Why I Believe in #WorkFamily

Families (or households) remain the traditional building blocks of tribes, communities, cities, and, ultimately, societies.

These days, particularly in privileged countries like the United States, it is increasingly popular to disparage the principles of hard work, sacrifice, and working for the greater good — the characteristics that created that privilege in the first place.

It’s therefore become very popular to disparage and attack the use of the “family” metaphor for professional teams and organizations.

You’ve probably ascertained from the title that I remain a fan of that metaphor in the workplace, especially as a Founder/CEO who feels a special affinity towards his team.

I must acknowledge that “real families” are singularly special in our societal hierarchies and traditions. But I’ll soon explain how I see parallels with work families. In fact, I argue that a #WorkFamily has a key critical advantage over a “real family”: while we inherit our real families, we curate our work families. That is, while we accept our real families as they are (no matter how weird, angry, politically-misguided, manipulative, or otherwise — although none of my family members are those things, of course :-)), we need not tolerate that within our work families: we can select the best cultural fits, help them develop and grow, promote those who can serve as role models, and help those who don’t/can’t to find opportunities elsewhere.

Now back to the metaphor and how I use it.

In the early days of building our #WorkFamily, I played three roles with my peers: I was 1) their big brother, 2) their parent, and 3) their grandparent.

• As their big sibling, I realized I needed to be a role model, to help them grow, and to protect them from hurting themselves or the rest of the work family.
• But that wasn’t enough. I also needed to be the parent, an unenviable and incredibly unpopular role (those who are parents know what I mean): I had to be the one who said “no” when it was necessary to do so, to have the difficult conversations, to preempt big/expensive mistakes, to catch details that others missed, and to be responsible for the fall-out from any mistakes anywhere in the family.
• But that wasn’t what I wanted to be. As the founder, I just wanted to be the grandparent: to give the pats on the back, to encourage and cheer good efforts, and to celebrate and reward the successes.

Over time, it was wonderful to start seeing members of the work family take on the role of big brothers and sisters to their peers. It took the first layer of responsibility off of my plate.

But, alas, I still had to be the parent and couldn’t enjoy being a grandparent until some big brothers/sisters grew into the parent role, a role very few people want to do.?

At the risk of sounding disparaging, it’s been my experience that, in the corporate world, most leaders only make it to big sibling-style leadership: they help, they drive, they coach, but they don’t feel the intrinsic sense of accountability and attention to detail required to be a parent.

I really care about my work family. I want to see them grow. It’s OK that their time in the work family may have a start and an end. I want to be there for them if they need me down the road even if they’re eventually with another organization. I’m eager to watch some of them grow and become parents within our work family. Over time, I’m confident I’m going to get to be the grandparent I’ve always wanted to be.