Siblings and succession: when childhood rivalry moves into the boardroom

“You know he was always Dad’s.”

The sentence drops in the middle of a meeting about who will run sales once their father steps back in two years. Nobody responds. The brother looks at his phone, the sister leafs through her papers, the father says “we’ll look at that next time”. Officially, the item on the table was an organisational chart. In reality, the table was the old kitchen table at which three children, thirty years earlier, counted who had got the bigger slice of cake.

When siblings end up in the same family business, they do not meet only as directors, co-owners or colleagues. They meet as people who shared parents, a bedroom, a car, attention and memories. They bring all of that into the boardroom — even when it looks as if they are talking only about numbers. In this post I will try to show why siblings and succession make such a sensitive combination, what often lies beneath arguments about shares and positions, and what you can do so that an old rivalry does not make the decisions for you.

The boardroom has a nursery in the basement

Rivalry between siblings is as old as the family. It is not a sign that something went wrong — it is part of how a child works out where their place is. Who is cleverer, who is better behaved, who is funnier, who is more like Mum. Most siblings settle this competition somehow in adulthood: each goes their own way, the comparisons lose their edge, and what remains is mostly closeness, or at least a polite distance.

A family business often does not allow that path. The siblings stay in the same space, under the same parent who is also the boss, and in front of the same task: someone will one day lead, someone will have more responsibility, someone perhaps a larger share. The question “who is better”, which would otherwise slowly fade, takes on a very concrete form — a title on the door, a signature on a contract, a salary.

I wrote about how siblings form alliances and coalitions already in childhood in Siblings, alliances and coalitions: the invisible geometry of a family. In succession, that geometry is not erased. It simply moves into a new space and acquires new consequences.

Three circles, one family

Back in the 1980s, the family business researchers Renato Tagiuri and John Davis described a simple model that almost everyone who works with family businesses still uses today: the three-circle model. Family, ownership and business are three systems with different rules. In the family, love and belonging apply — a child is yours, however successful they are. In ownership, shares and rights apply. In the business, competence, results and hierarchy apply.

The problem is not that these circles exist, but that each sibling stands in a different place within them. And from there, each sees a different company.

The sibling who works in the business and owns a share often feels they carry the heaviest load. The one who owns a share but works elsewhere feels that others are deciding about their assets. The one who works in the business but owns no share mainly sees inequality. All three are right — each from where they stand. And all three are also children of the same parents, wanting to be seen by them.

Comparison does not end at eighteen

Many people think that the question of which child the parents prefer is childish and something adults grow out of. Research suggests otherwise. In a large American study of relationships between older mothers and their adult children, the sociologists Jill Suitor and Karl Pillemer found that the great majority of mothers — around seven in ten — could readily name the child they felt closest to. More importantly, adult children who perceived that their mother treated them differently from their siblings reported more depressive symptoms. That held even for those who were the more favoured. Being the chosen one is not easy — it brings guilt, responsibility and the quiet resentment of others.

In a family business, this difference is visible on paper. Who was invited to the meeting with the bank. Whom Dad trusted with the keys. Who got the title of managing director and who “only” runs a department. Each such decision may be entirely justified in business terms — but for the sibling watching, it is also an answer to an old question: whom do they see more clearly?

If comparison with your siblings has followed you since childhood, you may also find “Why can’t you be like your sister?” Sibling comparison and how you see yourself helpful. The feeling it describes often returns precisely when roles in the business have to be divided. A concept that belongs here is envy — an emotion few people admit to because they are ashamed of it, yet one that says a great deal about what a person longs for.

Equal is not always fair

When siblings argue about succession, they are almost always arguing about fairness. But they often fail to notice that each is using a different definition of fairness. Back in the 1970s, the social psychologist Morton Deutsch described three basic principles by which people distribute goods: equality, contribution and need. Each of them makes sense. And each can sound like an injustice within a family.

A sibling who has worked in the business all their life will naturally think in terms of contribution: “I invested, I was the one staying late.” A sibling who works elsewhere will often think in terms of equality: “We are all children of the same parents.” A third, whom life has worn down more, may quietly hope for the logic of need. When these three views meet, the result is an argument in which nobody is lying — and nobody hears the other.

It often helps simply to say it out loud: we are not arguing about who is good and who is bad, but about which principle we divide by. That does not settle the question, but it opens a conversation that was previously closed.

Old roles in new positions

In every family, children are given roles. One is the responsible one who looks after the younger ones. Another is the rebel who tests the limits. A third is the one who needs protecting, or the one who defuses tension with a joke. I wrote more about this in Roles in the family: the hero, the scapegoat, the invisible child. Which was yours?, and you will find a short explanation in the knowledge base under roles in the family.

In a family business, these roles translate into positions surprisingly quickly. The eldest, who “kept order” at home, becomes the one who runs the finances and keeps control. The rebel becomes the one who constantly proposes changes and whom nobody takes seriously. The youngest stays “the little one”, even at forty, and their ideas are listened to with a smile. Nobody decides this consciously. The family simply continues a pattern it knows.

The parent who is also the founder has a special place in all this. Often, without meaning to, they become the go-between for the children: each sibling goes to them separately and complains about the other, and the parent calms each one down separately. In systemic therapy we call this triangulation — the tension between two people is redirected onto a third, so it is never resolved between the two of them. When the parent steps back from the business, this safety valve disappears. Siblings who never learnt to resolve conflict directly suddenly find themselves face to face. For more on what it is like when a parent is also the boss, see Dad as the boss: how to separate the family from the business.

“Why him of all people?” — a short conversation

This is how a conversation between a sister and a brother might sound after their father has announced that the brother will be managing director (composite, not a real person):

“It’s not about the position. Honestly.”
“Then I don’t know why you’re angry.”
“Because you found out before me. Because you talked it over with him, and I found out at the meeting, together with the accountant.”
“It’s nothing personal. That’s just how it turned out.”
“It always ‘just turns out’ that you’re in the room and I hear about it later.”

At the start the sister says it is not about the position. She is probably at least partly right. It is about the order of things, about who was invited into the confidential conversation — about the old experience of always coming second in the family. Her brother does not understand, because from where he stands he has no such experience. For him it really was just a practical arrangement. Both are telling the truth, only about two different things.

What lies beneath the argument about numbers

When siblings reach the point where they can no longer talk to each other, the dispute on the surface is almost always concrete: salaries, shares, who will sign, whether the business will be sold. Underneath, though, there are often three things nobody talks about.

The wish to be seen by a parent. For many, succession is the last chance to receive the recognition they did not get in childhood. When Dad chooses another sibling, they lose not only a position but also the hope that one day they will be “good enough”.

Grief. Succession means a parent is ageing and that something is coming to an end. Sadness is a hard emotion; anger is easier. So siblings sometimes argue precisely when they ought to be grieving together for what is being lost.

Fear of separation. For many siblings, the business is the only thing still holding them together. If they agree that each will go their own way, it can feel as if the family is falling apart. So sometimes they do not agree — and, paradoxically, the argument becomes a way of staying connected.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, one of the basic starting points is that unresolved patterns from the family of origin are repeated in new relationships — until someone recognises them and puts them into words. Christian Gostečnik describes this as the repetition of the same emotional atmosphere in new circumstances. The boardroom is just one of those circumstances.

When we look at the family as a whole, it becomes clear why a change in one sibling moves everyone. I wrote about this in The family as a system: why one member’s change moves the whole family. In succession, this also means something encouraging: not everyone has to change at once. It is enough for one sibling to stop playing their old role — and the others have to respond differently.

Exercise: one table, two lists

If you are in a business with a sibling or siblings and conversations keep getting stuck, try this. Give yourself half an hour, a sheet of paper and a pencil.

1. Write down what you think you received from your parents compared with your sibling. Time, trust, money, praise, responsibility. Then, on the other side, write what you think your sibling would answer to the same question. Do not correct anything, just write.
2. Separate two kinds of content. In one colour, underline everything that is genuinely about the business (shares, positions, decisions). In another, everything that is about whether you were seen, heard, chosen. Notice which colour there is more of.
3. Write down the sentence you would like to hear. From a parent or from your sibling. For example: “I know how much you have put in.” Or: “I’m sorry you were the last to know.” You do not have to show it to anyone.
4. Ask yourself whom you are really talking to. The next time you get angry with your sibling, pause and ask: is this anger meant for them, or for the parent who made the decision?
5. Before the next meeting, choose one topic that is genuinely about the business. And agree that you will talk only about that. Write the rest down for a conversation that is not a meeting.

The exercise will not solve succession. But it can help you separate two conversations that are constantly intertwined in a family business: the conversation about the business and the conversation about the family.

Where this view is not enough

I want to be honest: not every dispute between siblings in a business is an echo of childhood. Sometimes a sibling really is unsuited to leading, however painful that is to admit. Sometimes a division really is unfair, and you do not need to understand it as a projection — it is enough to recognise it as an injustice. In that case the answer also lies elsewhere: in clear agreements, in legal and financial advice, in external succession advisers. Psychotherapy does not replace that, and I do not advise on it.

Nor is every distance between siblings a problem that needs fixing. Sometimes the healthiest decision is for the siblings not to work together — for one to step out and the other to carry on, and for the relationship to be preserved rather than the business. If there is violence, threats or exploitation between siblings, that is a different level altogether, where safety comes first, not understanding patterns.

The systemic view is not an excuse for everything. It is simply an additional language that can help you understand why some conversations always end in the same place.

How family therapy can help

In therapy, siblings — sometimes together with a parent — can talk about what has no room at meetings. The therapist’s task is not to decide who will be managing director or to judge who is right. The task is to help each person say what they are experiencing, and to help the others hear it — without interrupting, without defending, without proving a point.

Here we can draw on a genogram, a family tree that, alongside names and dates, maps relationships, roles and patterns. In families with a business, it often shows that the question “who will take over” has been repeating for several generations — and that earlier generations struggled with it in a similar way. For this kind of view I offer a longer, 90-minute session, A Look into the Past. I also work with English-speaking clients in person in Ljubljana.

Some people come alone because their sibling does not want to come to therapy. That makes sense too. When one person understands their part of the pattern better, their response changes — and with it the dance they dance with their sibling.

What to remember

• Siblings and succession are a sensitive combination, because in a business an old childhood rivalry moves into concrete positions, shares and titles.
• Each sibling stands in a different place in the three circles — family, ownership and business — so each sees a different company and a different injustice.
• An argument about fairness is often an argument about which logic applies: equal, by contribution or by need.
• Beneath disputes about numbers there is often a wish for a parent’s recognition, grief, and the fear that the family will fall apart.
• Not every dispute is an echo of childhood — sometimes the answer lies in clear agreements and professional legal advice, and sometimes in deciding not to work together.