Compensating Family Members at a Family Business

Compensating Family Members at a Family Business

Sean: What kind of leadership style have you adopted that you found to be most useful for your company, for your team?

Ven: That’s a great question because I did not adopt it. It was always been who I was. So that’s the thing. I found the best parts of myself and offered that. I think you – Sean and I are familiar with strengths, and strengths development. So I lead with futuristic. So I also lead with ideation, strategy, competition, and relator. So that unique combination of strengths is who I am. I had to use the best of me for the company. So if I had a different set of strengths, I would be a different kind of leadership style. So I had to look at and own who I was and be able to use that.

Ven: So for me, I’m futuristic, so I love thinking about the future, I love planning, I love telling others about what I see and giving them a lot of excitement about what we’re going to do. Let’s look at the technologies, all the cool things, all the gadgets. Let’s get into the cloud and the automation and all of that, everything. And because that’s who I am, and if I try to be like, let’s say I wanted to be just like my dad or just like my mom. I would do a very poor job of that because I don’t have those strengths. I had to be the best version of myself.

Ven: That’s probably that kind of thing – I didn’t really adopt it. It’s who I am. And that’s what SCPA, our company, got. So if they got a different president, they would get that person’s best as well. I’m not going to force that guy to be like me. In the same way, I will never force my kids or my nephews and nieces to be somebody who they’re not, but offer the best of yourself and understand yourself. So that’s one of the hardest things right, then really in a company, actually, we have everybody take that strengths finder test so that everybody knows what they’re good at and how they could offer that to everybody. And even though they’re not yet in a leadership position.

Ven: And, you know, there are times, you know, the imposter syndrome strikes. I wish I was like my dad. He was like this. He was like, I wish I was like my mom. She was like this. She was like that. But in the end, I have to be satisfied with the strengths I have and they’re pretty awesome as well. And what’s funny is that when you talk to the others and they’re going to say,’ Oh, I envy you have that, I envy you.’ And then we just stay in the company and let’s work together, right? So that’s the best thing because you have things I really need, you know.’ So my sister and I, she has an activator. I just love working with her because anything that I want to happen, she just likes, just gets it done. Perfect for futuristic. So yeah. So you have to adapt it. I would say that in our company we adopt the strengths that you have. We offer that up as your best.

Sean: Yeah. For those of you tuning in and who’re not familiar with Strengths Finder, just look it up online. Gallup Strengths Finder 2.0. Very powerful stuff. And as SEO-Hacker, we also use that. So all of our regular team members, unlock their top five strengths and we use that to see who they are, profile them and see if they’re at the right seat on the bus in our company and how we can utilize their strengths as well. So very good stuff. And we all have strengths. These are things that we love doing, we look forward to doing and we are really good at and we focus on using our strengths in our lives, not just at work but in our family, how we lead our kids or how we deal with our parents or siblings. I think that overall we will have a better quality of life and better temperament as well.