My brother is our head of sales and a co-founder, but he is clearly hitting his ceiling and his division is stagnating. How do I address his performance on the Accountability Chart without destroying our family relationship?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Dealing with family members on the leadership team requires absolute, unsentimental clarity. You must separate the business relationship from the family relationship. In the office, you are business partners bound by the Accountability Chart and the company core values.

To resolve this, you must run your brother through the GWC tool. Does he get, want, and have the capacity to do the job as the business scales? If he does not, keeping him in that seat is actually damaging his relationship with you and the rest of the leadership team. He knows he is struggling, and the strain is likely bleeding into family dinners.

Sit down with him outside of the office. Frame the conversation around the needs of the business, not his personal worth. Explain that the seat has outgrown his current capacity and that for the company to reach its goals, you need to transition him to a seat where he can thrive.

If he does not fit any open seat on the Accountability Chart that he GWCs, then he must exit the day-to-day operations. He can remain a shareholder or board member, but he cannot collect a paycheck for a leadership seat he cannot execute. Use the business goals as the objective benchmark. It is not personal; it is about putting the right people in the right seats to protect everyone's investment, including his.