When leaders and their organizations struggle, or fail, the causes usually have little to do with intelligence or hard work. These are usually in ample supply. While there are a number of factors that cause problems, one of the most common, although often not recognized, is a breakdown in trust caused by a poor process of communication.

Use these six values to develop a process of communication that promotes trust, builds strong relationships, and achieves business (as well as personal) success.

1. Hold Honorable Intentions: Genuinely care about the well being and success of others. The adage that people don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care aptly applies to all important relationships. If people don’t trust the intentions of another person they often react out of fear, defaulting to such defense mechanisms as tuning out, blaming, personal attacks, and even sabotage. However, when people have confidence that another person genuinely cares about their well being and success, that the other person’s intentions are honorable, they feel safer and more able to openly discuss concerns, hear different points of view, and resolve even the most difficult issues.
2. Respect the Dignity and Worth of Everyone: OK, I can hear the objection, “But what about someone who’s being unreasonably difficult? Why should I respect him?” My response: Recognize that the other person is probably acting out of some kind of fear. Is there any one of us who hasn’t reacted inappropriately at times when emotions take over? While we need to take responsibility and avoid such behavior, don’t we want others to see the best in us when we may not be our best selves?
   See the best in others, even while you address concerns about their behavior. This is known as the Pygmalion effect and helps others recognize the best in themselves and reach for their human potential. It usually works. Regardless, do this because of the type of person you want to be in reaching for your human potential. Start by respecting the dignity and worth of all people.
   
3. Exhibit Honesty and Integrity: Be known for doing and saying the right things based on inspiring and trustworthy personal and organizational values. At a minimum, these should include: a) holding honorable intentions b) respecting the dignity of all people c) encouraging people to be honest about concerns and problems (conflict competency should be a business imperative for all leaders to facilitate the most informed, effective, and supported decisions) d) honoring commitments, and e) being honest about important issues in a clear, timely, and respectful manner.
4. Inform and Involve People in What Most Affects Them: Lack of predictability and feeling excluded creates stress, perceptions of disrespect, and mistrust. Be transparent on all but the most confidential of issues. Secrecy is an insidious and overused behavior that results in toxic rumors which are usually worse than reality. Being informed and involved empowers people and builds trust by valuing them, creating collaboration, and providing a sense that change is happening to a reasonable extent with them as participants rather than to them in an arbitrary, capricious, and inherently unfair manner.
5. Develop Competence: To achieve trust, people need to know that we’re competent, that we’re able and willing to do what’s expected. As business owners or leaders, this value also reveals one of our most important responsibilities; to help others develop their abilities so that they can be successful in their jobs and careers. Helping others develop their competence demonstrates concern for their well being, aligns personal and business goals, and builds trust. Everyone wins.
6. Promote Accountability: A critical component of achieving individual, team, and organization-wide accountability is developing clear, inclusive, and motivating methods of delegation, which most businesses and leaders think they do well, but often don’t.  This is a reason why accountability and execution are so often lacking in businesses, and a leading cause of mediocrity and outright failure.

What are the fundamentals that a business must know about leadership and management to promote long-term success? Let’s start with two simple definitions.

• Management is about achieving business results through developing and executing efficient and effective systems and use of resources
• Leadership is about achieving business results through inspiring people to do what is right.

The following chart expands on these definitions.

To be successful, a “manager” must also be able to lead people by developing meaningful and productive relationships with those who implement and execute management systems. And, a “leader” must be able to understand and manage the technical disciplines and consistent processes designed into productive systems.

I’ve seen managers who don’t develop leadership skills, causing morale and turnover problems, breakdowns in customer service, and excessive costs. And, I’ve seen leaders who don’t understand important management processes, such as project management and budgeting, who waste time, resources, and cause quality and customer service issues. The point is that both management and leadership are inextricably linked, regardless of “title,” and both can be learned.

There are some who argue that one must possess certain personality traits or charisma to be a good leader. I don’t agree. Certainly, a person who is unfriendly, autocratic, belittling, or uncommunicative does not exhibit the skills and behaviors to build meaningful and productive relationships with people. But, fundamentally, good leadership is about:

• demonstrating respect for the inherent dignity and worth of others
• holding honorable intentions of wanting to help others succeed
• being honest in a timely, respectful, and effective manner
• helping people develop their skills to be successful in their jobs, and
• learning an effective method of delegation and accountability

One example: Toyota was the first car manufacturer to provide employees with the education and authority to stop the highly engineered assembly line if a quality problem occurred. This is an example of bringing leadership responsibility right down to front-line employees. Toyota educated people to understand the management process, the organization’s mission and values, and empowered them to make important decisions in the best interests of customers, the company, and their own job satisfaction.

Often, entrepreneurs who start-up businesses possess the technical management knowledge of how the business works but lack the proactive leadership skills required to implement their vision. This is one reason why so many businesses fail during the first few years. In such instances, an executive coach can help develop the skills to strengthen communication, relationships, and trust required for business success.

(Published in the Wisconsin Law Journal, June, 2007, Alternative Dispute Resolution Section)

Think back to those law school days of the Socratic Method. Or perhaps a more recent, similar memory is oral argument. The good news is, in this instance, you can be the one asking the questions.

Consider the following scenario: One of your clients is embroiled in a bitter conflict with a business partner (or a family-business member, subcontractor, or customer). Your client is angry and calls you, as a deft legal advocate and litigator, to “win” the dispute.

Your objective is to represent your client’s best interests and, understandably, to quickly assume the role of legal advocate. However, an important option is to synthesize your legal advocate role with an executive coaching inquiry process — simply put, your questioning — to enhance client value.

Why is this important? A fundamental aspect of human nature is the tendency to be our own worst enemy when emotions take over. As we’ve all seen too often, in the heat of a dispute, all parties can unwittingly succumb to self-defeating ways of thinking and acting.

The outcome is that disputes usually have two dimensions. One, the substance, is the focus of most disputes and typically described in terms such as contract violations that attorneys are well suited to address. However, problems involving relationships are often the underlying cause of disputes, reflected by perceived mistrust, lack of respect, and breakdowns in dialogue causing fear and anger.

It’s deceptively easy to buy into your client’s emotional reactions and illusions of what is right and wrong, thinking that you’ve identified your client’s best interests and then pursue a legal strategy. Yet, accurately assessing “best interests” may be obscured even to your client, buried under layers of rationalization and emotionally reactive behaviors engaged in by both partiesGive Executive Coaching Inquiry a Try. An important aspect of executive coaching is to use inquiry skills to help people strengthen self-awareness about their emotions, thinking, and behaviors. The goal is to help others find greater meaning and achieve improved outcomes in their work, relationships, and personal lives. You can use executive coaching inquiry skills to help your clients take responsibility for their feelings and behaviors, consider other meaningful possibilities, strengthen important relationships and rebuild trust.

So, as an attorney, reviewing and creatively applying the Socratic Method of inquiry used in law school can help you move beyond common legal questions to help clients get to the root causes of relationship issues. For example, in contract law, a basic legal question might be: Who breached what duty? Using broader coaching questions can help clients improve their self-awareness; uncover erroneous assumptions; provide insight into the fears of both sides; and, engage the parties to creatively consider options beyond legal solutions

A few examples of meaningful questions you could ask might include:

1. What important outcomes would be achieved if the parties could rebuild trust?
2. Do you think the other person is defensive because of fears about your intentions?
3. Could your statements have been perceived as disrespectful?
4. What are the positive results of the relationship which would be jeopardized if the dispute continues for a long time?
5. Is the conflict caused by different talents and interests that are actually complementary strengths which offer greater choice and benefits for customers?

A Risky Approach: Be prepared for, “Whose side are you on?”

Your clients may be emotionally vested in their arguments, fears, and anger, wanting only to achieve specific legal outcomes. But that may be the reason to use a coaching inquiry process: To help clients reconsider, identify and achieve better outcomes than litigation might afford.

The process can reinforce your ability to pragmatically reason with clients to help them understand that what they desire as a legal solution can be expensive, time consuming, and risky to pursue. You can educate clients that even winning a legal claim may not result in a satisfactory solution.

Depending on the situation, winning could simply exacerbate a rift in important relationships, develop morale and turnover issues among employees, or create adverse publicity for the business. Just the litigation discovery process often runs the risk of public disclosure of sensitive information that the business may prefer to retain as confidential.

Particularly if no Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”) provisions are included in an existing contractual arrangement, and if the parties are unfamiliar with mediation, you may be able to add great value for your clients by enhancing your legal advocate role using executive coaching type questions.

You might also consider arranging for an experienced mediator to work with the parties to mutually explore ways to strengthen relationships and rebuild trust, as well as to help achieve long-term solutions to challenging problems in the best interests of all parties. 

Conflict is an inevitable part of any business. If well-managed, conflict enables businesses to build on differing points of view represented by the collective knowledge, experience, and insights of all parties. The goal is to achieve constructive outcomes based on informed, effective and supported decisions.

If poorly managed, conflict quickly deteriorates into emotional defense mechanisms and retaliatory behaviors causing a downward cycle of mistrust, disrespect, poor relationships and destructive outcomes.

Family businesses encompass all of the potential for constructive or destructive outcomes involving conflict with the added complexity of introducing family relationships and long-held, negative emotions into the work setting.

The following outline summarizes common sources of dysfunctional family conflict and briefly lists recommendations. The first and most important action is to be honest in recognizing if any of these problems exist and commit to making changes in how the business operates to resolve them.

Five Common Sources of Family Conflict

1. Sibling and other family rivalry and childhood roles. These follow people into adulthood. Such complex family (including spousal) relationships can adversely impact business results.

   Recommendation: Help people learn to talk openly about such issues and take responsibility to treat each other with respect as adults. This includes developing boundaries and learning methods of separating family relationships from business roles and decision making.

2. Succession planning. Who gets what type and amount of equity, benefit, title, or role can be major sources of explicit conflict or implicit but destructive behaviors.

   Recommendation: Develop clear criteria about standards of required participation in the business and objective measures of competence and successful work performance that determine how to allocate roles, ownership, and other business benefits to family members.

3. The pursuit of power, status or unearned entitlement. These can be toxic causes of succession conflicts (see above) and also cause disputes in on-going family business relationships. Viktor Frankl wrote about the deleterious effects of a self-serving will-to-power and a superficial will-to-pleasure that applies to our lives and our businesses.

   Recommendation: The alternative is to develop inspiring, unifying, and productive family and business values that promote meaningful, fulfilling lives and work outcomes.

   Examples include demonstrating integrity in relationships and decision-making, stewardship for the best interests of the business, accountability for performance, and respect for the dignity of all people. The objective would be for family members to consistently and genuinely exhibit such values to earn ownership, executive or managerial roles, responsibility and authority.

4. Playing by Different Rules. This is similar to the problems caused by playing favorites in non-family businesses. The problem often presents itself as a form of elitism or entitlement that exists simply by virtue of being in a family that owns a business.

   Examples show up in allowing one or more family members to exhibit deficient standards of conduct or performance that violate sound business practices or important requirements that all other employees are expected to follow. Such behaviors can be divisive and demoralizing to all employees and customers as well as harmful to the reputation of the business.

   Recommendation: Require family business members to serve as role models for expected standards of performance and conduct that demonstrate the importance of such requirements. Link effectiveness in these areas to the commensurate level of business responsibility and benefits earned by the family-business member. The goal is to serve as exemplars of business ethics and performance that help to attract, retain, and motivate non-family business members who are often prime sources of intellectual capital and added-value required for enduring business success.

5. Competing perspectives about business strategy. Such differences can create fear, anger, and destructive attempts to control decisions that are divisive and counter-productive to making and implementing sound decisions.

   Recommendation: Develop a strategic formulation and implementation process that poses best-practice strategic questions, develops sound criteria, objectively investigates facts and assumptions, facilitates full discussion and analysis, and promotes effective decision-making and implementation.

The above examples of family-business conflicts are not intended to be an exhaustive list but represent some of the most common challenges causing conflict in family businesses. These common sources of conflict can be significantly addressed by developing clear and effective communication skills, meaningful core values, consistent performance criteria, expected standards of leadership behavior, and effective decision-making processes.