Every family experiences challenges. Whether it’s communication breakdowns, financial stress, loss of a job or relative, or unresolved conflicts, these issues can strain relationships and create lingering tension. But what are family issues, and how can they be better handled to promote a tighter connection and strength in relationships rather than weaken family bonds?
At Echelon Front, we approach family issues the same way we approach leadership challenges—with the principles of Extreme Ownership – focusing on relationships, communication, decision-making, empowering others, self-accountability, and implementing actionable strategies for solving problems. This article will break down what family issues are, highlight some universal examples, and provide a practical approach to resolving them effectively.
Common Family Struggles
The most important step in productively addressing family issues is to properly identify them. So, what are some examples of big family issues? While every family is unique, common struggles include:
- Communication Breakdowns: Misunderstandings, lack of transparency, and assumptions can all lead to unnecessary conflicts. These things happen when there is a lack of communication between family members. And while conversing and having dialogue is critical, it is equally as important to listen to your spouse, kids, and parents, as this can prevent a lot of these breakdowns. When family members don’t communicate clearly, when they don’t listen, minor issues can escalate quickly or fester over time, neither of which is good for building relationships, growing stronger as a family, or resolving issues.
- Financial Stress: Disagreements over budgeting, debt, and spending habits can create ongoing tension. These choices can impact long-term relationships and create friction among family members, along with affecting time spent together or the opportunity to do things together that the family enjoys.
- Parental Differences: When parents have conflicting approaches to discipline, values, or education, it can create confusion and stress for both children and the parents themselves. These are important issues to seek agreement on because raising a family requires these topics to be tended to nearly every day. When parents are at odds with one another over these important topics, the strain and stress that can result are not good for anyone involved.
- Sibling Rivalries: Having siblings is a special experience, but competition and jealousy can come as part of that package. And if those dynamics are not effectively handled during childhood, it can lead to unresolved conflicts in adulthood, self-imposed stress and pressure, and impact family relationships. At Echelon Front, we often say that competition is a good thing; it can push and drive us, but it is unhealthy competition, at the expense of relationships, that can cause major damage to families.
- Major Life Transitions: Part of the human experience means going through challenging times, whether that is the loss of a loved one, moving to a new city, going through a divorce, or other major life events that impact the family. These situations require strong leadership and strong relationships to navigate the emotional and logistical toll they can take.
Recognizing these issues is the first step toward addressing them. The next step is taking responsibility for solutions rather than allowing problems to divide the family.
Lead Through Conflict
All problems in life, within a family, within a team, or within a community, require leadership to solve them. And if you’re asking, how can I resolve family issues? The answer starts with leadership principles that apply to any relationship.
- Take Ownership: This means not pointing the finger, placing blame, or making excuses. It requires looking in the mirror to see what your fault, role, or contribution was in a situation and to take responsibility for it. It means that while a problem may not be directly your fault, there is still an opportunity to pull the thread and see what you could do differently to improve the situation or prevent the situation from happening again. The focus is on being responsible for your actions and finding solutions to problems so you can spend time focused on more important things with your family.
- Listen First: Listening is one of the most undervalued skills of a leader and particularly in those relationships that are most important to us. By taking the time to listen to understand, listen to gain perspective, and listen to learn, this shows our spouse, son, daughter, aunt, etc, that you care. Listening builds trust because it allows people to be heard and for their opinions and perspectives to be valued. And when you are in relationships where the trust is strong, navigating family challenges is much easier.
- Detach from Emotion: Emotional reactions happen more often with family than with co-workers or others. That is because there is so much emotion tied up in those relationships, and they are the people we care about the most and spend the most time with. These emotional outbursts, however, can escalate conflicts rather than resolve them. Instead, when getting frustrated or emotions are rising during a conversation or after something has happened, take a pause and detach. This means take a deep breath, take a step back, assess the situation objectively, and respond with logic and patience.
- Establish Clear Expectations: One of the principles of Extreme Ownership involves empowering others, and a critical aspect of being able to do this successfully involves setting clear expectations. Many family conflicts arise because kids or family members don’t do what they are supposed to do. This is preventable when roles and responsibilities are clarified and agreements made to ensure there is alignment moving forward.
By applying these leadership tactics, families can shift from being reactive to proactive, preventing minor issues from turning into major problems.
Build a Stronger Family
Resolving family issues isn’t about winning arguments or proving a point—it’s about creating a strong, united family unit. The simplest way to resolve family issues is by implementing a framework for solving problems:
- Identify the Core Issue: Many of the problems plaguing families start small and progress or are misidentified. A necessary step to resolving the issues is to first ensure that you are addressing the core problem. It is easy to get caught up in the painless fix or what is superficial instead of looking deeper into the problem to ensure that the root cause is being addressed. This requires a little extra effort, some patience, and an honest assessment, but when done properly, addressing the root cause will better position the family for success moving forward.
- Develop a Plan: Solving a problem does not always mean that one person has to do all of the work. Families that work together to create a solution that aligns with their values and goals are more successful at preventing that situation from happening again and creating a stronger unit. In this way, by ensuring that each member of the family understands the plan and aligns on the action required to carry it out, that allows everyone to see the contribution from each member that led to the successful outcome.
- Execute and Adjust: Take action to implement the solution, but keep in mind it may be necessary to modify or pivot at different points. If a solution isn’t working, adjust the approach and look for ways to keep moving forward. Getting stuck on the lack of progress or resolution will only result in frustration, so instead, be prepared to be flexible because no plan is perfect.
Strong families operate like strong teams- they have secure relationships, communicate openly, support one another, and hold themselves accountable to the standards and expectations of the family.
Take Action Today
Family issues don’t resolve themselves. They require intentional effort, leadership, and humility, and are much easier to address and solve when the principles of Extreme Ownership are understood and utilized. Just like in business, these principles help people to build and develop strong relationships, communicate effectively, make better decisions, and share ownership across the family to get family members of all levels leading in their own way. If you’re ready to take action and lead your family through its challenges, enroll in a course at academy.echelonfront.com.
Gain the skills needed to strengthen relationships, resolve conflicts, and create a more cohesive family dynamic. Don’t wait for issues to get worse—step up and lead today.
