Not By Chance Podcast

Family Meetings: The Most Intentional Way To Strengthen the Home.

September 02, 2021 Dr. Tim Thayne Season 2 Episode 21
Not By Chance Podcast
Family Meetings: The Most Intentional Way To Strengthen the Home.
Show Notes Transcript

We can learn some great processes from our work lives that can translate well into our home lives.  One of those is the vision, celebration and connection that comes from meetings.  Tim and Roxanne Thayne share the obstacles, benefits, and best practices for improving your family’s communication and unity through family meetings.  Take note of the tips and motivation that comes from research, thousands of homes, and their own family experiences.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

Hi, and welcome to the not by chance podcast. This is your host, Tim, Thayne, and I'm grateful to be with you. On this podcast, we believe a family success and happiness is not by chance. And for that reason, most of what we cover in this is meant to be both inspirational, and practical. And today is no different. We have a topic today that that I believe is one of the most important things you could do on a consistent basis to shape your family's culture, and to resolve issues along the way. And that is to hold regular family councils. And today, I've brought along with me, someone that that to me epitomizes most of the intentional stuff that we try to do at not by chance and it Homeward Bound and, and the work we're trying to do with families, and that is my wife, Roxanne. So Roxanne, thank you for being here on this topic of family councils. And I'm going to be picking your brain on we'll share some principles. And then I'd love for you to share some examples from our own family where this has worked or not worked? And what we've learned along the way. I'd

Roxanne Thayne:

love that. Thanks.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

So let's get started with talking about the difference between maybe a meeting and a council. They're related, because it is gathering together. But I think our ideas about meetings sometimes don't apply. What do you think is maybe the core difference between just maybe a regular meeting, as it standardly done and a council?

Roxanne Thayne:

Well, I think that all of us have a little bit of a negative attitude towards meetings, like not another meeting, or I'm not ready for my meeting, or those kinds of feelings bring a lot of anxiety, and we're having a meeting, this is a bad thing. So a lot of that kind of exists in our culture already. But we've also decided that, you know, really, there's a big difference in the kinds of communication that happen around the water cooler, where you're just kind of shooting the breeze and shooting from the hip on things you're talking about, and a meeting where you actually prepare, because you need to move something forward. And since that happens in an organizational situation, in a workplace, it's it really is exactly the same thing that happens at home, although the setting might be different, the way you dress might be different, the way you talk might be different. There's a lot of practical things that happen in a regular meeting that should be brought into the home.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

Yeah, so I love that that pointing out that there's some things about meetings that ought to be deliberately placed in the home, a lot of times, we'll put our best foot forward at work, and we'll have an agenda for our meetings. And we'll think through what our purpose for the meeting is. And we're trying to move the ball forward at the workplace, how often do we decide to do that at home? So I guess what we're saying is, there's some things about meetings and workplace that we ought to be bringing in, and we can, we can talk about the difference between councils in a meeting inside a home. And there's actually some things that you might think about, that are part of councils that should be brought into the workplace, you know, you might have an objective for meeting is to kind of share information to help people you know, understand the direction you're headed. And that's more driven by the maybe the leader of that meeting. But in many cases, you need to bring people together to, to solve problems, or to get on the same page or to create a shared vision. And that's where you open it up, and you're facilitating a different kind of dynamic inside that meeting that ends up being a council. And in my mind, if you can set the stage for that kind of conversation. It's like a mastermind, you know, it's the blending of the intellect and the inspiration of everyone in that group. And what comes out of that is usually some shared ideas about how they're going to go forward from here. So let's talk a little bit about why councils tend to be awkward or not work in the home. Maybe some examples where that has not worked. What do you think, Roxanne are some of the reasons that they may not work?

Roxanne Thayne:

Well, I think that you know, just stepping back for just a second you know, the whole not by chance podcast is to teach intentionality in our families. And when you talk about doing a family council, it sounds so odd. Like that's not what families do, they might do dinner they might do you know vacations they might do weekends together. But really, do we need to have a meeting or a council? And, you know, not on every subject? No, you really don't. But on the important ones you do. And I think that as we talk today, we're going to hopefully expand people's vision of some of the smaller ways that you can hold councils that are just as impactful and actually foundational for the bigger topics. I think, what was your question?

Dr. Tim Thayne:

Well, maybe maybe I'll just comment on what you just said there about it not often being it may not feel natural to hold a meeting inside the family, where it's kind of formal. And what I've found in working with families for many, many years, is that what comes natural, oftentimes is not very effective. You know, it's natural to get angry, it's natural to not listen to each other, it's natural to, you know, to to not involve people and maybe make decisions unilaterally. There's lots of things that just feels natural, that we need to intentionally remove from the family. And so this is, this is, the only reason to do something that's unnatural, by the way, is that it will work better. You're gonna have better outcomes, if you do some things that are not natural, that are unnatural at first, and then over time, they become part of your family culture.

Roxanne Thayne:

I think one thing that I remembered, what I wanted to say is that if you're sitting this going mind, family is not the normal family, a two parent, family and the home, it doesn't matter. These principles again, apply, no matter who you are, what your family situation is, who has the kids on what day, you know, how you work well are not so well with your co parent. So there's principles we're going to be talking about throughout the day that can be applied one on one parent to child, and that you can use with others, like your home team members. So you're probably going to get into that. But I just wanted to let people know before you shut this off, saying it's not going to work at my house to listen a little bit longer, because I think you'll find some things that are going to be easily applied.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

That's great thing about principals is they have broad application and all kinds of situations. And so I think that the principles we're going to talk about will apply, like you said, so going down kind of through some things that, that make councils not that effective, is sometimes a council requires some skills of the leader that they might not they may not naturally possess, they may need to develop some skills, and some awareness and a different way of looking at what their role is. So we'll talk about what those skills are. Another reason they don't tend to work is that it's not a priority. And they may be thrown together last minute and or it's not. It's not regular. And for those reasons, it never really has the effect that it could have. Another one that happened in my family was my family of origin is that it seemed like every time we were called to, to a meeting, a family meeting, it was focused on problems. And emotions were always high. During that time as well, there hadn't been time for the issue to cool off, it's like right on the heels of some event that took place that we knew we're all in trouble. And so gathering under those conditions, set it up for very minimal success, if not just failure. Another one is that the parent don't realize what that role is that their job and a Council is to facilitate. And not just lecture. And that's that's an easy way for us to think, well, it's an easy way for us to, to limit the power of that meeting. Another one that parents might not think about is if there's more than one parent involved here. And you're dealing with maybe a sensitive subject or Whereas you might not be on the same page as your co parent, you need to make sure that's the case, you're on the same page. But so when parents are not on the same page, and you get into a council situation, that difference shows up. And that's not what you want when you're trying to help your kids come along in the right way. So those are some of the big things I can think of that are our reasons why they don't tend to work very well.

Roxanne Thayne:

I think also not having a heads up that is coming is another problem. So we have a kid who I swear if you don't give him three days notice he just flips out because he didn't have it in his plan. It's not that he had other plans, but he just wanted to prepare himself emotionally for it. So if you can give kids a heads up, that this is coming, let them know what the topic is. You know, I know these are some of the keys that we're going to talk about. But I think that that's where a lot of these fail is that it sprung on people and they just are not in a place.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

It's a great point. And we'll get into that in more detail in just a second. But so what Why don't we counseled together regularly? You know, what are some of the reasons that happens? And I would say, first of all, it's anything that usually builds something positive and and strengthens a family. It requires intentionality. And it requires us getting, maybe developing habits that we don't have in the beginning. So it takes a lot of persistence, while we're trying to learn. It's like, we have to go through the training wheels phase of learning how to do councils. And so for that reason, it's not a good habit, it's not a habit already set up. It's something we have to develop.

Roxanne Thayne:

I think we also don't have a vision for what it could actually accomplish. I mean, I think a lot of us think, okay, yeah, we need to plan for this event or take care of that. But we don't have a vision for the power that it provides. I mean, can you imagine, if you had a great way to communicate, it didn't matter what was coming up, there was enough trust and security and safety in that council setting, that those kinds of things could come up, that would be a huge win, that would be used throughout a lifecycle, I would think I mean, just all the way through the ageing process, which would then of course, be passed down further, to next generations.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

That's, that's fantastic. That's a great point, through regular councils, we're starting a pattern that could have multi generational effect. And that's an awesome thing. Let's get into some of the elements of effective counsel. So get your notebook out, if you want to get some some key ideas here, and why don't want to try them at home. You know, I would say number one, meet together as an executive counsel, if there's a co parent, in the situation, make sure you to meet together, identify the purpose of your family council, identify what your hope for, you know, outcome might be. decide who's going to facilitate the council. And make sure that you two are in pretty good alignment. Before you begin,

Roxanne Thayne:

I'd say even beyond the alignment, make sure you've kind of gone through what waterfalls might be ahead of you on this little journey, if so, and so is going to be tired or so and so's always grumpy at this time of day, you know, have somebody be on the lookout for that while you're facilitating have someone else be watching the mood.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

That's good. Yeah, that's nice to have a couple people there who are watching the process and attuning to the all the members of the group to notice those things. The next thing is something you brought up Roxanne and that's to give notice on the topic, and not only is it there is this important to avoid someone feeling surprised and not be be prepared. But it's to give them time to really think through and maybe even come up some really good ideas they couldn't have had had they not had time to prepare. eliminate distractions. You know, we've, we've tried carrying camp, we've tried carrying on family meetings when there's been lots of external distractions. And right now we've got two two dogs, we just brought a new puppy into the family system. And we found we can't really meet and have a focused conversation where we can really be present with those two dogs in the room. Right? So eliminating the distractions really important. You've identified now someone who's going to lead the discussion. How does that person create, let's say the environment, not just the physical but kind of the emotional environment needed for a good family council, Roxanne?

Roxanne Thayne:

Well, I think that the agenda is a huge thing. Again, that sounds very formal and very corporate business world, but it's not, it's just to keep you on track. And knowing ahead of time, if everybody in the family knows that they're each going to get two minutes to bring up pros or cons or creative ideas or whatever it is, everybody can relax, and they can listen to one another because they know that their turns coming. And that is just a gift for them to know, I am just as important. I'm gonna get as much time and I also have that responsibility of being expected to contribute.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

Yeah, that's really good. You know that the the atmosphere that that the leaders of this council need to create is one of love and safety, where there's this feeling of connection like we're in this together. We're working as a team to achieve the goals that we have. And I just feel like any kind of time any way you can create a feeling of love and safety, openness, you're going to get outcomes you could never have otherwise it's that magic ingredient to almost any scenario that you can think of that if that's left out, you, you will probably fall flat.

Roxanne Thayne:

Yeah, this might be another one that people might think is silly, but there is power and food. And so if you had some kind of food that you could have present at every council, maybe it's something that's traditional, maybe it's just popcorn and water. I mean, it really doesn't matter what it is. But something that would gather everybody around and make them excited to show up for it. You just need all the little help some prompts along the way that you can get to make this a good experience. And maybe later, they'll come just for the experience of the council. But at first, it might be the treats that lower them.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

Yeah, you want to sweeten it? Yes, sir deal during the council. And it's great to kind of share the goal or the purpose right out the gate. This is the goal of our family council today. And that, that keeps us orientation going the right direction. Let's talk about some real world examples that where councils have used some of these things, and then we'll wrap it up with maybe a few other things the leader can do to facilitate a good outcome during a council. So, Roxanne, you had an experience as a young girl in your own family of origin that that was really around a really important trip that I've heard about many times over the course of our, our marriage together, you want to share that with with the audience.

Roxanne Thayne:

Yeah, my dad was a history professor. And he would take students over to London for study abroad every summer. And one summer, we decided that we were all going to go for a month. And that was a big deal for a family who was living on a professor salary. And so my parents really wanted to give us I mean, this was like a once in a lifetime, they wanted to give us the experience of going to museums and plays and, and ballets and things like that, but they just didn't have that kind of money. So my parents called us together in a family council to say, hey, we really want to have these experiences, we don't have the extra money, we know your kids are too young to have jobs. So we found a company in California that needs pine cones to make holiday wreaths with for front doors. And we can get $5 per black garbage bag, if we fill it with pine cones. And we lived in the middle of a ponderosa pine forest. And so they were plentiful, just out our back door. And so as a family, we went out and started doing it and there was griping and there was crying and there was whining, because at first you know, we agreed we didn't know. But it was not our parents sending us with the bag and saying go out and get it. My parents were out there with us picking up pine cones. And you know, there was stuck fingers because they're prickly and their SAP. And it's messy. But I'll tell you when we were sitting in London in the theater, watching Agatha Christie's mousetrap, there was such a feeling of accomplishment that we had actually contributed to the family in that way. As kids, it was a real building experience such confidence, and an appreciation and gratitude that we weren't just blowing this trip off as something that mom and dad should provide us it was something that we all had a part in. So that was a great way that my parents used to counsel to help get buy in. Before we went,

Dr. Tim Thayne:

That's great. You know, the next kind of point I want to make is that if you're the leader of a council, whether it be just a one on one with the child, or in your maybe all of your family together, and this relates to love to me, is you need to facilitate really, really good listening and responsible speaking. You want the atmosphere to be one that people are really engaged and, and safe. And you're going to model this, you're the first one out to be the listener. And listening to me is is the best way you can show love to someone. And no matter who it is, whether it's a stranger or someone at work, and obviously if it works there, it works 10 times better in in homes where that relationship is that that important? So facilitating good listening. Roxanne, could you share the experience we had with our own kids? And especially especially around this concept of listening, as we did our monthly meetings with our kids?

Roxanne Thayne:

Yeah, so everyone has a different way that they do allowances. And what we just decided in our family was that we would pay our kids every month, the number of years they were old, they got dollars. So if they were 10 years old, they got $10.11 years old $11 We would have them come in and meet with us monthly just privately it was a personal parent interviewer and we would always started out just being fun, like what's going on in your life. We noticed this happening. This is awesome, really building them up and and then we would ask them silly questions that we also were kind of wondering about, you know, so Are you on drugs, or do you have a girlfriend?

Dr. Tim Thayne:

We're doing that we're doing that with a big smile on her face because we're helping them see that, hey, we're going to talk about a lot of things while we're here together. And so they just laugh at us like no of course not. They were little but it just was the beginning of being able to have conversations that were about all kinds of things,

Roxanne Thayne:

right. And you know, as it as the conversation went on, we would finally get to the part where, okay, let's talk about how your chores were this month or your behavior, and then we would dock them, sometimes$1, or we would give them $1 bonus if they had done really well. And I believe the kids came at first, just for the money, because yeah, they wanted that money. But it was a good lure to allow us to have a half an hour together, alone, uninterrupted, or however long it took, and the other kids knew to leave us alone, because they wanted their turn. And I think it was just really a beautiful experience to get to know them one on one. And it's just rare that we had that experience being busy entrepreneurs, and having a lot of kids and farm animals that we actually just sat and enjoyed their personalities.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

You know, and in this case, it was it was two parents with one child, and we'd kind of go through all of them in that format. We have other experiences where it's just been one of us with with each of the children. But But I think when I look back on that, and I think they had both parents 100% focused on them, you know, cell phones were gone, there was no distractions, it was a very focused experience. And they felt this love coming from both of us. And at the end of the conversations, of course, we had a shared understanding of where our child was at. And that was another really important thing for for that was a really, that was a really important outcome of those monthly meetings.

Roxanne Thayne:

Yeah, and if I can just share another one that I did for Christmas one year, that just worked out very well and just had the same kind of result. And it was a one on one experience. For Christmas, I gave each of the kids $1 store photo album. And I told him, this is going to be for your dream board, you're going to put all your dreams in here. And I'll help you and it's going to be awesome. And of course, they were like, what, I don't get it. They didn't really see the value in it. But I took them one on one. And we sat at the computer and I just started asking questions about their likes or their dreams. And I would ask things like, if you could have any dog in the world, what breed would you get? What would the dog's house look like, if you could live in any kind of a house? What would it be? And then I just sat back and watched as they told me what they were looking for, then we would go look up images on on the computer. And then we would print out the image that they felt most resembled their dream, cut it out and put it in the little photo album. And I'll tell you, it was an hour and a half long per kid and went on all day long. And at first they thought it was silly. But then they really enjoyed talking. And just because we were not staring at each other, but both facing the screen instead. And I was just running the computer and they were running the printer and cutting it out. It became just a beautiful experience for me to get to know them. And I had to bite my tongue not to say oh, you wouldn't want to live in a House vote that would get old really fast. I just had to say great live in a House vote great live in a tree house. I mean, if that's your dream, let's see how we can help you do that. So that that's a an example of me listening very well, me showing curiosity, me showing support. And then just feeling heard.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

Yeah, you've been excited about what they were excited about. Right. So and that's a bonding experience. So let's list a few of the things that family councils could could cover. And, and let's let's think about that me obviously, you've shared an example of a family event that was in the future that you were we're all working towards, and how to have that kind of experience. So calendaring and, you know, trips and vacations are great topics to cover and family councils. Another one would be, you know, the goals of each child. You think about having a family unit behind you, you know, whether it's one sibling or, or just your parents or multiple siblings all of you there to talk about their goals and dreams that that one person that's pretty powerful family counsel to, especially if we do that for all of our kids, right? We wouldn't want leave anybody out. What are some other thoughts? You have Roxanne about topics?

Roxanne Thayne:

Well, I think there's those big life changes that are going to happen. Obviously, there's things like a divorce or a health crisis, maybe for one of the family members. Maybe it's a death that's taken place, and you're trying to figure that out or a move, or those kinds of things. Definitely need some extra attention. And not just Well, half of you are watching television, but you really plan for it. And I think you know of the times where we've had family members who have passed and we're trying to figure out what to do. Do we send flowers do we go help them move or whatever it is. There's so much power and creativity that is Write amongst us, no one person has all the answers. And if you can remember that, you're going to get a much richer experience and a much greater outcome.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

Yes, and I would also say that, you know, there, there are those life transitions where those are opportunities. But there's, there's these really common opportunities for family councils to. And that would be around problem solving of any kind, you know, where solving a problem is best done as a family. For example, let's say you have chores that are really family responsibilities, but they're just not really happening very well. It'd be perfect to bring this this up in the council, and talk through it and facilitate what could be a universal solution to the problem. And when you've got that, now, you've got everybody on board with the new plan. And so I want to throw in here right now, is we talking about topics for a second, just how important it is that you are good at communicating, that you're good at, at facilitating effective communication. And this is one of those skills a lot of people don't possess right off the bat, you need to be good at facilitating good communication. And I, this is the core of it, you know, it's what this is all about is communication. And when you do that, well, you can solve problems, you can create unity, you can, you can heal, there's so many incredible benefits of being able to communicate well. And if you can do that in a group that now happens across the group,

Roxanne Thayne:

you know, you talk about managing emotions as one of the most important things that you can do in communication. And so can you just give a couple of hints of emotions they might feel coming up in themselves or coming up in the other members,

Dr. Tim Thayne:

I'm glad you brought that up, because depending on the topic, there could be a lot of emotion. And yet your job as the leader or the facilitator of that is that you're monitoring the emotions in the room, that you're in, attuned well enough to everybody there that you can identify what they're thinking and feeling. And you may have to ask them, but at some point, you know, if we get into intense discussion, you know, our emotions can take over. And we kind of go down into the lizard brain instead of the prefrontal cortex, where we're able to make decisions and have empathy and all those high level, you know, cognitive abilities, kind of go out the window when there's the strong emotions. And so you're the one in charge of making sure you can move them from that what we call the downstairs brain, to the upstairs brain. And it may take some time, it may take some deep breathing, it might take a pause in the middle of all of this. But if you manage that, well, you'll you'll not have the experience I shared earlier, that this becomes a really, really painful, awful experience that you don't want to have over and over again. So it's it's important that you manage those emotions, so that you can ultimately have a track record of, hey, anytime we have a family council, we have good outcomes. And so we'll I'll try and do another podcast sometime on solution talk, which is a model of communication that that we have developed over the years at homeward bound. That enables us to really tackle everything from small issues really effectively to even being able to manage the some of the biggest issues these families ever face. And it's empowering, to know how to do that.

Roxanne Thayne:

I think that if you were to ask Tim and me what has been the most intentional thing we've done in our family life, I would say this, and it has not been without freak outs and flops and it not going well as having to call recess and maybe not even getting back together. It takes practice is what I'm saying. It doesn't matter. If you study this all day long. And it's part of your career. It's different when you're working in your own home. A lot of your disciplines that you use at work, you don't use at home, you take that off and hang that on the hook when you come in. But you're gonna have to put back on that hat of being a leader of being somebody who is not ready to squash someone's idea. You've got to be ready to be your best self when you do this. But I can promise that as you are intentional, it gets easier. It gets more natural, it gets better. Everybody starts to look forward to it. And pretty soon you're not saying let's call a family council, you're saying hey, can everybody jump on the video conference? We have something we need to talk about and people will make sure that they're there for it.

Dr. Tim Thayne:

That's a great wrap up Roxanne I think this is probably a good place to and an off Brian a couple more tips as we as we close here. But the goal of these family councils, if you're dealing with something that that really needs a consensus is to get to consensus as much as possible. Ultimately, parents need to be the leaders in the end to make some of those decisions. But if you can come to a consensus, that would be fantastic. And also you want to summarize at the end, what did you learn from this? Where are we going to go from here, so that people see the progress that's been made during that meeting. And, and so you're, if you look at this kind of high level, what you're doing is you're planning maybe before the meeting with your other co parent or others, you're, you're having the meeting, and you're coming to a plan through that process, you go out and do whatever it was that you've decided on. But don't forget to come back and review. Because if you can share this pattern of plan, do and review with your kids, they're going to see this as a powerful model that they can follow in their own families. And remember, you're giving them tools for the future, you're not just solving problems for today, you're giving them tools for the future at the same time. If you do all of that regularly, you will gain this competence, and a track record of success around these family councils that will enable your family to to achieve what it's here to do to strengthen its members to help each one reach their potential to tackle the challenges together. To ultimately even mourn with each other if you need to. And be sad together but also celebrate and be happy together. I mean, the great thing about family life is that it is it is intense. You know, if we're trying to avoid suffering, we would never want to be in families. But if we're trying to have meaning, then family is where it's at. And so I leave that with you as hopefully inspiration to take on this idea of family councils and begin to do them regularly. And to have the the success that's there waiting

Talmage Thayne:

for you. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The not by chance podcast. Everything discussed today is a topic that they go more into in a new video course that's coming out this fall. It's a masterclass on intentional family living. And if you're wanting to learn more about it, go to home coach.com