Five years ago, I wrote a Thought Post with that title, Do Family Businesses Have Better Values? During the last 5 years I have been involved in many conversations with many family-business people about this topic.

The consensus is – Yes, family businesses do have better Values.

An observation – Regardless of what people think about Values in family business, there is another related facet to consider: the people who work at businesses led by family-people live with the personalities of those family-people. To the extent the family has better Values the non-family-people enjoy that environment. To the extent the family does not have better Values the non-family-people tolerate, grin & bear that [or they depart].

When family-business values are not inspiring, people either put up with the flawed family-business values or they depart in search of better values. If they stay, sooner or later, their talents and strengths are stifled and replaced with mediocrity or dysfunction.

That’s a consequence of flawed family-business values. Talents and strengths never rise to the top when they live in environments laced with flawed values.

Similarly, when people do not receive clear signals to confirm the presence of better values they tend to assume the worse…they tend to think values are less than ideal, likely flawed…i.e., this is one of those negative-bias tendencies people fall into.

As a leader at a family business…

What do you think?

What values do you project at your business?

What values do you want to project?