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Business Consultation

My work with business consultation is varied and diverse. I have worked with family businesses, insurance companies, departments within colleges, financial businesses, and sports teams. Much of this work centers on increasing productivity, reducing employee absentism, creating a healthier working environment, establishing better team work, and developing leadership skills. There are many people who do this kind of work. What makes me different, I believe, is what I focus on within these various cultures. In my years of practice, I have witnessed over and over again how unresolved family of origin issues get in the way of business success. Whether working with a family business or a business not related to family, it is my belief that many of these organizations are impacted negatively by the "stuff" we bring to work everyday. While the old axiom "leave your personal life at home when you come to work" is well known, I think it is almost impossible to do.

Consequently, I have begun to look at business problems as reflecting unresolved family of origin issues. Let me site a few examples. A boss recently called to consult with me because he was having a difficult time with one of his managers. He had been having this problem for a long time. After consulting with him, it became clear that the boss wass truggling with this employee because the employee reminded the boss of his mother. His unresolved issues with his mother where getting in the way of him addressing the issues with his employee. I was consulted by an employee who was having authority issues at work. After talking about it and exploring this person's history, it became evident that their authority issues stem back into their family of origin and specifically his relationship with his father. He was playing out his unresolved issues with his dad with all the authorities that were in his life. Another example, a family business consulted with me because the father, who owned the business, wanted to retire, but didn't feel that he could turn over the business to anyone in the family because of all the historical strife. He was afraid that all he had created would be lost due to the emotional and psychological problems of the family. We consulted about this and then decided a course of action. We decided to engage the family in family therapy to try to resolve the issues before turning over the business. We are still in that process.

Every office is influenced by the relative mental health of its employees. The more emotionally and psychologically mature employees are, the more productive and efficient a work environment tends to be. The less healthy employees are, the more often they tend to bring unresolved family of origin issues to work which are played out and interfer with work environment productivity and efficiency.