Building Unbreakable Brands

Building Unbreakable Brands - Dr. Donna Marino Interview

[00:00] Meghan Lynch: Welcome to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast where we talk to business leaders with a generational mindset. I'm Megan Lynch. I'm an advisor to family businesses and CEO of Six Point Strategy, which helps generational brands honor their past while evolving for the future. My guest today is Dr. Donna Marino, who is a psychologist and coach and specializes in helping family businesses resolve conflict, rebuild trust, and protect relationships that keep their families strong for generations. Welcome, Dr. Donna.

Dr. Donna Marino: Thank you, Meghan. I've been looking forward to this conversation.

[01:00] Meghan Lynch: We've connected as family business advisors, comparing notes and seeing the intersection of our two disciplines. We've had some great conversations, but it was only recently when we were having dinner that I learned more about your personal why for doing this work. I'd love to have you share that with the audience. It's very powerful, and while many family business advisors come from family business themselves, for you it's different.

Dr. Donna Marino: My personal why is very personal and connected to 9/11. My father was an electrician in the World Trade Center, and I grew up knowing those buildings as dad's buildings. We have three generations of New York City construction electricians. While it wasn't a family business, there was tradition and a passing down. My grandfather did the Verrazzano Bridge, my dad the Trade Center, and my brother Yankee Stadium.

[02:30] Sadly, my father was there on 9/11 and we lost him in that tragedy. My dad was really proud of me—I was in grad school getting a doctorate and I'm the only person in our family with a doctorate, among our first generation to go to college. When I lost my dad, it was really prominent for me that I wanted to continue to live a life that would make him proud.

[03:00] When I moved my career from traditional therapy into consulting and discovered this niche of working with family business, it brought everything together for me. My dad was a strong family man, and no matter what happened inside our chaotic Italian household, you always had each other's back and you always stuck together. That's something my siblings and I really did when we lost my dad.
The sense of loyalty is in family business too. I felt like there were all these values that my dad instilled in me—hard work, loyalty, family—that I could combine with my love of psychology and understanding of people to make a difference in families and their businesses.

[04:30] Meghan Lynch: All those values are family business all day long. When you've had that kind of loss, there's also that sense of wanting to protect it for other people and save them from their own loss. If they have these relationships in their lives, don't mess it up. This is precious. It gives you such a sense of urgency about protecting what already exists and helping people keep that strong.

Dr. Donna Marino: Exactly. I've learned that someone can be here today and gone tomorrow, and you only get a certain amount of time with someone. How precious family is. It makes me really sad when I see family members stop talking to each other or cut each other off over business. I've seen that—friends who were siblings who created a business and now they're suing each other. It really breaks my heart. Having an opportunity to bring families back together is really rewarding.

[06:00] Meghan Lynch: Knowing that you're seeing families in these high stakes moments, I'm curious—when you get the call, are there patterns or red flags that make you turn up the sense of urgency?

Dr. Donna Marino: Typically it's the breakdown in communication. People are not checking in on their assumptions. They're creating these big stories that they don't know if they're true. Often it comes at a time of transition—someone is ready to retire and they're looking at succession, or one person wants to sell the company and another wants to pass it down. A lot of not talking about what we want and making assumptions about what the other person wants. That's usually a pretty big red flag. You see people being so unhappy in the business and starting to question what it's all about.

[07:30] Meghan Lynch: When you see people who are not questioning assumptions, are there symptoms that you see that make you think this is probably happening in the background?

Dr. Donna Marino: They don't come self-aware, usually not when it comes to assumptions. They base it on old experiences. With family, we still see the dad that raised us this way or the brother that teased us that way. It's really hard as family members to see each other in our professional roles. We have stories about who each other are, but it's often based on long ago experiences.

[08:00] There's a lot of "he's just going to do that" or "she's just going to do this." One family I worked with was going through transition between second and third gen, and third gen would tell me, "He's never going to leave. He can say whatever he wants, but he's never going to leave." That's because there had been a failed succession where emotionally he wasn't ready and backed out at the 11th hour.
We were able to do the work and pretty quickly when we brought everyone together, get to the place where everybody was comfortable. That business is running really smoothly now, but there were these stories—including the second gen story that person was telling themselves about what would happen if they left. All of that was future forecasting that wasn't true.

[09:30] Meghan Lynch: How do you break those patterns? I recognize that in myself where I'll run through the conversation in my head and it's almost like I don't even have to have it because I've already had it. I know how it's going to happen, so I don't need to bother. But how do you get families to break those assumptions?

Dr. Donna Marino: I love the word "story." If you can get people to wrap their head around that idea that I'm telling myself a story—am I willing to question that story? Do I know that that is true 100%? Where is that story coming from?

[10:00] My role is really asking the powerful questions to get them digging in and to be willing to consider an alternative perspective. When we talk about courageous conflict, by not having the potential hard conversation where there could be conflict, we also don't offer the other person the opportunity to correct the assumption, to change behavior, to talk about their own perspective.
We try to avoid conflict because we don't want to upset the other person, but we actually cause more friction and miscommunication by doing that. Checking your assumptions with the other person is really important and stopping that dialogue in your head saying, "Wait a minute, I don't really know it's going to go that way. And if it does, at least I've said my piece, at least I've done my part"—kept your side of the street clean.

[12:00] Meghan Lynch: Sometimes the conflict is the assumptions and interpersonal relationships, but sometimes it can also be really complex, messy issues like addiction or mental health or dementia. What is the cost that you see both to the people, the family and the business, when those kinds of issues are ignored?

Dr. Donna Marino: It's really bad because people wait till it's critical. You have that 83-year-old parent who now has dementia but won't hand the company over, but you wouldn't talk about it before and now you're in this predicament of how do we do this without totally destroying that relationship.

[12:30] People really need to have the conversations upfront, early when problems start. That idea of "it'll resolve itself"—no, it just doesn't, especially with dementia. I'm seeing that a lot now as people are staying on longer in companies. Family businesses need to start thinking about this now before it's an issue—how do they write this into their family governance, their board contracts, their bylaws to help protect them from that.
If you see someone with early addiction, we try to hide so much. Someone reached out to me saying, "We want to pass this company on to our child, but they are an addict and now what do we do? How do we handle that?" Those things just don't resolve themselves. If you can get someone in to either help you learn how to talk about it or help facilitate those conversations, it can be so much easier.

[14:30] Meghan Lynch: You mentioned courageous conflict. You have your own podcast by that name. I'm curious why that title—how is conflict courageous?

Dr. Donna Marino: Because so many of us avoid it or we're too aggressive in it. Being brave enough to have the hard conversation and to show enough respect for the other person that they can handle it and that you can get to a reasonable place. If you don't have those hard conversations, you're robbing that other person of the opportunity to correct it.

[15:00] By having the conflict, most people most of the time walk away feeling better and feeling closer because there's been this gap between them that everybody knows is there, everybody feels the tension, but they're not addressing it. You start to remove passive aggressive behavior and start having real dialogue. Healthy conflict promotes innovation, diversity, it helps move companies and families forward and it is courageous. Most of us don't like conflict and we want to keep the peace, especially in our families, but talking behind each other's backs doesn't work and everybody else knows it's going on.

[16:00] Meghan Lynch: Some families when they hear "psychologist" might say, "Oh no, I don't want that. I don't want a therapist." It feels like it means something's wrong or broken with them. Is that something that you encounter?

Dr. Donna Marino: Yes, definitely. On the one hand, that is my special sauce, and there are people looking for that who are drawn to it. But on the other hand, yes. A lot of my companies that I work with are manufacturing. They're not exactly the type to run to therapy.

[17:00] What they need to understand is that when I come in in this role, I am not a therapist, but I'm someone who understands family systems, organizational dynamics, communication and perspective-taking, emotional intelligence. You need to provide some education and diffuse that thinking and challenge the stories.
Family businesses tend to be very private. They like to keep things in-house, very challenging to earn trust and be invited in, which just makes me all the more honored when I get the opportunity. The term psychologist can be a bit scary—what are you going to see or what's behind the veil? When they realize that I'm coming from a non-judgmental place and an opportunity to be closer and grow the business together, it really helps people relax. People get so much self-awareness and behavioral change and the relationships improve that they become a believer.

[19:00] Meghan Lynch: I find too, even with manufacturing companies that tend to be like, "We don't talk about our feelings," but when you do get them talking, they'll say, "I just want to be heard. I don't care about the money. I just want to feel respected." It's such a reminder that all humans need these same fundamental things—respect, to be heard. Those fundamentals stay the same regardless of who you are or where you come from.

Dr. Donna Marino: 100%. At the end of the day, everybody wants to be seen, to be heard and to belong. Those are the three things that they really want. If you do those things, you will have a great culture. It doesn't mean giving into every whim. It means really hearing someone out and when you disagree, explaining your why and giving your reasoning so they know that they were heard.

[20:00] A big mistake people make is listening—they listen and then nothing happens and the person feels like it falls on deaf ears. The owner may have heard it and just not agreed and not acted on it. So that's where the communication breakdown happens. People need to know that you at least heard them. People need to know that their work is seen and valued and feel like part of the team and a sense of belonging. Family businesses, when they get that right, are better at that than anyone. That's why when there's splitting and gossiping and those kinds of things, the feeling that mom and dad are fighting again, you really have to repair that.

[21:30] Meghan Lynch: We talk quite a bit about building trust with customers, but this is really about building trust inside the business. I'm curious particularly when that trust is broken by a leader, by a family member, when people see those fractures start, how does a team start the process of rebuilding that trust?

Dr. Donna Marino: It's a hard thing. It's easier to earn trust originally than to repair trust when it's been broken. I start by working with them individually before bringing them together. In most places of conflict, I want to get the full picture, both perspectives. I want to work with them beforehand on challenging their stories and assumptions, but also feeling seen and heard, then bringing them together, preparing them for that conversation.

[22:30] There's things that have to be done—first the trust has to start with me, that I'm providing a safe container for them to talk, that it's confidential, that I'm not here to judge or take sides. I lay ground rules at the beginning. We're not going to swear, we're not going to call each other names. Taking turns, listening, not interrupting, and then giving each person that space to be seen and heard and helping navigate the miscommunications.
Being able to turn to someone and say, "Wait, did you hear what this person just said?" or "Wait, I didn't hear the same thing. Can we ask this person what they meant?" It helps with the facilitation because I'm not emotionally invested. I want the success and I'll cheer along with them, but I can help them see those other perspectives.

[23:30] Trust is hard to earn back, but with patience, vulnerability, being really honest—even when the honesty is like "I don't trust you and I don't know when I'll trust you again" or "This is why" or "I know I really made a mistake and I know I've been biased"—working through that. But it's being vulnerable. It's providing the safe container. It's agreeing that you have a mutual purpose. We may be in conflict, but we both want to be able to get along with each other, or we want the culture to be better or the business to survive. Alignment on purpose is really important—the why behind it.

[25:00] Meghan Lynch: You brought up not taking sides and being a safe space. I'm curious, when you come in, it might be one particular family member who's very open to it, they've connected with you, they bring you in. How do you make sure that you gain the trust of the rest of the family who might feel like, "Oh, this person has brought in their person"?

Dr. Donna Marino: That does happen. I came into a family where all the women were on board with doing this work, and the men were like, "What are you thinking?" I think meeting individually with those that are skeptical or uncomfortable and demonstrating that I am here to help your family, I am here to help your business. These are mutual purposes where we're aligned, and the proof is in the pudding.

[26:00] You have to build connection first. How do you see this? What is bothering you? Why don't you want to do this? It's okay that you don't. I can see where you're coming from. There was a situation where the person was really resistant to my coming in and saw no need for it. As we're talking and past hurts are coming up and I can hear that and I can empathize, and this person who feels like their perspective has never been seen can see that I can see it. That is a big breakthrough—okay, we can do this. I can trust this person.
Especially in this case, the hurt was towards the person who brought me in, but I was seeing her pain. Being able to show that I'm not just siding with that person and that I can see both sides, and as we build that relationship, I can challenge both perspectives because there's usually a little bit of truth in both.

[28:00] Meghan Lynch: Sometimes I will come in and just work with that one person. Sometimes their uncle is not on board, but that doesn't mean we can't get started on the work. There's two things that happen there. One, the family or the people in the organization can recognize the positive changes coming from that person and they're curious and more open. But two, I always say that systems, families, organizations—they're like the baby's mobile above the crib. If you tug one part, everything else moves. Even if you're working with one person, you are working with the system. You work with what's available to you. In an ideal situation, you get to work with all the parts, but you can still do good work with even one person.

[30:00] Meghan Lynch: Can you give one example where doing that emotional work actually protected the business or helped somebody move forward who was otherwise really stuck?

Dr. Donna Marino: I had this client come to me—he was the third gen owner of a business. He came to me with all this anxiety that he had never experienced in his life. He was a tough guy. We didn't know when we started that this was related to the family business and succession. First we had to talk about stress management and relaxation training to give him some skills to settle down.

[31:00] Then we were able to really identify: How do I leave this business when it's been my life for 20, 30, 40 years? This is my identity. Who will I be and what will I do and will it be okay? Can the next gen handle this? All those questions. This is a great example of working with someone individually first and getting them to a place where they feel settled, where they feel secure. Identity is huge when you talk about succession. If you don't tend to that emotional part of succession, people pull out at the last minute.

[32:00] So preparing this person to have the open conversations with the next gen and to air their concerns, and for them to be able to have those courageous conversations about "This is what I want to do, this is what I'm afraid of," and the pushback and the push and pull until they got to a good place.
This was a situation where I got brought in and it was like, "No, that's your person. I'm not working with this person and why do I have to do this? Psychologists"—it was the whole ball of wax. Now I was invited to stay on and work with the leadership team and grow not just the new owners, but the people that they had selected as their new leadership team.

[33:00] He's enjoying retirement and following other passions in his life. The business is thriving, people are getting along, they're learning how to handle conflict with each other, but beyond that, they're learning how to be leaders and do it both in a way that respects history and tradition, but also is innovative and creative and drives the business forward. It's not always conflict. We got through that and now it's about managing people and leading people and developing potential.

[35:00] Meghan Lynch: For somebody who might be listening and they know in their gut that something feels off, that there's some conversation or conflict that they're not addressing, but it just feels too big, too deep, too raveled up—what is the smallest, lowest stakes first step that they could do today?

Dr. Donna Marino: Of course, I'm going to say reach out to me and let's have a chat, and I can point you in some good directions. I think sitting with yourself—I am a big fan of journaling, writing things down and start to dive in a little bit into what is that gut feeling, where's that coming from? What are your concerns? But also where do you want to be? That's a big question and an important one to ask.

[36:00] We can get so focused on the problem and it's there and we need to treat it, but let's say we resolve that. What's on the other side of that? What do you really want? What's that big dream? And then what's standing in the way? For some companies, they want to hit a billion in five years, 10 years, whatever, but they have this big dream. Really looking at the cost of not addressing it. It's always risk reward in business.
I think just getting real with yourself. Also identifying who your allies are in the company—who is on the same page with you, who does get what you're saying, who is someone who's an ally, who might be the person that someone who's not on board would listen to—but starting to have those conversations even in pairs to problem solve a little bit as you get clarity.

[38:00] Meghan Lynch: I love the piece about being able to really articulate what's on the other side. It sounds so easy, and then when you start to do it, we have such a negativity bias that it's so easy for us to list all the things that are wrong, but to actually start to say what outcome do we want, what does success look like—for some reason that is so difficult to do. That step of where are we headed here, what do we want instead of what exists, is such a powerful question.

Dr. Donna Marino: And then there's the assumption that everyone's on the same page. "Oh, well, I think we should buy out other companies. We should make some acquisitions." "No, I think we should sell." "I thought that was the goal." "No, we're keeping this in the family forever." Nobody's on the same page with what the end goal is. They all want the company to do well—that's the mutual purpose—but the end goal isn't in alignment.

[39:00] To your point about the negativity bias, it's a real thing. It's hardwired into our brains. Evolution is so slow. It was for our own survival back in the day when you had to notice predators before anything else. Even though our world has changed, we still have that. In positive psychology, they did some research on this positivity ratio—it takes three to five positive things to match the impact and energy of one negative thing. That can really get in the way of looking at what we really want. We do get fixated on the obstacles, and certainly we want to pay attention to them, but we want to have the motivation from our big dream.

[41:00] Henry joins the conversation

Meghan Lynch: We have my son, Henry, who's here to be the voice of the next generation. Hi Henry.
Dr. Donna Marino: Hi, Henry. It's nice to meet you. Do you want to follow in your mom's footsteps in the business?

Henry Lynch: Yeah.

Dr. Donna Marino: What makes you want to do that?

Henry Lynch: Just the fact that she's my mom and that it's just to respect her hard work.

Dr. Donna Marino: That's really beautiful. What would you say to other kids whose mom or dad or family member runs a business that they might have an opportunity to work in someday?

Henry Lynch: I would just say that you don't have to follow them because just honoring them in the first place is respecting them. So it's no big deal if you don't.

[43:00] Dr. Donna Marino: What would you say to the parents of those kids, people like your mom and other parents who are running a business and maybe they hope to have their child in the business someday? What words of wisdom could you give them?

Henry Lynch: I would say that do whatever job that would make you really happy and that you'd be passionate about. If you're going to do it, you're going to have to be passionate about it, focus on it.

Dr. Donna Marino: Yeah, I like that. Passionate. I agree. You should really be passionate about what you do.

[44:30] Meghan Lynch: We've been talking a lot about tough conversations, how you have to have courage to have tough conversations. Have you ever had to have a difficult conversation with a friend or someone in our family?

Henry Lynch: Yeah.

Meghan Lynch: What was that like for you?

Henry Lynch: Well, I mean, sometimes it's really bad, but sometimes it's just like I disagree with you, or it's like a misunderstanding or something. But sometimes it's deeper than that and that's when it hurts more. But usually it resolves in about a day. Sometimes it can be more complicated, but sometimes it's just like, I think chocolate ice cream is way better than vanilla.

[46:00] Dr. Donna Marino: I would argue that vanilla is better, but I think we can still be friends. When you have those more deep conversations, do you ever feel better after having them?

Henry Lynch: Yeah.

Dr. Donna Marino: And what usually happens to your relationship with that person that you had the hard conversation with?

Henry Lynch: Usually we just kind of stay the same, and nothing really happens between us. Like me and my friend Ilyas, we argue so much of the time. Or I have another friend, Thomas, and we argue a lot, but in an hour we have already forgotten about it and we've done something else.

Dr. Donna Marino: So you can have conflict with someone and still stay close and be friends or have a relationship with them.

Henry Lynch: Yeah.

[48:00] Meghan Lynch: The real question is Dr. Donna's brother did the electricity work for the scoreboard at Yankee Stadium. What do we have to say about that?

Henry Lynch: I'm a Red Sox fan. I've had some good memories at Yankee Stadium though. This Father's Day I went there and it was Red Sox versus Yankees on Father's Day. Me and my dad strongly agree that Red Sox are better than Yankees. We went there, we won. After that we got the opportunity because it was Father's Day, they were doing a father son event, and we got to run the bases. We have a bottle that's empty filled with the infield and outfield dirt. And we have Fenway grass out in our front yard.

[51:00] Dr. Donna Marino: Those are things you're always going to remember. I always remember going to the World Trade Center with my dad every New Year's Eve and getting to run all over the building. Because he worked there and their lockers were in the basement, I got to go to all the nooks and crannies the public doesn't see, and go up on the observation deck and ride the freight elevators.

[52:00] Meghan Lynch: Thank you so much for being with us, Dr. Donna. It was a great conversation. And Henry, thanks for sharing some of your thoughts and chatting with us. Donna, if people want to learn more about your work or want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Dr. Donna Marino: They can go on my website, drdonnamarino.com. That's D-R-D-O-N-N-A-M-A-R-I-N-O. And my handle is the same on LinkedIn. And my email address is donna@drdonnamarino.com.

Meghan Lynch: Wonderful. We'll link to that, and we'll also link to Courageous Conflict, the podcast for folks to check out. Thank you so much for being with us and for sharing with us, and for sharing with our audience.

Dr. Donna Marino: Thank you for having me. It's been wonderful and great to meet you, Henry.

Henry Lynch: Great to meet you too.