My adult child has worked in the business for five years and expects to step onto the leadership team, but the current executives feel they have not earned the seat. How do I handle this without creating resentment at home or at work?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Family privilege at the executive table is poison to leadership team health. If your executives believe that bloodline outweighs performance, you will destroy vulnerability-based trust and drive your best talent out the door. Cracks at your leadership level will become massive chasms across the rest of the organization.

Take family completely out of the equation and evaluate the situation strictly through the EOS toolset. First, pull up your Accountability Chart. Look at the open or targeted leadership seat in question. What are the five core roles defined for that seat? Does your adult child truly GWC that seat: do they Get it, do they Want it, and do they have the Cognitive and Emotional Capacity to perform at an executive level right now?

Second, let your Integrator and leadership team run the evaluation. If you are the founder and Visionary, your paternal bias makes you the worst person to judge their readiness. Require your child to hit the exact same measurable milestones, Scorecard metrics, and quarterly Rocks as any outside executive hire.

If they fall short on capacity, tell them the unvarnished truth. Explain that protecting the business and their future reputation requires them to master lower-level execution before leading peers. True love for your family means not setting them up for public failure. If they expect an unearned seat simply because of their last name, that is entitlement, and an entitled executive will rot company culture from the top down.