Marriages may hurt businesses, vice versa

When Charles Brahmstedt, a specialist in agricultural business management, helps couples in business together assess their financial status and do tax planning at year’s end, he often suggests they plan for the health of their relationship as well. Brahmstedt’s perspective comes from years of experience helping couples with business related to their family farms. “When things aren’t going well in the relationship,” he said, “things are often not going well in the business either. It typically takes both people giving 100 percent, and when either is absent physically, mentally or emotionally, things can fall apart very quickly.”

Key challenges

Although a family-owned business can have rewards, couples in business together also face some challenges atypical to couples in separate workplaces. University of Minnesota researcher Sharon M. Danes, notes four potential areas of conflicts.

Financial fairness. Are there inequities in compensation? How do spouses treat each other in the workplace? Who gets to make the decisions about allocation of resources? Danes also refers to this as an issue of “justice.”

Role-related conflicts. As a college student, I once worked a summer for a family-owned retail business. I observed firsthand conflicts related to who got to supervise the employees. On one occasion, the husband-owner allowed his aging father to harshly reprimand staff, even though the owner-wife clearly felt her father-in-law was uninformed and out of line. Later, the owner-husband admitted to me that he felt his father was wrong, but because he believed he should respect his elders, he refused to speak to his father about his role, or to support his wife rather than his father. This ongoing couple conflict continued to create stress in their relationship and uneasiness among the staff.

Work-family balance. This type of conflict is especially evident if the couple is raising young children. Whereas they both may once have worked side-by-side, when children enter the picture, the demands of caring for them and attending to the business can collide, creating tension and stress. Not only is the couple able to spend less time together, but one or both may feel resentful about what the other is not contributing to either side of the work/family equation.

Identity issues. Conflicts related to one’s identity in the workplace may be especially prevalent when one spouse marries into a family-owned business. It can be difficult to know who is in charge, or if one is free to pursue a course of action contrary to traditional family expectations. Married-in spouses may have a particularly difficult time negotiating sibling rivalry and conflicts between adult children and their parents in the family business. One couple I know worked hard to pass along the family business to their sons. Unfortunately, not all were equally talented, and the parents’ desire to be fair led to even greater dissension in the family. Eventually, the oldest child moved away and the youngest, who possessed the greatest business acumen, took charge. Unfortunately, work and family-related stress took its toll on the mental, physical and relational health of family members; the father died suddenly and the business was sold.

Beneficial conflict

All relationships inevitably involve conflict at one time or another, but it’s not all bad. Danes stresses that a healthy level of conflict can provide the creative energy necessary to move a project forward. Couples who have good communication skills do well together; those who withdraw are headed for trouble.

While couples in business together can face a number of relational obstacles, they may also experience considerable benefits. These include a couple’s identity developed from working together toward a common goal, the opportunity to value each other’s strengths, and helping children learn about work and responsibility. Springfieldians Scott and Keri Schoessel exemplify a successful couple in business together. They own a number of transportation related businesses, including Alliance Management, Alliance Bus Co. Inc., ATS Associates Inc. and MAKS Investments LLC. They cite flexibility and playing off each other’s strengths as the biggest parts of their success. “We know we can count on each other and depend on the other to follow-through,” Scott adds. “A lot of it comes out of a strong faith – a key element in our ability to work together.”

Achieving balance

In Danes’ four-year study of 187 family-business-owning wives and husbands, one of the greatest stressors consistently involved having a healthy work/family balance. “Planned down time together is critical to the health of the marital relationship and the business,” he said. “It’s certainly more cost-effective than trying to regain a spouse’s affection by buying an extravagant house or expensive jewelry.”

Planning ahead for relational and business health now could have a big impact on the bottom line in 2008.

Dr. Jennifer Baker is a licensed clinical psychologist, a licensed marriage and family therapist, associate professor, and director of the Marriage and Family Program at Forest Institute in Springfield. She may be reached at jbaker@forest.edu.