La familia evoluciona cuando dejamos de culpar y empezamos a reinterpretar.
In the family business, conflicts are inevitable… but their impact depends on how we interpret them. Reframing does not erase the facts: it changes the perspective, organizes the emotions and opens paths where before there was only tension.
Why reframing is vital in the family business?
In the family business, conflicts not only affect results: they affect identity, history and ties. Therefore, when a misunderstanding arises, we usually react from emotion and not from strategy.
Reframing—or reframing—is the tool that allows a business family to stop fighting against its shadows and begin to walk towards its possibilities.
Steps
1. Pause: stop automatic reaction
Before interpreting the situation from anger or habit, stop.
Pause is not weakness; It is emotional leadership.
In business families, where the issues are sensitive, this pause avoids unnecessary hurt.
2. Separate fact from emotion
Made: “My dad doesn’t delegate.”
Emotion: frustration, tiredness, helplessness.
When you mix both, you react.
When you separate them, you understand.
3. Question: what other explanation is possible?
The reframing comes from questioning the first reading.
In the family business, there are almost always deeper reasons:
- fear of losing control,
- need to protect the legacy,
- lack of communication,
- unspoken expectations.
Continue reading: When the mathematics of the family business does not add (or multiply)
4. Reframe: Change the meaning, not the facts
Example: “My dad doesn’t delegate” → “He wants to ensure that the replacement is ready and I have not yet shown him enough evidence.”
“My sister questions me” → “He is putting pressure on me to improve the decision, not to overrule me.”
This change does not justify negative behaviors; it simply opens a door to act more intelligently.
5. Act from a new perspective
With reframing, you no longer respond from pride or impulse, but from a strategy:
- propose processes,
- request formal meetings,
- document achievements,
- share ideas without assuming negative intentions,
- build clear agreements.
The impact is immediate: the conversation changes tone and bonds are strengthened.
6. Reframing as culture
It is not enough to apply it in a crisis; You have to make it a habit.
Families that practice it:
- reduce tensions,
- accelerate decisions,
- and strengthen trust.
Because the true power of reframing is not in resolving a conflict, but in preventing it from becoming a rupture.
The Ramírez family, owner of an agricultural company, lived in constant conflict: the
founder criticized every decision of his children.
They interpreted it as a lack of confidence.
An outside advisor helped them reframe: “It’s not distrust; it’s fear of losing the legacy he built.”
With that new perspective, the children stopped fighting and began to show concrete results.
The father, upon seeing evidence, gave way.
The conflict did not disappear, but it was transformed into dialogue.
The family business does not grow by avoiding conflicts, but by transforming the way we mean them.
Reframing does not erase history or friction: it orders them, redefines them, and turns them into opportunities for maturity.
In the end, the key is not to change the family, but to change where we look at it from…because when the look changes, everything else changes.
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Wayne Dyer
What conflict in your family business needs a new meaning to become an opportunity?
About the author:
Twitter: @mariorizofiscal
The opinions expressed are solely the responsibility of their authors and are completely independent of the position and editorial line of Forbes Mexico.
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