Everyone Needs a Role
Define Your Family’s Organisational Structure
To get organised, Good Fathers & Mothers must first decide who will have authority over each area of family life, and who should report to whom for all chores and tasks.
You may wish to label these as management roles or portfolios.
Family Hierarchy
Many conservative families in the west and most families in eastern cultures, have fairly strict rules around these roles. Confucianism, for instance, is centred around the idea of an ideal family hierarchy, with eldest, middle, and youngest sons and daughters having particular roles and personality traits. This family hierarchy can even be a model for governance of the state.
These ideas render China very strong in some ways, as people tend to know their place in society, but weak in others. Although there is a serious imbalance in their population demographics (due to the one child policy) with many more men than women, the idea that only men should be farmers has left a whole generation of men single and looking after their parents’ farms, while young women in country areas move to the cities to study.
The Chinese might benefit from learning a little flexibility from Australia where, for various reasons throughout history, many women have become successful farmers!
Our suggestion is that families have structure while remaining flexible. A Good Mother in one family may choose traditional roles and agree to be in charge of meal-planning, procurement (food shopping), and housekeeping, while the Good Father takes care of car maintenance and accounts. Other families may decide these roles are better to be allocated differently.
The truth is that not many people enjoy cleaning. Because of this, cleaning chores should be divided equally among family members. The housekeeping manager and assistant manager should oversee this work but not be expected to do it all.
Family members should be allowed time to learn and settle into a position if it is new.
Some jobs can be shared but still have basic rules of who is in charge. Cooking, for instance, is something you may both enjoy but not want to do all the time. In this case, you may agree that whoever has the idea and starts the job is in charge.
For instance, I might ask Steve to help me with dinner, but if he tries to take over I will tell him to get out of my kitchen!
Action Point: Allocating roles can be a great time to learn about your family members’ personality types. Big corporations would never give an individual a job without knowing this information about them.
The best tools we have found are here:
TypeCoach will give you invaluable information about yourself and your family. It will also offer each family member short video tutorials teaching them the top five secrets of success that people with their personality type should focus on. TypeCoach also offers an amazing online type-to-type tool that will give you specific advice on how to better manage each and every family member according to your personality types.
I am currently trying to negotiate a discount with them for our members.
We strongly believe that wherever possible, roles should be chosen depending on each person’s personality type, natural interests and talents, and the unpaid workload in a family distributed as evenly as possible.
What Are Boundaries?
If people have problems with each other, the first thing psychology professionals teach is to set boundaries.
All too often, in our experience, setting boundaries is considered an act of confrontation, punishment, defiance or resistance; a person demanding respect with not much of an idea how to get it.
This misunderstanding of what boundaries are can lead a person to take actions that may unfortunately compel the person they confront to defy them.
Boundaries are much better understood as well-defined roles of authority and responsibility in a group’s organisational chart, along with well-defined standards, policies, procedures and limits.
Checking where these may need to be better defined, should help quickly end most conflict.
Consider the following:
- Has everyone accepted and understood their role and responsibilities knowing in clear terms what is expected of them? And that you feel confident that what is expected is within their capabilities and best interests?
- Is everyone clear on the lines of authority, knowing who they answer to for each responsibility, and where each family member sits in the hierarchy?
- Are there well-defined procedures, standards, policies and limits, providing room for individual style and taste but with enough structure for growth and achievement?
- Is your working environment clean and well-organised, where everyone can find things they need without asking?
- Is there a consensus based decision making process in place, with well defined ‘rules’ where everyone’s needs are considered when important decisions are made?
If so, everyone’s ‘boundaries’ should be well-defined.
Any conflict in a group should result in a GF&M making sure the five points above have been established and well-defined.
Status
Status in a group should be delegated carefully, making sure roles in the hierarchy do not cause oppression or animosity.
More and more often, successful couples choose to have the lower status jobs, such as cleaning toilets, etc., taken care of by hired help. If the man of the house doesn’t want to pay a cleaner to do these jobs, he might demonstrate valour and humility by taking these jobs on himself.
No one should act as a servant or slave in your home. Lower status jobs should be shared or done as a paid chore.
Paying yourself might sound pointless but if you think it through, it’s not. Usually we share money in a family, but if a family member does the job of cleaning the bathroom, they should receive a larger share of the spending money. I used to pay myself the same amount we would pay a cleaner to do the bathroom at our place. I felt happier about the standard to which the job was done than if we hired someone else in. I wasn’t a slave to my family, however, as cleaning the bathroom gave me an extra share of the household spending money.
Children Should Not Dominant the Hierarchy
A real danger to the human race these days is children being given status over their parents. Advertisers have worked hard to turn the family hierarchy upside down. Child-led spending will often see a family’s wealth squandered, with parents ‘groomed’ to keep-the-peace by giving their children everything they ask for.
If you compare the family negotiation table to the US congress making decisions, think of how many corporations are out there lobbying for your children’s vote on spending? This influence needs to be countered with love, understanding, authority and wise counsel.
Children cannot make wise decisions about spending. Their real needs must be considered above fashions and trends. If the clothes they need to ‘fit in’ at school are going to break the family budget, it might be time to look for a more down to earth place to live.
Everyone in the family should express their needs in the family decision making process (DMP) but parents need the ultimate authority to decide what are real needs—and what are wants—and make creative decisions on how those needs should be met.
It is good that children learn that money generally comes from being in service to others, and that taking care of yourself pays in ways other than money.
Children of all ages need to be assigned roles and corresponding chores. Julie, for instance, is my assistant housekeeper, and Ollie is his father’s assistant car maintenance manager. Older children may have management roles of their own.
Even though Julie and I are housekeeping managers, everyone in the family is a cleaner. What this means in practice is that while I have ultimate authority when it comes to managing who does what and how it should be done (the procedure), it doesn’t mean I do all the cleaning.
I have included a number of financial positions as I believe it important that children are involved in learning these aspects of good family governance. Responsibly run finances will also take stress out of other areas.
For transparency and accountability, it is good to have a large number of financial roles.
Allocate Roles
Action Point: Here are some suggested positions/portfolios to help you begin allocating positions:
Accounts Manager—Pays bills and collects debts, and may also devise family budgets (for joint approval); deals with project funding for all agreements; must be transparent by making books/budgets available to partner.
>Accounts Admin Assistant—Assists accounts manager at tax time; is trained backup for assistance in dealing with managing cash-flow and paying bills if accounts manager is sick or detained.
Investments Manager—Manages all investment projects.
>Assistant Investments Manager—Assists with all investment projects.
Core Business Manager—Manages and keeps track of all income streams coming into the family, from F&M’s salary or wages, to other income generating projects garage sales, weekend market stalls and younger member’s paper run or part time job. Keeps track of time and resources spent by all members on income generating projects. For instance, does Dad’s job contribute one-third to the overall family income but, as Dad is spending a lot of time talking to the family about his work problems, his job is taking up more than half of the family’s time in discussions and negotiations? If so, the core business manager may assist Dad and help set boundaries to make sure available resources (including time) are being managed more productively. This person may also be responsible for advising on good core business opportunities, e.g. local jobs, programmes, etc., that provide income opportunities with little ‘drag’ on family time and resources.
This person’s position should ensure that no one person in the family be allowed to let their projects (or problems) consume an unfair proportion of the family’s time and money.
Our business mentor, James, calls this position, managing ‘the mosh pit’.
This role may sound unusual but in some families it is vital. Because Steve and I work from home and now manage a number of contracts, we pay someone external to the family to administer this position. This ensures everyone’s projects and jobs get attention and also takes stress off us worrying that everything is being attended to.
If one family members projects or job tends to suck time and money from family life, it may pay to ask an older family member or friend to take on this role. It would also be a great opportunity to introduce a business coach or trainer to the family to help everyone learn how to operate more productively and efficiently.
Our core business manager is studying business at university in Australia. He has a big family back in Pakistan where his father is a factory owner, so our friend is used to business and family life being combined.
If your local university offers internships and you have a family business, see if you can sign up for the programme. Looking through candidates’ CVs should help you find the right person.
The core business manager may also fill this role…
Leveraged Income Manager—On the lookout for leveraged income opportunities for all family members, royalties, directorships, scholarships, honorary positions, rental investments, shares and bonds etc. May require study, but would be a valuable challenge for the right person.
Meal Planning and Procurement—Creates menus and oversees food shopping.
>Head Chef—In charge of all kitchen operations.
>>Sous Chef/Kitchen Hand—Food prep and cleaning; may make dietary/menu suggestions to chef.
Housekeeping Manager—Oversees all domestic cleaning, decorating and refurbishing; allocates housekeeping roles and responsibilities to all family members.
>Assistant Housekeeping Manager—Assists with house cleaning and supervises chores with younger family members.
>>Cleaners—Each family member should be responsible for a list of duties taking care of their own room/clothes/belongings. These should be allocated by the Housekeeping manager and supervised by the assistant.
Laundry and Wardrobe Manager—Responsible for keeping clothes clean, organised and in good repair. (I designed and built a clothes-drying rack when this was my portfolio so things could be hung up and dried on their hangers.)
>Laundry and Wardrobe Assistant Manager—Assists drying folding, etc., and may have input about suggested wardrobe upgrades.
Car Maintenance Manager—Checks oil, water, coolant and tire air pressure in all cars; keeps cars’ service histories up to date, and interior and exterior clean; decides when cars should be sold and upgraded; keeps garage or tool shed clean and organised.
>Assistant Car Maintenance Manager—Assists with all above duties, making sure cars are clean and available for other family members’ use as required. Older children may act as valet in this position.
Contract Administrator—Deals with contracts for all insurances and warranties on household assets and appliances; manages repairs and upgrades.
Communications & AV Technician—Responsible for set-up and maintenance of family’s audio-visual gear, mobile phones and computers.
Research and Development Consultant—Sounding board for all of the family’s research projects that may eventually end up generating income. (E.g. Steve is researching real estate deals, while I am looking into renting out beach 4WDs, with Ollie researching where to purchase these cheap second hand. Julie is looking into government grants for another project she and Ollie are working on, while also being the consultant for everyone’s R&D projects.)
Sit down with your partner now and figure out the basics of how you think the roles & responsibilities in your family should be allocated. Each role should be provided with a list (or even checklist) of responsibilities that role entails. Managers should be encouraged to develop their own procedure instructions kept in a file for their roles that might include things such as usernames and passwords, recipes, instructions for technical jobs etc. The final decision re allocation of who takes on these roles and what the responsibilities and procedures are for each role, should be made together as a family.
Rewards
Now that you have figured out your families roles and responsibilities, how will everyone be rewarded for these roles?
Just like out in the workforce, if the job is not completed the family member should not be rewarded.
It is good that children learn that money generally comes from being in service to others, and that taking care of yourself pays in ways other than money.
If your son washes his clothes, for instance, that might be something he gets certain privileges for (using the car, having friends over etc.) but if he washes other family members clothes, he should get paid for that chore.
Sit down with your partner now and figure out the basics of how you think responsibilities should be rewarded before making the final decisions on this as a family.
Policies, Procedures and Limits
Action Point: Standards, policies, and procedure manuals should be developed over time.
Procedure manuals give instructions on how important tasks that are part of the families roles should be completed. This may be as simple as a recipe file in the kitchen (Julie and I share our file on my Google Drive), and car cleaning and servicing instruction manuals in the garage.
You may, however, also want to put together a cleaning manual giving instructions on your expectations on how cleaning and laundry jobs will be completed.
Plus, your AV manager may want to document usernames and passwords and procedures for restarting modems, etc.
Standards and policies, however, operate differently. Along with limits, they will end up forming part of the family’s operations manual. These should be put together and be available to everyone in the family to refer to when needed.
Some examples:
A (dress) standard may be that men are expected to wear at least a singlet and shorts to the dinner table.
A policy may be that the family walk visitors out to their car to say goodbye when they are leaving.
A limit may be that young adults are expected home by 9.30pm on school nights.
What are your family’s standards, policies and limits? Deciding on these together to form your families operations manual should be part of your family’s introduction to the DMP (decision making process).
Facility Layout and Design: Get Your Space in Order
Once roles are allocated, the next step is to work on what they call in business your facility layout and design.
Each manager should have ultimate say over where things are put away and how things are organised in the area they manage. Having the group decide on the layout of shared spaces in your home may also help get the DMP process rolling.
Things that should be considered are:
- Safety: Do you have the correct safety equipment for chores? For instance, gloves and eye protection should be worn when using most harsh chemical cleaning agents.
- Flow of movement: What moves in and out of the area? Is there clear foot traffic pathways and work spaces to manage the people/work flow? For instance; my kitchen is tiny, with room for only one person to use the sink, stove and chopping bench at a time. However, it is set up so that the refrigerator can be accessed and rubbish taken out without creating bottlenecks or disrupting the person working there. All utensils are also in reach.
- Output: What is each area producing? A kitchen produces meals but your kitchen table may also be a space for family together-time, meetings, agreements, emotional coaching, and just plain fun. So in the kitchen we are not just producing meals.
- Efficient use of space: Ollie’s bedroom in our last apartment was a sun-porch we curtained off. This allowed our family to stay in a neighbourhood we all loved for many years longer than we would have been able to afford otherwise.
- Impact on morale: Your home should not only be practical but also uplifting and fun. Are there ways you could improve your family’s environment?
Label it
Once you have decided where things should be kept, if changes have been made or some family members are not putting things away in their proper place, it is a very good idea to label cupboards, drawers, and even sections of drawers with stickers. This may look a little ugly until people get used to the new places for everything, but it will be well worth it. It won’t be long until everyone is trained and the labels can be removed.
The labels will save you the hard work of training everyone—and will probably do a better job of it.
It is difficult to argue with a sticker!
I cannot over-emphasise the importance of getting your facility layout and design in order, and deciding on as much of it as you can together. Poor mental health is often classified these days as a disordered personality. An ordered and uplifting environment is a sure pathway to a healthy mind. Get those bases covered and you will be well on your way to building a strong and healthy family.
Good Fathers and Mothers
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