What Should I Do If A Team Member Has An Un-Supportive Spouse?

What should I do if a team member has an unsupportive wife, or husband, or just a loved one or a close one? They’re just unsupportive of what they do and how they do it.

Masa and I have dealt with this issue. It’s more common than you probably would think. As you probably understand, as you grow in your business, in your life, you become a different person. The persons that Masa and I were 10-13 years ago before we started our business, we are completely different persons today. I am standing in front of the camera, talking to you, something that probably 13 years ago I wouldn’t even think I would be doing.  The reason I’m doing it today is so I can share with you my experience. My experience in regards to having an unsupportive husband or wife is the following.

First of all, it’s about understanding that when they are unsupportive, it’s not because they want to hurt you. It’s, first of all, maybe they want to protect you from you getting hurt. That’s one thing. The second of all is, how what you’re doing is going to affect their lifestyle and what they have. What they have is something that they have been working very hard to achieve. They are afraid of missing out, so there is two things. They are afraid of you getting hurt and they are afraid of them not having the lifestyle or not having what they have been working so hard to have.

The most important thing, or the thing that kind of always helps, is to sit that person, or the whole family, around the table and pre-frame the whole conversation. The most important thing, obviously, is to have that conversation. Uncomfortable, but necessary conversation. It is about sitting everyone at the table and saying, “Okay, what’s in it for you and what’s in it for me?” What’s in it for me is that you know I care about you, I love you very much, but I’m really committed to get this done. I think when I achieve this in my business, I think I am going to be able to do so many more things in my life. I’m going to feel so much better, so much happier that I’m not right now. That’s what’s in it for me.

Now, what’s in it for you, I think at the end of the day… Again you don’t need to do exactly like this, but just so you have an idea. What’s in it for you, for the loved one, is if you help me to do this, let’s say, if you help me to put two hours aside, and help me with the kids two hours a day or an hour a day, or you cook dinner twice a week, or three times a week so I can go to meetings, I can go and meet people, I can do my business. As a reward, what’s in it for you, first of all, is once a week I will take you for dinner here. I know that you love going for dinner to this restaurant. I will take you to dinner once a week or once a month.

You need to find what is it that they like and what’s in it for them. That’s the most important thing. You find something that is in it for them. What is it that they love doing? You enable that conversation by telling them what’s going to be the thing that they’re going to achieve if they help you with your business for example. The second thing is you need to give them a timeframe of action. For example, if I was at that table and I was talking to my spouse and my spouse is not very supportive, I would say, look, again, I am very committed, I am going to do all these things. Second of all, I know that you have been working really hard and I really care about you, so if you help me with this … I really want your help.

If you help me with this, I would love to take you to dinner once a month to your favourite restaurant. My goal is to do … I don’t know, this much and I think I can achieve it in the next three months. What I would like you to do is give me permission and to give ourselves permission all this arrangement for the next three months, and at the end of these three months we can sit down again and reevaluate. If for some reason you are not happy with that, or I haven’t achieved these goals, or I haven’t succeeded, we can reevaluate and talk about it again. Would that be okay with you?

That way, you are dealing with that unsupportive wife, or husband, or loved one, and they see that you care about them. Also, at times they feel also misunderstood. They feel that you don’t care about them, but when you sit them down and you actually have that conversation, they will feel than you actually care about them and they will be more open to suggestions and things that you probably want them to help you with.

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