When Work Feels Like “Family”

I am typically skeptical when I read or hear that organizations use the “we are family” metaphor to describe their corporate cultures. Many would agree that a decision to join an organization fundamentally comes from a desire to grow, advance, achieve, and earn – professionally. For me, I love to embark on new leadership journeys enthusiastic about the idea of leveraging the organizational structure as a “living lab” and get hands-on in experimenting, prototyping, and executing at a fast pace. It’s my impatience to see an idea on paper come quickly to life. It’s my personal appetite for disruptive change!

So, what goes through my head when the work environment pushes less for driving action and more for getting along, because “we are like a family”?

Here are my reflections on the good, the bad, and the red flags of family-like corporate cultures.

The Good.

These are altruistic environments in nature. We are expected to care for and help one another and demonstrate rooted values and individual philanthropic aspirations. Leaders and teams are keen to display a strong foundational conviction to the value of family, in some cases even informing their decisions to execute on an initiative versus another. I often hear statements such as “I want to make my family proud” and members calling each other “sisters” and “brothers.” I rationally understand the value of family as a cultural attribute. I know it is important to have people you love and who love you unconditionally – not for what you do but for the complexity of your being. Thus, it can feel comforting at a personal level to believe that the work environment is truly selfless in the promise that “we’re in it together.”

The world of work in family-like culture is seen through a social lens which enriches collaboration and makes the challenging days better carried on as we have dinner together, go out for drinks, reach out for coffee chats, and show concern for others’ personal lives. It can also be inspiring to be in an organization where people show a desire to do good in the world they can affect. You will see team members on every corner who honestly want to become better leaders in what they do. You can also sense a genuine pursuit for a purpose higher than oneself reflected in the questions people ask and the topics they actively engage in the most: leadership, empathy, change, what it means to be a prime teammate. There also is selflessness in the maintenance behaviors that emerge to protect the team in times of crisis. Team members show up in solidarity and strive for unity even if that means a lot of individual compromise. There is laughter, compassion, and a strong force that reinstates harmony when needed for the well-being of everyone.

The bad.

There is the writing on the wall and the eggshells, like it happens in real families.?The hidden dynamics that create deep dysfunction – sometimes temporarily, however often perpetually. If you are tuned in with toxic family dynamics, then you become hyper-vigilant preparing for the moment in which the illusion of a perfect culture vanishes - when people are faced with friction, disagreement and dislike, and someone is finally willing to speak up about things that are utterly uncomfortable. These types of corporate cultures have an immune system already set up to neutralize that which challenges the identity of happy perfection and perceives conflict as a threat, instead of a moment when transformation can be born. People do not confront, nor debate, nor dig into sensitive topics where it can potentially dismantle the peace of the team.

The strong family value system also results in the culture’s deepest cognitive bias and gets in the way of many opportunities for growth in facing innovative circumstances. Organizations are full of very difficult scenarios, politics, and adverse climates which often call for very skillful actions from a leadership point of view. I see it as a critical risk that inhibiting biases based on family values might undermine how the team dynamics could become the biggest source of wisdom in expanding people’s mastery in such situations. When people are not comfortable disagreeing on pressing issues, it often means there are underlying motives to hold them back on showing up vulnerable and stumbling. This also disables risk-taking and perpetuates behaviors that rely on waiting to rescue, to be rescued, or to simply shut down. This can be quite challenging for leaders and team members that abide by creating boundaries, holding accountability, and taking a stance – or as they can be known as: the black sheep, who may question:

• Do we really know what our goals as an organization/ team are? Is there one at all?
• What stories are taking form in the minds of others who, like me, break the rules and question the status quo?
• Is there resentment being built up that we do not talk about?
• What is at stake in by standing and fearing to speak up?
• What is contributing to the dysfunction of our dynamics?
• What do we think about the role of gender differences in how we perceive conflict? Do we recognize any insecurities?
• How does it feel to be different in this organization? Does it make people fragile or strong? Is there intrinsic pain we are not being sensitive of?
• Do we really like each other that much? I mean, not even in the best families people like each other that much all the time. Do we feel like we can have those conversations? Do we feel like it is okay to not like someone in this company??

I am afraid of a pattern that goes unnoticed and get us apathetic in declining momentum as organizations try to move forward, when breakthroughs generally happen if: periods of frustration have taken over, resistance increases, we are challenged against our inherent human need to fit in, we lean into the feeling of wanting to quit because our goals might be too small, we face failure, or we are onto something amazing. I secretly wish organizations strong in family-like cultures knew when to act more like innovation studios and get messy and figure things out together – there is more about the workplace than being sucked in a dysfunctional family, if you ask me!

The red flags.

I reflect a lot on how to exhaust every inch of the time we have together at work. I also pay attention to those subtle red flags that inhibit organizations from leveraging their collective wisdom and fulfilling transformative guiding principles. I recognize these are red flags parallel to replicating family dynamics that don't serve us in the workplace, if we want to remain relevant and competitive:

1. We play it too safe. While harmony can make us feel nurtured and cared for, too much of it can hinder our ability to show up authentically.?People may choose to not hurt someone’s feelings instead of being outspoken to explore a different way of doing things. We may be too nervous to “damage” the family environment and be rejected for it. Asking for or receiving feedback becomes an act of fear and does not serve the team’s learning. We do not disagree often enough, but when we do, we “agree to disagree” – an agreement only to keep fake peace while holding fake power that again does not enable our potential for shifting breakthroughs.?
2. We do not rock the boat. While we do share our thoughts in the context of critical topics, that is all we do. We voice our opinions, but we do not settle on a new paradigm if it becomes too conflictive and away from the conventional frame of reference. We do not explore and try to adopt a different perspective. We do not role play enough or practice what it would be like to walk in someone else’s shoes. We just say what we think, and let it fall flat, and move on - or keep silent. This is due to our need to maintain harmony and avoid conflict. This is all really bad because what it truly conveys is that we do not trust each other to be safe enough to go down a hill of opposing views. When there is tension, teams easily wear out and bring about mechanisms for reinstating superficial peace – way too quickly. We are not equipped to thrive in tension. We do not talk about race, gender, cultural differences – like at all. We rather talk about the new gossip or the current task, even when these are deflections to keeping interactions easy.
3. We rely on an authority figure for survival. Maybe like in any family we look up to our parents. Most of the time a leader. When instructed to work as a team, there is an immediate self-organization to find “the leader.” The leader, however, is not a strong personality, but someone who can be trusted with the harmony of the culture and the facilitation of who gets take turns in the decision making. This way, shared leadership becomes impossible. When new voices start to set their ground, these voices do so timidly and quickly get “put in their place” by the huge pull the culture has for remaining conflict avoidance. Only when the leader backs up a disruptive perspective as valid, dissenting voices can influence the team dynamic towards a productive breakthrough, but not otherwise.
4. ?We preserve an identity culture that holds us back. This is my biggest fear. We do not discuss culture and group dynamics enough. We do not spot dysfunctions it as they play out in real time and course correct them. We do not breakdown what's effective in the culture and what is hindering, we don't even question that nor assess alternatives for evolving it. We do not leverage what we are learning from our cultural dysfunctions to our advantage. If you attentively look around like in video calls, you can see frowning/ confused faces in meetings that do not get checked in with - so we never know the intents until there is a clash.?We do not confirm regularly who we truly are and what kind organization we need to become.

I have learned over the years that the topic of family does not come fully clear without a trauma-informed framework. Therefore, I feel like the most ideal professional environment we can build is one where people can truly show up at their best and sometimes not so much, a space where we could debate and push ourselves out of our comfort zones and courageously deconstruct intellectual perspectives, creative contributions, and anticipated impacts in the best interest of the business we are passionate about. A humanized workplace.

Lindsay