Merging Friendships (Relatives) and Business Relationships
As I have discussed in the previous two posts, friendships and business relationships represent two different paradigms for relating. The former is more concerned about the emotional-personal connection or bond between the two parties, whereas the latter is focused on the project with the personal aspects only considered insofar as it will promote the project. Another way of putting it is to say that friendships are about the relationship for its own sake, while the business relationship is primarily for the end result driven by a profit motive.
Since friendships are emotionally based and business is financially based, and since people have a distinct relationship with money that is particularly strong, bringing business into a friendship adds a level of volatility to the friendship that can be quite explosive. It is inherently unstable. Illustrating the conflict between money and life itself, the old-time comic, Jack Benny, tells the story of being held up by an armed gunman who said, “Your money or your life!” to which Benny replies, “I’m thinking it over.”
So when friends decide to go into business together, or when a friend approaches you to buy a product or offers to “help save you money” if you do business with them, red flags of warning should immediately pop up. You are swimming in dangerous waters. The water may at first seem quite calm and even inviting, but the chances are high that a strong undertow exists. The friendship can easily turn from being the safe, nurturing bond that had existed into a relationship filled with unstated expectations and pressures to perform experienced by both parties. As you and your friend’s attention is directed towards business and money, the bonds of friendship may dissolve.
Suggestions
- Before doing business with a friend ask yourself whether the friendship is strong enough to endure the inevitable challenges of doing business together.
- Explore the hidden expectations. What do each of you expect from one another?
- If you are being asked, are you given room to say “no” without jeopardizing the relationship? Ask yourself whether you feel pressured.
- If you are doing the asking, are you giving room to your friend to say “no” without jeopardizing the relationship? Are you pressuring them.
- Are you acting out of desperation, either pressuring or making decisions under duress which might affect your judgment?
- Before going into a partnership with a friend/relative, ask yourself would whether you would do so if the person were NOT your friend or relative. If the answer is “no” then don’t!
- Be mindful of your preconceptions, assumptions, and presumptions: check out their validity in the real world.
- Before doing business with a friend or relative ask yourself how comfortable you would feel if your were unhappy with the product or service and would it affect your relationship.
- Most importantly, ask yourself whether you are willing to lose the relationship should something go awry in the business transaction.
[Please add your thoughts and experiences on this topic in the comment section of this blog. This blog is intended as a forum for folks to raise issues, share experiences, and promote dialogue on important issues of contemporary life. Please sign up as a Facebook Fan at www.docdreyfus.com/fanpage. For additional information about me and my practice, please visit my website at www.DocDreyfus.com.]
Tags: awareness, communication, dialogue, human connection, living consciously, Personal Growth, relationship
I’ve experienced much of what you’ve written about here, regarding giving advice, business, family relations….
Regarding advice, you’re so right, it’s such a sensitive thing …I try not to give advice unless asked and then I listen carefully for an inflection that says, ‘I’m asking but I’m not really receptive to you telling me anything”…. it’s like religion and politics.
I’d tried to give advice to my daughter over the years but she alienated easily, especially after her marriage. Now, I try to keep my mouth shut. And even tho’ I keep my mouth shut, because I’ve made suggestions in the past, I’m stigmatized by association with those earlier suggestions. Man, had she heeded, she might have avoided some disasters. The same with Sis-in-law, my brother’s widow, a hippie girl who knew nothing of finances…When her husband, my brother, died. My husband offered to help her and guide her investments, etc. She stubbornly blew him off and quickly ended up in dire straits, with us often lending an ‘after the fact’ helping hand. She told us she doesn’t want us in her life but we should give her money!
A friend whose hubby was a philanderer asked me if I thought she should have something ‘done’ to make herself more attractive. I said, I really don’t think you need it, but if you think so, if it will make you feel better.’ … she became so insulted it ended our friendship.
Many times you can see the train wreck coming and want to say, please don’t do that!’. I’m committed to helping family and old enough to be respected (LOL) and I thought it was a good thing to try to prevent a big mistake. ‘A committed person can change the world’…Maybe the world but I would omit family from that. Stronger than the French ‘Resistance’ is family ‘Resistance”. Why is that?
My husband and I had a successful business, we’ve been together 40 years, and we sometimes advise each other … Marriage seems to be intimate enough to be a safe place for advice. Yet, there are some things that we cannot utter in that safe place…. or remedy… too incendiary! Is that common, I wonder?
You nailed this one too…I was our film company’s rep, out to start our business and I made calls on advertising friends, good prospects, I thought…a few were very close friends. I didn’t ‘sell’ them. They received me lovingly, responded enthusiastically to our sample reel, yet no jobs ensued!?… I was surprised to learn that angle of human relationship. They were insulted that I should be so mercenery to expect to make money from friends. Took decades to heal those inadvertant wounds.
In our first two years in business we had partners. It didn’t work out for all the reasons you mentioned. We were of different backgrounds. They stole from us. We couldn’t stand them. It was a disaster. Yet later we took on a friend we knew for many years and it was a wonderful conflict free business relationship until we parted amicably and retired. So, business with friends is possible but probably not with family and not worth the probability of destroying family ties, better to leave them untested.