Developing Your Family Pod
In 1945, Ray Hickok had recently returned to Rochester, New York, from his service in World War II. That year, his father died—leaving the 27-year-old in charge of Hickok Manufacturing, then the largest maker of men’s jewelry and belts in the world. Hickok quickly realized that his education and experience weren’t enough. “I felt that I needed broader management roots,” he recalled for a story in INC. “And I felt that untold benefits would accrue by getting together with other younger presidents.” He put together a list of other company leaders, and contacted them one by one. For the most part, they were receptive to the idea; the first meeting of the Young Presidents’ Organization was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York in 1950. Today, the YPO has over 29,000 members from 130 countries. The group’s mission reads: “Better Leaders through Lifelong Learning and Idea Exchange™.”
What Hickok and countless other young leaders since him clearly understood is that achieving your goals requires a particular level of expertise, drive, and passion—and these are best supported in peer groups that share similar goals. For the members of the YPO, these goals are professional, and at an elite level—questions of management, complex financials, acquisitions or mergers, intricate employee benefit structures or other human resource issues. These leaders know that as much as they enjoy the colleagues with whom they work, or the people in their community, there are simply some questions that require the help of other seasoned chief executives.
There are important lessons for families here. Chances are, your family can already count many, many other families as “friends” or at least “acquaintances.” You’ve got a group of friends you’ve known since high school, who now have kids of their own, and maybe you get together once or twice a year; a group of fellow soccer or football or hockey parent friends; the families of your kids’ school classmates; maybe some in your church, or that you met while volunteering together, or at work, or who live next door. Many of these people may very well share your values—that’s why you’re friends in the first place. Like-minded people tend to find each other. You feel comfortable with them, and you know you can open up to them. These people have been there for you, and they’re crucial. But if you’re serious about achieving your family’s goals, you may want to consider actively seeking out families that share similar goals with which to share your journey.
An example here is illustrative. Imagine you and your spouse have a pretty impressive goal—you want to run the Boston Marathon. You have friends who work out, but you find that training for a marathon is a different beast than staying fit, and the Internet has more opinions on how to do it than you can manage to sift through. How much do you run, and how fast? How can you prevent injuries? What equipment is worth investing in, and what’s a sham? You have a daughter who is 17, a strong runner, and wants to join you—is this OK, given her young skeletal structure, and her schoolwork commitments?
Or imagine that your goal is to open a family business. You have a lot of awesome friends—at your kids’ school and extracurricular activities, or through church—but you realize that none of them are business owners. Again, there’s a ton of information on the Web, but you don’t know whom to trust. Gee, you think. My family could use a mentor right now.
This is where the idea of a “family pod” may be helpful. When seeking individual goals, the worth of accountability has been well proven. Studies show, for example, that people trying to lose weight stick with a program better when they have social support. The same is true for families. Finding other families with similar goals can help you stay on track. The wisdom you gain from how these families “made it” can save you countless steps along the way. Talking to these families can also help you normalize responses that may seem crazy to you. Say you want to start a family business, but you’re embarrassed about the debt you have to climb out of before you can begin to build a business. How much would it help to know that another family faced the same hurdle and overcame? That you’re not an outlier? And these relationships can become stronger faster than most other types of relationships. That’s why, for example, men and women who serve together in the military can quickly develop lifelong relationships. They face common obstacles and pursue common goals; they share a mission.
So how do you find families who share your goals? What does the relationship-building process look like when it’s more intentional, versus organic? There’s no single answer, but below are five tips that may help in this journey.
1) First, open up to those around you. You may be surprised to find that some of your friends have similar goals, or to learn that they would be very interested in pursuing some of these dreams together.
2) Actively seek out new relationships based around family goals. This will take a bit more digging, and may very well involve some remote relationships. Search online for resources on your goal; find out who does the research, the blogging, the posting, etc., and reach out. See if there are ways for you to connect.
3) Meet regularly. Either virtually or in person, or some combination of the two. Actual meetings are crucial to keeping the goal alive.
4) Be vulnerable in those meetings. Open your hearts. Or, as one executive told INC. about YPO, throw it all on the table. Tell these people about where you are, where you’ve been, and the things that you think are standing in the way of where you want to go. Seek wisdom from those who have been there before you. Or if you’re in the position of having accomplished more toward the goal than others, freely share your own struggles so that others may benefit, and learn even more by teaching what you’ve experienced.
5) Have “homework”—steps you promise to complete during the weeks in between meetings, or resources you will find, or reading or writing or researching that you will do. Have things to discuss during meetings to help facilitate more open sharing and learning. Remember that you’re in this journey together, and pursuing common knowledge together is part of that picture.
And more than anything, be encouraged. Whatever your goal is, there are probably other families out there who would be thrilled to pursue it with you. Very soon, FamilyWorks will be offering pilot “family pods,” in which you can be matched with other families who share your goals, and start pursuing those goals together with the help of one of our expert coaches.
The key here, as in so much else of your family’s journey, is intentionality. The members of the YPO know that to be strong leaders, they need the advice and support of other strong leaders. To be a strong, goal-achieving family, intentionally seeking out and growing relationships with other goal-achieving families is going to be key.