The rhythm of revenge in a family business.

My last post described the vicious cycle of anger and assumptions at work in the story of Samson, and recounted how these same tendencies emerge in modern-day family businesses. This week we see the furtherance of a tit-for-tat cycle of violence:

So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards. Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.” And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. And Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged on you, and after that I will quit.” And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam. (Judges 15:4-8)

You can almost feel the escalating rhythm of revenge: Samson destroys wheat fields and olive orchards. The Philistines then burn both the woman he hoped to marry and her father. Next Samson avenges their deaths “with a great blow,” which assumes multiple Philistine injuries or deaths. The back-and-forth violence becomes more intense with each exchange.

While physical violence may not be common in your family business, there is often an emotional, and sometimes verbal, form of escalating violence perpetrated by family members on one another (and by the way, silence can also be a form of violence). Someone becomes offended by a comment or action; they look for an opportunity to make the other person feel what they felt. The other person (who may or may not have intended or realized their initial offense), is taken aback by the aggression and responds with even greater intensity. Pretty soon, longstanding and important family relationships are coming apart at the seams.

In your family business or one that you know, have you ever witnessed an escalation of negative behaviors? What words or actions might interrupt and de-escalate the cycle of retribution occurring between family members?1