IF YOU CALL THEM FAMILY…

Your workplace is not a family, it can never be your family. If you keep calling it one, you had better back that up with the kind of leadership that holds people, and culture, to a higher standard. Families tolerate dysfunction, high-performing teams do not.

Too often, leaders say “we are like a family here” to imply closeness, loyalty, and connection, but fail to deliver on the structure, accountability, and clarity that make a workplace actually work. That is an emotional bait-and-switch.

The family metaphor creates blurred lines where suddenly, feedback feels personal, boundaries disappear and expectations become inconsistent. Before long, you are managing workplace drama, not performance. Your team does not need to feel like your siblings, they need to feel like professionals who are clear on what success looks like, how to get there, and who is responsible when things go sideways. In fact, I would argue the best leaders are the ones who show respect not through warm-and-fuzzy vibes, but through consistent standards. Let us talk about what that really looks like.

Boundaries are a leadership tool, not a mood so when leaders hesitate to set boundaries, they send a very loud message that they are not comfortable with leadership as good leadership requires saying no. It means clarifying scope, managing priorities, and ensuring the business does not become a free-for-all of personal favours and unspoken resentments. Smart leaders create consistency and structure to protect their team’s time and energy like the valuable resource it is.

Feedback is love in leadership language and if you avoid feedback because you do not want to hurt feelings, you are not being kind, you will be seen to be unclear. This type of leadership breeds anxiety where high performers are left guessing what good looks like, underperformers are enabled and this builds resentment. If you want a strong culture, normalise feedback as a muscle, so give it early, give it often, and give it with the intention of building someone up.

Clarity over closeness is a basic foundation of leadership. The desire to be liked is one of the greatest sabotages to great leadership. Agreed, it is human to want harmony but if that harmony comes at the expense of clarity, your culture will suffer. Clear roles, clear expectations, clear communication are the real love languages of high-performing workplaces. When your team knows what they are doing and why it matters, they perform better and that matters far more than whether you all hugged at the last staff retreat.

Lead like a Coach, your job is not to fix everyone’s problems, it is to equip your people with the tools, confidence, and support to solve their own. That is how you create scalable leadership and long-term transformation. If you want a resilient team, stop shielding them from discomfort and let them stretch and grow and earn their wins, with you as the guide, not the crutch.

The best teams are not built on the idea of family. They are built on the foundations of trust, clarity, boundaries, and mutual respect.  So stop calling it family if you are not giving your people what they really need to thrive. Instead, start building something even better, a team that runs on purpose, a workplace where feedback is normal, boundaries are sacred, and accountability is a shared value.

When you get those right, you will not need the family metaphor as your culture will speak for itself.