because these are the same rules that I bring into my business, right, so when I chair boards, and I chair quite a few, I always make sure, excuse me, you know, so and so has the floor, so and so will finish their comment before, and I recognize you and you after, so the same dynamic ironically that you learn around the family table is the same dynamic that I now have in my business and other industry boards that I chair. And people love that, because they know they’re going to be recognized, they know that they have their time, they’re going to be listened to before other comments are made. It just makes for a much healthier dynamic.