Before you sound the fire alarm, ask yourself:
What size fire is it – one alarm or five alarm?
In real fires, not all blazes are created equal. A one-alarm fire is very different from a three-alarm fire, and a three-alarm fire is much different than a five-alarm emergency.
The type of fire is crucial information for a fire chief because it determines what resources are deployed.
- Should they send one truck or 2?
- Re-allocate firefighters from an existing fire to this one
- Ask another station to send help?
When it comes to emotional fires, it’s equally important to know the size of the blaze.
Unfortunately, too many people treat minor conflicts like five-alarm fires, rushing in with excessive resources and too many people. This usually results in more damage rather than less – too many people involved, too many ideas floating around, and too many resources being wasted.
THE REALITY: Many emotional fires are like small brush fires.
Sometimes it’s better to let them burn out naturally rather than rushing in.
One way to more accurately determine how much alarm to raise for any – or ALL– emotional fires, is to first look at patterns of behavior that reflect the level of chronic anxiety in the family business system.
A BASIC RULE:
The more prevalent these patterns of behaviors – you observe in the family system – the greater the cause for Alarm…
