How Understanding Your Family Dynamics Can Improve Work

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Deborah Ancona, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, and Dennis Perkins, CEO of The Syncretics Group, have researched how family dynamics play out in the workplace. They say people often revert to childhood patterns at work. By applying a concept from psychology known as family systems theory, managers and leaders can come to understand how their past influences their behavior and thus can grow professionally. Ancona and Perkins wrote the HBR article "Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite."

Transcript

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0:00.0	So you got the job. Now what? Join me, Eleni Mata, on HBR's new original podcast, New
0:08.1	Here, the Young Professionals Guide to Work, and how to make it work for you. Listen for
0:13.8	free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here. See you there!
0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR IDA cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish, managing people
0:50.1	means engaging with their psychology. Understanding someone and why they behave the way they do takes
0:56.0	a lot of effort, but it can also unlock better ways to work together. The same goes for yourself,
1:01.2	your own psychology. Reflecting, developing self-awareness, those take time, but they can bring you to a
1:07.1	better place in your job and career. Today we're putting a new research-based lens on our interactions
1:13.0	with others at work, especially when it comes to conflict and difficult relationships. It's
1:17.8	called Family Systems Theory. At the high level it's the idea that our early lives shape us,
1:23.6	and how we interact at work can stem from past behavior patterns that we learned at a young age
1:28.9	in our families. Here to talk about their research on applying Family Systems Theory to management
1:35.1	is Debra Ancona, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, and Dennis Perkins, CEO of the
1:41.6	Syncretics Group, and a former professor at Yale School of Management. They wrote the HBR
1:46.5	article Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite. Debra, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for
1:52.1	having me. And Dennis, thank you, too. My pleasure. Let me start with you, Dennis. Why is Family
2:01.6	Systems Theory something that's useful for leaders and managers to think about? Well, I think that
2:07.9	we know that families have played an important role in our lives, but I think we're often
2:14.7	unaware of just how that plays out every day in the workplace. And for me, I began to understand
2:23.1	Family Systems Theory when I went to a talk by a woman named Virginia Satir. And she was a very
2:29.3	inspirational figure that peaked my interest in the field. And I applied some of the ideas to
2:36.4	myself and my career choices. And I realized that by using that framework, I could help other people
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