Family estrangement is a pervasive issue that affects many — if not all — families at some point. In the context of family businesses, the stakes are high. Professor Daniel Van Der Vliet, executive director of the Smith Family Business Initiative at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, shares strategies for repairing rifts and finding peace when reconciliation is not possible.
Family estrangement can significantly impact the functioning and success of a family business. Estranged family members may withdraw their support or refuse to collaborate, which can hinder business operations and growth. Moreover, the emotional toll of estrangement can affect decision making and day-to-day interactions, creating a tense and unproductive work environment.
Join Daniel Van Der Vliet, professor and executive director of the Smith Family Business Initiative at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, as he delves into successful strategies for individuals who have a chance to repair family rifts or find peace when reconciliation is not possible. We will look at why the health of the family unit is intrinsically linked to the health of the family business, making it crucial to address and manage both personal and professional conflicts effectively.
What You'll Learn
The Cornell Keynotes podcast is brought to you by eCornell, which offers more than 200 online certificate programs to help professionals advance their careers and organizations. Learn
more in our Family Business Leadership certificate program co-authored by Daniel Van Der Vliet.
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Chris Wofford: Today on Cornell Keynotes, we learn how to overcome deep division within families, particularly in the worst case scenario, estrangement. Our guests are Dan Van Der Vliet, who is Executive Director of Cornell's Smith Family Business Initiative, and Carl Pillemer, who is author of Fault Lines, Fractured Families, and How to Mend Them.
We're examining estrangement in the context of family business. But as our guests have said, in many ways, family is business. So in short, today's show is for anyone who hopes to overcome strained or damaging family relationships, both personal and professional. Check out the episode notes for resources mentioned during the discussion and information on Dan's Family Business Leadership Certificate Program from eCornell.
And now here's my discussion with Dan Van Der Vliet and Carl Pillemer. So when you discuss and define family business, you had mentioned in our pregame huddle yesterday that culture is one of the lenses through which you look at things fundamentally.
Daniel Van Der Vliet: Yeah, we do. And especially here at Cornell, where we have a very international student population, right? So there's some great work done by Jim Grubman and Dennis Jaffe around Culture and family business, and they look at the three predominant forms of culture globally here in the U.S. North America.
We think of ourselves as individualists, right? You know, it's all about the self. You know, we come to school because we want to get a job on Wall Street or in one of the big firms. We want to start a company. But when we look more globally, say Latin America, Northern Africa, India, we think of an honor culture, much closer family relationships.
Often those families are living together or in close proximity with each other. And those families are often in business together in multi generational situations. That certainly changes the dynamic a bit. There's a lot more, what I would call, respect towards that elder generation, and less, maybe conflict than what we might normally see here in an individualist culture.
And then as we move into some of the Asian cultures in particular, the authors describe that as a respect culture, a heavy level of deference towards the senior generation. And you can imagine that makes some of these conversations very difficult. If there's a disagreement or you know, we want to “hey dad, let's talk about this”, that's a hard conversation to have when, you know, dad is always right you know, what dad says goes.
So in the family business context, that can play out around some of these relationship challenges that we have, especially as it pertains to what my role in the business might be, what my relationships with my siblings might be. So sometimes some of those conflicts might get a little bit more suppressed in some of those cultures or maybe it's not seen as conflict the way that we would view it here.
Chris Wofford: We were talking about the structure of a family business and you mentioned how critical it is to have some governance around this, right? External steering, advisory kind of things going on. Tell us a little bit about that and why you think it's so necessary for a family business.
Daniel Van Der Vliet: Yeah, I would say that governance is sort of like the relief valve, right?
So governance takes a lot of these emotional conversations that might be present in any family or business, but provides some structure around how we're going to discuss this or how we're going to make a decision about it. Let's say somebody dies. You know, what's going to happen when somebody passes away?
There's a lot of a trauma that can happen in the family emotionally. They might not want to think about some of the decisions that need to be made at that point. Governance states, you know, here's what we're gonna do. Here's how we're gonna provide for the family. Here's how we're gonna take care of ownership in the business.
Same holds true of, you know, some of the more normal conversations of, hey, Can I work in this family business or not? Why did you choose my sibling over me for leadership? Well, if governance exists, then there's more of a process by which those decisions are made versus mom or dad just like that one better because they were older, because they were male, because they were female, whatever.
So it takes a lot of that emotion out of the decision, and at least provides a little bit more of a process by which you arrive at that decision.
Chris Wofford: Carl, I want to kick it over to you. In your research and your observation, thinking about family businesses or families, what are you observing as far as intergenerational relationships?
How do you think about this stuff? How do you set the table with talking about intergenerational family businesses and the dynamics at play?
Karl Pillemer: Well, if I can do a little sociology, there's one way I think that you can think about it. In sociology, we make a distinction between primary groups and secondary groups.
And primary groups are your family, they provide love, affection, etc. And secondary groups, like a university, get jobs done. And so if you imagine a Venn diagram, or first a diagram with those two separate circles and you overlap them. You are really creating a situation when worlds collide. So as Dan was saying, in your business, that's not a family business, issues of parental favoritism, issues of sibling rivalry, issues of the virtual unbreakability of relationships don't come up.
So I think sometimes that's, you know, when we start to think intergenerationally. It really does merge two very different models of how human beings interact. In fact, I would say it's amazing how well it works for a lot of family businesses because we aren't used to combining these two spheres. Intergenerationally is a really key issue because now, we see the influence, not just of different generations in the family, but of the cohort you're in. So Generation X, Generation Z, Baby Boomers, we bring the historical circumstances in which we grew up, the influence of our peers, back into these family situations.
I'll give just one example that actually came up in a meeting I spoke at that Dan had organized, where a family wealth manager talked about the patriarch who had made the family's fortune in fossil fuels, and the next generation who wanted to do all their philanthropy around alternative energy.
So you have not just the intergenerational dynamics of love and emotion and family, but you also have the fact that generations differ in fundamental ways.
Chris Wofford: How do we think about family businesses versus non-family businesses? What are the fundamental differences? We have 80 percent of our audience involved in family businesses.
I’m sure they have some understanding of how this works. How do you distinguish between the two?
Daniel Van Der Vliet: Yeah, that's a great point. We use something called the three circle diagram. If you can imagine three interlocking circles of family, ownership, and management. Right? So the question was, do you work? Are you from a family business?
Do you work in it or are you part of the family? So in one of those circles are the family members themselves. And so you have a very different perspective. You live this. You know, you might be in the second, third, fourth generation. This is something that's passed down to you. We use words like legacy in those situations.
So there's a whole set of situations and decisions that need to be made in the family circle. For those people who are here today who work in a family business but are not part of it, you're in that other circle of, you know, we're here because this is our job. Right? And so sometimes those family issues creep into the business and that can have some pretty serious ramifications.
If there's a conflict going on, if there's estrangement, if there's somebody we don't talk about because they're not here anymore. All of that anxiety from the family can sometimes percolate into the business and have its own effects even outside the family. So it's really important to be able to regulate some of these things, to be able to say, “okay, this is a family thing. We need to keep it out of the business” versus “this is a business issue that we need to deal with in that particular circle”
Chris Wofford: You had told me that the health of the family is inextricably linked with the health of the business. Its ability to thrive.
Daniel Van Der Vliet: Absolutely. I mean, if we look at the businesses that have succeeded 2, 3, 4 generations, they have something going for them, right?
You know, often, what can tear apart a family business is this conflict, is the fact that we don't talk about certain things. There's the elephant in the room that we've never dealt with. You can imagine that those businesses are gonna be much more challenged when it comes to passing down to the next generation or, you know, picking up on Carl's example of, how do you make that decision around? We made our money in fossil fuels, but now we want to move into renewables or alternative energy. If there's not a healthy context for that family to have that conversation, you can imagine the path forward is gonna be very difficult there.
Karl Pillemer: I was wondering, Dan, as we've been talking about this, it's occurred to me, we've found in our studies of family estrangement outside of family businesses that, perhaps not unsurprisingly, money is a really major pathway to at least temporary family estrangements, wills, inheritance, and so forth.
I was wondering if there's a way that a family business can somehow inoculate itself against that fallout. So, for example, one of the interviewees in my book was part of a very successful family business. The parents got older, the father who founded it died, the mother made the determination to leave the business, tattoo siblings excluded another without telling the person.
So they found it out only when she died. That had ripple effects down through generations. The person I interviewed had cousins who were as close as siblings who are no longer allowed to talk with her. And I wonder, you know, it's always a possibility that something like this could happen. I wonder if there's a way to prevent these kinds of psycho emotional ripple effects in families that can occur when there are these kinds of business level conflicts.
Daniel Van Der Vliet: So I would go back to Chris's question about governance. You know, one form of governance within that family circle would be the role of a family council. So this is where we talk as a family about all of these issues.
What are our perspectives on wealth? You know, how are we gonna transfer this wealth to the next generation? What is the responsibility for the next generation and how much freedom are we going to give them? To make some of these decisions about, you know, we want to go into a completely different space or we want to give it away.
We want to be more philanthropic than we have been previously. That would be the conversation that could be structured in a family council, a family meeting type setting, that would pull it out of the business, and keep it solely in the family. Also, that would allow other family voices to be involved.
You know, if there are only a certain number of people working in the business from the family, but you have all the in-laws, you have the younger generation, you have the older generation, that gives all of those families a voice now that they don't have in the business circle.
Chris Wofford: So we're going in the direction of pitfalls and potential conflicts and shortcomings and all of that.
I'll start with you Dan. I think both of you had something to say about this when we talked about it. Does a family business have a particular competitive advantage and what is it?
Daniel Van Der Vliet: We like to say it does, you know, and in the best scenarios, you know, where they have an advantage is when there's this great alignment between the family and the business.
So, let me use the example of SC Johnson, right? We're in the SC Johnson College of Business here, and Fisk Johnson has talked openly about how being a family business is a huge competitive advantage. A few things there. One, they have the freedom to make their decisions very quickly. Right? So, while they might have a board of directors, there's a certain level of family control that the family retains.
This is very common in family businesses, regardless of the size. And when they can make a decision on, hey, we want to acquire this, we want to move into this space, we want to sell this, they don't have to go before the board of directors. Also, you know, in the best of scenarios, what I was just describing with Carl, where you have all family voices, suddenly, there's a great deal of unity in the family, and so when those decisions are made, there's a lot of buy in around that.
Now you can also imagine that there's an underbelly to that as well. So if you've got one person in control or a certain group of family members, and they're making decisions that go against the best interests of the business because they want to favor certain people in the family or certain individuals that can go off rails really quickly.
So, I call this like the double edged sword of family business. We certainly want to extol all these great virtues of family business when it comes to that competitive advantage, but we've seen many instances where that can be a huge disadvantage as well.
Karl Pillemer: I would agree with Dan that way. You know, it's like Harry Truman wanted a one armed economist.
So you would stop saying on the one hand and on the other hand, I mean, I think it's the same thing is that when it works from, you know, somewhat limited work we've done on this. It's sort of the best of all possible worlds because people have a sense of trust. There are those underlying emotional bonds.
There, you know, can be a kind of openness and discussion that might not exist. And there is a sense of permanence that the person's not going to leave the following day if they get angry. And I think, when it doesn't work it is very challenging, but I think it has all those strengths when the family business is running well, when it has the kind of assistance standards, you know, you mix those bonds of loyalty, love and affection and trust.
It's kind of an unbeatable combination, if you keep things on the rails.
Daniel Van Der Vliet: We call that family capital. Families have certain levers that they can pull that other businesses cannot. People are willing to work for free. You know, they'll come back when there's a medical situation or somebody dies unexpectedly.
People will leave their careers, come back, and so that's a form of family capital that really can be a huge advantage.
Chris Wofford: I want to move into Act Two now. Estrangement. Carl, how do you define it?
Karl Pillemer: So I find estrangement, I define estrangement, pretty strongly. There's a lot of, there’s some debate in the literature as to what it is, but I really believe that estrangement is different from emotional distance, from not being in contact a lot, from some kind of psychological distance.
So by estrangement we mean the person considers himself to be estranged and has essentially no contact with one or more family members. So in a world where we are hyper connected through social media, a person has as successfully as they can said, I never want to speak to you or hear from you again.
And in our research and in the things we've learned, there's a qualitative difference between people who are still in contact and in conflict and having a bad relationship in a situation where somebody says, you know, I'm done. And for immediate family members, for siblings, and for parents and children, it's a very big statement to make.
And, you know, I think it's very helpful for us, for any researchers out there, to keep this distinction in mind, that this is a different phenomenon from just bad social relationships. It is, as you said earlier, an extreme form of family conflict that people feel they can only resolve by, you know, having no contact with the other person.
Chris Wofford: So given that, I want to poll our audience again and find out what people are experiencing out there. So we'll ask you with poll question number two here. Are you witness to or are you yourself undergoing estrangement with a family member? So we'll let our audience answer that. And Carl, I want to ask you, while we're standing by for responses there, you make an interesting distinction between good and bad estrangement.
There’s a good side here?
Karl Pillemer: I would probably word it a little differently, although I would go along with the sentiment.
Chris Wofford: Okay.
Karl Pillemer: By that I mean, you know, generally, in my view, in clinical views, and in some of the research I've done, there are real advantages to overcoming an estrangement.
And we can talk about those later, but for a lot of people in our studies, even after being estranged for 5, 10, 15 or more years, the process of reconciliation resulted in a lot of personal growth and the rewards of the relationship that was restored, even if imperfect, was still worth it. But it really is clear, and it's important to state, that people shouldn't feel stigmatized or shamed or guilty if they believe that they are in a relationship that is damaging, dangerous, was abusive.
There is a subset of folks out there for whom this may be a healthy choice. In general, though, I will say, lots of estrangements are situational, they're temporary, and people really can overcome them. But we don't want to say that this is always a situation where you should remain in contact with your family, no matter how bad it is, because that's unrealistic and unhealthy for some people.
Chris Wofford: Can you recommend how we might start thinking about overcoming estrangement? I'm not saying finding solutions right away, but what kind of mindset do we need to get ourselves into when we start considering repairing family relationships?
Karl Pillemer: Right. I'll be brief and Dan, you can maybe expand on this.
We did what was the largest study ever done of people who have reconciled after estrangement. So we have in depth interviews with around a hundred people and we track their course back. Typically for people, it begins with a contempt. It's sort of a contemplation stage. People begin to have anticipatory regret if they won't see the person again.
Often the person they're estranged from has changed, that they've gotten better. So a person goes through that kind of process. The other couple of steps that almost everybody who reconciled was able to do is one, you know, to set much clearer boundaries than they had before and get the other person to agree.
And almost always people had to let go of the past. You know, if I believe that my brother, Timmy, and I do not have a brother, Timmy, was a sadist growing up, and Timmy believes he was doing harmless teasing. 30 years hence, you aren't going to be able to impose your view of the past on the other person. So very often people just move forward.
The final thing, almost everybody who did reconcile after a long estrangement, typically had some kind of beneficial psychological counseling or outside help to do it.
Chris Wofford: So Dan, how do we think about pivoting to business? How do we think about what structurally needs to happen within the business in order to reconcile following an estrangement?
Daniel Van Der Vliet: Joe Astrakhan, one of our Cornell family business fellows, talks about solving structural problems with structural solutions and solving family problems with relationship problems with relationship solutions. So I think it's important to make the distinction of where that line is between this is a family issue, you know, I have a problem with my brother and this is a business issue.
We're just not operating well or communicating well in that business sense. So I think that's a really important first step. I would say a few things that people can do, you know, talking about Carl and some of the work he's done in his book. First, I think the reconciliation process is important for the self.
And I've been through this myself and in my own estrangement issue, did not have full reconciliation, but at least the process leading up to that, the interactions that happened with this sibling and then coming out of that, I felt much better. Right? It was just kind of getting this off of my mind, knowing that I at least had sort of cleared my deck personally.
But when we talk about how that can then transition into the business, you know, say my brother and I had worked together, and this was permeating into our family business, that can have much different aspects. And I would say, in a business context, a great thing that a lot of business leaders can do is think about a peer group.
Think about, either a CEO or a next gen group. These are things that we call them in family business, where you're around a table with six or eight of your peers. You can have these conversations around, “Hey, I'm really going through this thing with my brother right now when we work together. What do you recommend?”
How can we solve that? So it just gives you a little bit more grounding. It often opens up the conversation to other people saying, “oh yeah, I'm going through that same thing” or “I went through it” or “I feel like I'm about to go through this, how can you help me there?”
Karl Pillemer: First of all, I think, you know, Dan has touched on this. I would say for the individuals in our studies who were estranged because of financial reasons, whether in a business or for wills, inheritance, business deals, whatever. When I asked what they could do to overcome the estrangement, many of them said the equivalent of a time machine, that they wish that they could go back and seek out some kind of professional mediation.
It was one of the biggest regrets. Many people involved in these financial or business issues, especially if it's a small business that they don't have other supports or kinds of family counsels, They really, really wish that they had sought out a mediator. There are plenty of resources for that, for that, it's easily available.
So one of the biggest things was to prevent estrangement is when this is getting to the point that someone is about to call it quits, to look at a mediator. The other thing I think that Dan made me think of is if you read about toxic families, and look on Amazon for toxic parents or children, if you watch a succession, you have the image that these families are cesspools of conflict. We have to remember the vast majority of families are getting along pretty well. You know, even though there's a lot of estrangement, the overall course, and I'm sure it's true with family businesses, I assume, you know, the vast majority are functioning well with one another.
So we have to not overblow this to a sense that these families are all like hornets nests of conflict.
Chris Wofford: There's something going on in the chat here.
Sebastian and Daniel and myself are wondering. Carl, they're asking about intergenerational legacy stuff. Transitioning the business from one generation to another. You have some observations about intergenerational relationships that maybe you could share with us.
Karl Pillemer: I would, yeah, I mean, there are a couple of interesting facts about intergenerational relationships in general that I think really do apply.
And there's one I'm going to share because we have limited time and I'm curious for Dan's thoughts. The one thing that we have to remember is that the generations view the importance of family relationships differently. And sociologists have invented a term for this called the intergenerational stake, S T A K E, not the dinner. And that means that if you look at surveys, not just of estrangement, but surveys over 60 or 70 years of the quality of parent child relationships, parents care more. Parents have invested this vast amount in their children. So if you look at surveys of parents and adult children, parents are much more likely to say, “this relationship is a 10 in importance to me. I miss my children when they aren't there.” It's not that children don't love their parents, but they have more options that they're building their own lives. Sometimes that imbalance gets ignored. And sometimes, especially in people in my age range and above, there's a my way or the highway, drawing the line in the sand.
And I think a lot of the older generation doesn't realize how easy it can be for children to say it. If this is a persistently unpleasant interaction. I'm out for a while. Yeah. So I think that's the first point I would make that it's not just a family unit that the generations really are different. Again, there's a lot of love, a lot of commitment, but they have different levels of commitment, and I think that's critical for people to be aware of.
Chris Wofford: Dan, did you have something?
Daniel Van Der Vliet: Well, I remember what I was going to say to Carl's point around, you know, good families versus toxic families. Yeah. And I think that's a really interesting point because sometimes this can just be two people. Right? In my family, I've noticed this trend of, you know, dads don't get along with their sons.
There's a little bit of that sort of, you know, male friction there. But you look throughout the rest of the family, there's often a lot of very healthy relationships. So I think that's a really important distinction of, this is not an indication that there's something terribly wrong with the family or the system, right?
Sometimes it's just two people just don't get along.
Chris Wofford: Yeah. Hey, I completely ignored the poll results. I know. 63 percent of our audience are undergoing estrangement themselves or with a family member, right? So a lot of family business people, a lot of people working or dealing with estrangement here today.
So that's useful to know. Carl, you've observed strategies in people. who successfully reconcile using science based tools. Tell me a little bit about that.
Karl Pillemer: Sure, and I, you know, I'll be brief on a couple that I had mentioned a bit. First, I really do think that if someone is considering reconciling, whether you're the one who caused it or you're the recipient of it, really meeting with a good counselor or a family therapist.
One problem is that it's very atypical that both people in the estrangement will come together. But there are family therapists and psychologists who will really help you at least look at your own role in it. Perhaps you may be blaming the other person excessively and not seeing that it's a relationship issue.
So that's one piece, is that really exploring your motivation for reconciliation, why you want to do it, you know, how you'll feel if it doesn't work out. So I would say that's one key place to begin. One of the biggest problems is when, and this may be the case, I'm guessing, of a lot of our listeners, there's someone else who has done this.
So someone else has, is stonewalling you, has moved to a point where emails are unreturned, gifts are returned, there's no connection at all. I wish science had a solution for that, and it really doesn't. But from a mix of clinical and research, there are two principles, I would say. One is not to give up. So almost everyone who overcame that situation didn't give up.
They continued to send cards, like not stalking, of course, but to express their availability. And they worked through the grief if it was not going to be reconciled. It's not quite treated like a death, but they actually work to make themselves feel somehow resigned to it. So I think those would be the two I'd start with.
But the hardest one, and I'm going to guess, so we may have comments on this, is a person who wants back in and isn't being let back in.
Chris Wofford: Right. So short of scientific, go-to’s, we're thinking about other personal characteristics that may serve someone who needs to reconcile in a strange relationship.
I mean, we've talked about them a little bit and resilience just came up in Carl's answer there and stick to itiveness and right, dedication to the cause, etc. Any others when you think about family businesses that serve to these ends, positive outcomes?
Daniel Van Der Vliet: I will just underscore. I think Carl's book in this regard is a wonderful resource.
It's a very easy read, but it's also fact and research-based. It's helped me in my own situation. It’s funny, you know, in our prep call, Carl works in this space as a sociologist here. I'm the family business guy, but yet we're both dealing with it as well. So we're not immune from, you know, some of these relationship challenges, especially as it comes to family, and I've dealt with one that's been very personal and still pretty raw.
I think, you know, to pick up on your question, Chris, I kept it out of the classroom for a long time. Right? You know, I wanted to be the guy that could kind of teach family business, but until I really acknowledged it and started to think of, first, my own role in that situation, I think that's a little bit of humility and self reflection goes a long way, but one of the things, you know, picking up on Carl's book again is think about the other person.
Right? You know, what brought them to this spot? And it wasn't until I looked at, you know, my sibling in that very sort of human context and understood, he was going through stuff as well. He had his own relationship challenges. He had his own family challenges, financial, physical, whatever they might be, and that really helped me sort of think about it at a much more sort of human level and doing the things, you know, Carl had just talked about, like just being sort of persistent, but not annoying, you know, sending the text on birthday or at least a call and a voicemail from time to time until the point that, you know, there was at least communication and an opportunity to kind of see each other face to face and coming out of that, you know, feeling somewhat relieved. So I think that's important for any of us in these situations because I think on one hand, it can be very isolating.
And, you know, based on what we just saw, two thirds of the people watching today are facing this in some capacity. So it does take patience, it does take a little bit of courage, you know, realizing that, you might not get 100 percent reconciliation, you might not get that apology, but really it's important to do that for yourself.
To just sort of clear that out of the back of your mind so you're not always thinking about it. Like why won't he or she talk with me? Why does this, you know, persist? Because that's, to me, I think where it then begins to affect others around you. Either your spouse, your children, or others in your family.
And just, you know, have sort of an attitude that things are not always going to be perfect. But, there is a point at which, you know, we just have to sort of quit litigating the past and move forward.
Karl Pillemer: Yeah, I would add just one point to Dan, if we have time, that on one of the psychological conundrums that occurs in estrangement is that we know from decades of interpersonal relations research that direct interpersonal rejection is one of the most stressful things that occurs to people.
And we also know that when you encounter direct interpersonal rejection, as you do in an estrangement that are the things leading up to it, people naturally get extremely defensive. So over and over in interviews, I would hear people say that they had no idea why the estrangement occurred.
Then they would go through the interview and reveal a whole series of conflicts. So, the one thing I think, like Dan's saying, it's not that you admit blame, but a serious examination, like in a family business, I think, would be a great example. How did I contribute, in any way, to the conflict that led to this.
I, you know, we see that in conflicts about family caregiving, other issues. And the second thing I would like to kind of second with Dan is that even though not everybody should reconcile, if I'm asked what surprised me most about the studies we did, it's how positive an experience, even the attempt to reconcile, was for so many people.
It was really a remarkable engine for personal growth. Even if the resulting relationship was imperfect, and thinking of business, you know, or kind of business concepts, people describe reconciliation like a discipline, like learning a martial art or running a marathon. You know, there's no winning it.
There's no kind of final goal. You're always improving, always working on it. And they found that discipline of trying was incredibly powerful for them. And I think, you know, if that could be translated into sort of a business context, the third thing I would encourage people so strongly to do if a rift occurs, is to not let it spread down generations and across generations. Get the people together to make sure that nieces, nephews, cousins still have the ability to get together. That really, from my work, has been the most tragic. Is the actual splitting of the family into multiple groups who no longer have contact. And look, people call the family a haven in a heartless world, even though things are broken down to some extent, you know, like Robert Frost's line that it's when you go there, they have to take you in.
It's true. I mean, for a lot of people, it's not just love and affection. This is a powerful social and economic resource. And you want to keep your descendants in that mix, and that's one of the most worrisome things in the family business rifts that we've seen is everybody stopping communicating. So I would work to avoid that in any way possible.
Chris Wofford: Go ahead, Dan.
Daniel Van Der Vliet: Yeah, I think two things I want to pick up on there. And one, I think to Carl's point of sort of the discipline of doing this. I think that also from a business perspective, you're modeling good behavior. Right? So if they're aware of some of these relationship challenges, but they see you working at it, this is just, you know, this is good management, right?
This is, you know, being a good communicator or being maybe a little more humble and showing some humility and, you know, realizing that maybe we don't always have the answers, but we're striving towards them. So I think that's a really important part right there. And then the latter part of what you talked about, Carl, again, kind of looking at this through the business versus family lens, you know, in business, these decisions that we make, the actions that we take, they might have impact for a year, five years, maybe 10 years if we're really good.
But these things that we do in our family, they can last for generations. So a rift like that, that can carry on for generations well beyond us. And I think that's really important when we think about how important family is. We're all from some form of family. And we want that to be a place where we're comfortable, where we're loved, where we're trusted. So the more work you can do to keep that unit intact is really critical.
I'll just say one other thing, and this kind of occurred to me on the drive here today, you know, I think social media often gets very maligned. I think one, somewhat positive aspect here is when we think about risks and again, just kind of thinking of my own personal situation, social media does allow us a way to stay connected to some of those family members that we might be estranged of, or thinking of maybe their children, and just ways of, you know, maybe, okay, so maybe my sibling and I aren't talking, but I can still keep lines of communication open with other family members so that that permanent rift does not occur for generations to come.
Chris Wofford: I imagine that a lot of people in our audience experience this as a solitary endeavor. You can feel really alone when you're in this, right? And, you know, latching on to what you said about personal growth, Carl. How does this fit into the way you teach this in family business in your certificate program?
I mean, this fits into a larger picture. There's a through line here. How do you talk about this?
Daniel Van Der Vliet: Again, as I said earlier, it wasn't until a few years ago that I really actually began bringing this into my classroom. And the results were really strong. I had people coming up to me after class, really thanking me for just sort of exposing myself and making myself vulnerable in that capacity.
The certificate that we've developed with eCornell, it includes a lot of elements that are just great tools for managing some of these family relationships. I would encourage it for anyone, even if you're not in a family business. The course that I teach talks about family diagrams, and this is a way to sort of chart family relationships over time so we can see some of these patterns developing.
In my case, you know, there's been sort of this transmission of father to son difficulties. And that's something that's made me very aware of how do I stop that, right? There's a governance course in there as well. So, you know, what are some of the healthy rules and policies we can put in place to maybe pull the emotion out of some of these difficult situations.
So we're thinking about better either family decisions and or business decisions. There's a whole course on family relationships and dynamics, which really has nothing to do with business at all, but it looks at all of these family systems. Those are things that we're talking about that Carl has written about in his book.
And then the last course is a family wealth and values course. How do we talk about some of these things that we do want to pass down from generation to generation?
Chris Wofford: Yeah, thinking about legacy. Carl and your website and in Fault Lines, the book, you have some resources to share. I'm thinking about next steps for our audience, right?
Karl Pillemer: You know, it's unfortunate because family therapy and clinical psychology is just beginning to embrace this as a particular issue, so if you look at the doorstop size handbook of family therapy, it doesn't have an entry on estrangement, so that there aren't a lot of people who specialize in this.
One resource for people, there is one group of people who do coaching and therapy in a tradition known as Bowen, B O W E N theory, and there is a Bowen Center that people can look up, and they actually will do coaching specifically around these issues. They do these kinds of historical family maps, and they really do work with people in situations like this, perhaps so we can provide at some point, we have created a free online course for professionals who can access that through Cornell. I would say in terms of resources, and this may be controversial, but I'm going to go with it. I agree with Dan about the benefits of social media for some of these ways of staying in contact with somebody who might not want to have full contact. People do have to be very careful though with online chat rooms and online groups around estrangement.
I talk in the book that they're extremely polarizing generally. There aren't any, for both, say estranged parents and children so that there are parent Facebook groups, etc. that demonize children, you know, categorize them as military deserters. And there are children's groups who use nicknames like N Mom and N Dad for narcissist mom and narcissist dad.
And you'll see threads like my mother is dying of cancer and she wants to get back in touch, help me to resist that. So there are some of these which are useful, but people just need to be aware that if you go to an estranged parents or an estranged child Reddit group or otherwise, you're going to be inundated with one very strong viewpoint.
And a number of our interviewees found that less than helpful. So, I would say, you know, a family therapist, all these resources you can find fairly easily are probably a good way to start. And I would agree with Dan, I think, on one other issue. You can reach out to family members who aren't involved in the estrangement and also try to get their assistance.
Chris Wofford: Absolutely, Dan.
Daniel Van Der Vliet: Yeah, I mean that's one of the benefits of the family diagram that we've talked about and one of the things I challenge my students with when they do that is, you know, most of us can go back obviously to our parents, sometimes to our grandparents, but when we get beyond that, there’s a lot of empty spaces on that family diagram, and I will challenge the students to put it to their family members to have some of those conversations like, “Hey, I don't know a lot about this uncle or that aunt.” You know, “what happened here?” and I always give my students a little bit of leeway and say, “just tell them your professor wants you to do this.” This is an assignment, so that gives them a little bit of that operating room to maybe ask some of these tougher questions that might be more difficult if you're just sitting around the Thanksgiving table or something like that.
Chris Wofford: Check out the episode notes for info on eCornell's online family business leadership certificate program and resources for overcoming estrangement mentioned during our discussion. Thanks again friends, and please subscribe to stay in touch.