Working with Your Spouse Part 2: Clearly Defined Roles

The hardest aspect of working with your spouse is your roles in the business versus your roles to each other as husband and wife. Who is in charge? How do you tell your spouse to do an assigned task without taking that home after work? The best way to accomplish these goals with respect and love for one another is to have clearly defined roles in marriage and at work.

Choosing who is the “boss” at work is not an easy task; pride often times makes one hesitant to accept authority being put on them. Assessing strengths and weaknesses when it comes to business can become quite personal when done with your wife or husband. Remember this, “It is not personal, it’s strictly business” realizing that the business will thrive only when the right person is in the right position helps take the sting out of the decision you reach.

The best way to ensure there is little or no sting from the decision you reach is to remember that this is no reflection on your marriage or the strength of the individuals in regards to the marriage. You may have one person “in charge” in business and the other in the marriage. The idea here is to ensure that everyone’s strengths are optimized in the right places.

When decisions are made or tasks assigned, remember, this is your spouse to whom you swore a life long vow. Treat them with respect and whatever you do, don’t act like a tyrant; Napoleon went out of fashion quite some time back. Leadership in its truest form is a servant’s position, putting the needs of others before your own. This is true in marriage and in business; the good of the whole must be put before the good of each individual.