Communication is key when running a family business. Keep reading for family run business: how to successfully run a family business.
Did you know that roughly 19% of all American businesses are ‘family businesses’?
You might be thinking about turning your business into a family run business. Yet, you may not know how you can create a family business without creating a lot of stress.
Here’s a quick look at what it takes to operate a successful family business. If you want to give family members a chance to work for you, these tips will ensure everything goes smoothly.
Let’s begin!
1. Create Clear Roles
When running a family business, you need to make sure everyone knows what they’re responsible for and what is expected of them. Once you’ve established this, you shouldn’t ask people to do anything outside of their assigned roles.
If you don’t assign clear roles, family members will argue about who does what. This will then lead to a breakdown in relationships, leading to lower levels of productivity in the business.
When assigning roles, there’s a chance you might make a mistake. The best way to identify mistakes is by conducting a monthly check-in, wherein you see how everyone is doing.
During this check-in, you might find that some people feel as though they’re not suited to their given role.
If that’s the case, you might want to speak to other people to see if they feel the same way. If you find a few people that aren’t happy, you might be able to remedy the situation by switching people around.
2. Be Fair
Being fair is another thing that you need to focus on if you’re going to be running a family business. You want to make sure that nobody feels as though another person is getting special treatment.
After all, if this happens, the people that aren’t getting special treatment might begin to resent you. As a result, the quality of work will fall, which will then harm the business.
Now, in some cases, you might not realize that you’re giving a particular person special treatment.
Because of this, you need to pay close attention to the feedback you’re getting from family members. If the majority of them feel as though you’re giving someone preferential treatment, you will need to change your ways.
Being fair is often the sign of a good leader, and if you currently lack leadership skills, this is something you’ll need to work on. If you want to improve your leadership skills, this site will teach you the fundamentals of leadership in family business.
3. Don’t Rely on Family
It’s also vital that you don’t rely on family members when you’re running a family business.
For instance, if you have a large family, you might think family members can fill most of the critical roles within the business. However, just because these people are available, doesn’t mean that you should rely on them.
That’s because family members might not always be the best people for the job. Following this, you should also consider how you can bring in people who aren’t family members.
Thus, if you’re looking to fill a specific role, you might want to advertise for that role before hiring a family member.
If you come across someone that is a perfect fit for that role, you might have to pass on the family member. If you can’t find the ideal person for the position, you can then think about hiring someone from your family.
4. Training Is Important
If you want a family member to join your business, you need to give them the right amount of training. After all, you shouldn’t assume they know how to do the job, simply because they’re family.
Therefore, before you hire a family member for a particular role, consider sending them on a training course. This training course should teach them everything they need to know about the role in question.
Once they’ve completed this course, you should ask them to shadow someone in the company. If they do this, they’ll learn how the business works and how they should interact with clients and other staff members.
Note that putting a family member through a rigorous training program will also create a certain level of ‘buy-in.’ This simply means that the person will feel invested in the role, simply because they’ve done all this training.
As a result, they will then be more committed to the role, which means their performance will be better. They will also be less likely to leave since they’ve already committed a lot of resources towards training for the role.
5. Should You Create an Independent Council?
If you want to avoid any family politics, you might want to create an independent council within your business.
This council will be made up of people that aren’t part of the family, and they will judge any disputes within the business, amongst family members.
Having a council like this will help you settle arguments in a fair manner, as nobody will be able to accuse you of taking sides.
Of course, the quality of this council will be dependent on the quality of the members. Therefore, when you’re setting up this council, make sure you practice a lot of caution when selecting members.
Operating a Family Run Business: Will You Do a Good Job?
Operating a family run business is one of the most challenging things you can do in the business world. That’s because you will have to deal with family politics, alongside the usual drama that comes with running a business.
That said, you can tackle most of the issues associated with a family run business by improving your leadership skills. That’s because if you’re a good dealer, you will know how to deal with the inevitable clashes between family members.
Now, at the moment, you might feel as though you aren’t a good leader, and that’s okay. However, if you try to improve your leadership skills by 1% every day, it won’t be long before you’re competent enough to operate a family business.
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