Venting with Purpose: How To Complain About Your Family

In any family business, complaining about fellow family members is bound to happen. Our natural tendency as human beings is to focus on negative events. This negative bias leads us to complain—a lot. Ten good things may have happened at the office that day, but the one bad thing will get most of our attention. So, we will come home to complain about that one thing (and the one person responsible) with our spouse, or we will text our sympathetic siblings and cousins about it.

But complaining in a family business context can have unintended consequences that harm relationships with loved ones. Here, I’ll explore the reasons why we complain and provide tips for how to complain (and how to respond) in a healthier, more constructive manner.

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