When families go into business together, they often find they're faced with a multitude of new challenges. When conflicts arise and tensions mount, disagreements can threaten not only their familial relationships but also the very continuance and profitability of their business interests. As this trend became apparent to Jack Brunner, Ph.D., he decided to apply his talents as a Clinical Psychologist to helping the business community resolve these issues. Dr. Brunner founded The Beacon Consultancy, and became a charter principal of the Global Consulting Partnership, a national company comprised of several hundred psychologists devoted to assisting corporations and family businesses with their human resource needs. We visited with Dr. Brunner recently, and listened as he outlined his company's offerings and services:
The Beacon Consultancy specializes in family business consulting, leadership development, executive coaching, and career derailment prevention. I apply my skills as a psychologist to a wide array of business problems, and offer seventeen different types of coaching, including the following capabilities:
Family Business Consulting
All families have their conflicts, and when family members go into business together, their conflicts usually intensify. Tensions flare or get buried as family members cope with who is in control and who is being criticized. As Time magazine noted in 2001,
"Managing growth can be especially challenging in a family firm, and more and more family owned businesses are turning to psychologists versed not only in psychology, but in business consulting ... because the stakes are huge in terms of passing a business along from one generation to the next."
The average life span of a family business is twenty-five years, and fewer than thirty-three percent make it through the second generation. These family businesses often collapse or decline because they failed to manage the complex and emotion-laden issue of succession.
Leadership Development and Executive Coaching
Coaching can express the company's commitment to its people. If people are truly the primary resource of a company as most organization attest, they must be managed and developed like other assets. People can change, but the most substantive and permanent change is realized when they develop from the inside out. Consequently, the surest strategy is to begin at the beginning and focus on inside (that is, self-awareness and self-understanding) before the outside (that is, skill building and on-the-job development).
The importance of the emotional intelligence of a company's leaders is brought to light in a 1999 Gallup poll that indicated "seventy percent of people quit their managers, not their companies." Coaching leaders is the key to employee retention ad satisfaction.
Derailment Prevention
It's very common for executives and managers to derail or flounder, then get shunted off to roles that are out of the mainstream of their businesses. Typically, it's because they have a psychological blind spot that's all too visible to others. Research studies have pegged failure rates for senior executives at up to thirty-three percent. When leaders or managers are overambitious, volatile, or insensitive, often the companies' response is to simply terminate them. Unfortunately, the company must then absorb the staggering costs associated with the loss of a key person, including exit costs, recruiting costs, and the possible cost of termination litigation.
The experiences of our clients have clearly shown that a turnaround program produces better results while preventing the costs of termination. In most cases, under performance is not the result of an ability deficit, but is a result of the employee's blind spots. With proper intervention, the struggling employee can be turned around and, as a consequence, the company can be spared the organizational disruption and corporate expense while retaining the employee's accumulated industry knowledge, experience, and competitive information. A turnaround program offers a potent management option for handling a potentially unpleasant and difficult dilemma.
I enjoy using my skills to help corporations and family businesses overcome the challenges they face. I typically meet with clients at their workplace, although I'm also available to meet with them in the comfort of my office to preserve their confidentiality and privacy.
The Beacon Consultancy specializes is conflict resolution for businesses of all sizes. Call The Beacon Consultancy today, and don't forget to tell them The Advocate sent you!
