Close Encounters Just how much family togetherness is too much?

It's obvious: The more time you spend with family members,the more your lives overlap. That's why relatives who worktogether have an especially keen awareness of each other. Theirclose daily contact gives them the opportunity to talk aboutpersonal topics they wouldn't broach if, say, they only talkedon the phone once a week. They can read each other's bodylanguage so well, they can tell how the others are feeling withouthaving to ask. And they talk among themselves, so if one siblingknows that another is having marital problems, for example, he mayshare that information with another sibling so they can take somework off the shoulders of the sibling under stress.

This private verbal and nonverbal communication is the glue offamily businesses. It helps relatives stay connected, supportstheir individual and collective needs, and allows them to share thevision that drives the company. Without the closeness,disagreements mushroom into disputes and people pull in differentdirections.

Patricia Schiff Estess writes family business histories andis the author of two books, Managing Alternative WorkArrangements (Crisp Publishing) and Money Advice for YourSuccessful Remarriage (Betterway Press).

Closing In

Problems arise when togetherness becomes extreme and familymembers become too involved in each other's lives. "Thiscan be especially stifling for young people in a familybusiness," says Leslie Dashew, a family business consultant inAtlanta and author of The Best of the Human Side (BeowulfPublishing). "They wind up being smothered by their familiesat the very age they need to separate from them." The result:They're turned off by the family business.

The lack of privacy can have other negative effects as well.Spouses, for example, may build up resentment and jealousy. Theyfeel "out of it"--less important in their spouse'slife than the spouse's siblings or parents. Noninvolved parentsand children of the family businessperson may also feel they'reconsidered inconsequential and that the family members in thebusiness take priority.

You know you're too enmeshed in the family business when itcreates problems in your household. "You can also see symptomsof how too much togetherness can be detrimental to thebusiness," says Joe Paul, a family business consultant inPortland, Oregon, and a member of the Aspen Family Business Group.He identifies these red flags:

• Members of the family business are so in tune with eachother's emotional states that when one panics, the others do,too.

• Decision-making is slowed to a halt because of the need to haveeveryone in the family "on board."

• All the family members can be swayed by one person's pooror radical idea because they don't want to make waves.

Drawing Healthy Boundaries

In some cultures, the extended family unit is the norm, and theidea of individual privacy would be laughed at, says Paul."But that's not so in the majority of family businesses inthe United States," he says.

For the most part, relatives who work in a family business needto live personal lives on their own turf. Michael Schuster wouldagree, although he was still shocked initially when his daughterCatherine and her husband, Blair Kolkoski, announced they weremoving to Kansas City, Missouri. Catherine and Blair had beenworking for the Scottsdale, Arizona, company Schuster founded in1978, The Center for Professional Development, a business schooldedicated to helping dentists with the development of theirpractices. "Now I've come to realize it was a healthything . . . and right for them," Schustersays. Blair and Catherine are still working for the company (as areCatherine's three sisters and one brother-in-law)--he as arecruiter and she in marketing support. But the Kolkoskis are doingit in the privacy of their own state.

Staying connected with the family while still being separateneed not be as dramatic as the Kolkoski example--as long as familymembers are conscious of the boundaries between the family businessand their personal lives. Dashew suggests some appropriate personalboundaries to draw:

• Keep private information private. Decide what information aboutyou and your immediate family to keep private and what informationthe rest of the family can or should know. Many people feel theirreligious beliefs and participation, their sex lives, and how theyraise their children, for example, are subjects that are not opento family discussion or debate. Says Laura Fullerton, one of theSchuster daughters who works in the family business: "Eventhough I'm very close to my parents and sisters, when I gotmarried, my loyalties changed a bit. Now I share my innermostthoughts with my spouse, not my family."

• Develop relationships outside the family. When families are tooclose, they push others out. People need to have their own personalrelationships that the rest of the family isn't a part of."Otherwise, family members look to each other to satisfy alltheir needs," says Dashew, "and that doesn'twork."

• Make your own decisions about what you will do with yourresources. "We define our values by the use of ourresources," says Dashew. So while a person may talk about whathe or she does with money, time and energy, decisions about theseresources should be made only by that individual.

The balance between getting too involved and being too separateis a challenge when you work in a family business. "It'seasy to drift into [too much] togetherness when you like andrespect each other and spend so much time together," saysPaul. To ensure that doesn't happen, family members need to"get a life"--private and social--outside the family.

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Contact Sources

Aspen Family Business Group, familyfirm@aol.com,, http://www.aspenfamilybusiness.com

The Center for Professional Development, (800) 288-9393,http://www.c-p-d-inc.com

Leslie Dashew, c/o The Human Side of Enterprise, 210Interstate North Pkwy., #700, Atlanta, GA 30339, (404)252-7113.