Faith & Family Business
The value of non-family team members in the family business (Proverbs 17:2)
My second Faith & Family Business series considers the book of Proverbs. Though written thousands of years ago, these proverbs still have a timeliness and power today. My aim is to consider these maxims in the context of our current experience of living and working with family members. Thanks for your feedback and sharing this post with others.
While much of my writing focuses on the family members in a family business, Proverbs also points to those who serve the family:
A servant who deals wisely will rule over a son who acts shamefully and will share the inheritance as one of the brothers. (Prov. 17:2)
Though the passage contrasts a servant acting wisely with a family member who brings shame, let’s focus on the servant’s role in the family business.
A modern day servant might be a key non-family employee, or even a non-family CEO. Those non-family employees bring wisdom and experience, often a sense of calm, and a complementary approach to decisions. They can offer a more objective opinion, be a sounding board for family members, and side step some of the assumptions and politics that plague family relationships. (By the way, those strengths can also wear them out, so be careful!)
Wise family business members often focus on who, regardless of DNA, has the right temperament and skills to fulfill an important role in the organization. I’ve witnessed a number of efforts to bring non-family members into ownership, make them centerpieces of succession plans, and even provide them an inheritance.
Does your family business, or a family business you know, have a key non-family team member? What place in the leadership, management, or ownership structure of your enterprise do you envision for them?