Family at Work How Family Dynamics Shape Our Working Lives

Part I: The Benign Third – the Art of ‘Kintsugi’  Part II: Family at Work  1. Family in the Mind  2. Couples at Work  3. Founders – Proud or Narcissistic Parents?  4. Family Businesses  5. The Challenge of Succession – ‘Killing the Father’  6. Siblings at Work  7. Abusive Families  8. The Scar of an Early Loss  9. We Are Not a family  10 The absent family  11 Falling out of love  12. The Grandparent Effect

Biography

Francesca Cardona is an organizational consultant, executive coach and a teacher of consultancy. Italian by birth, she has been based in London since the mid-eighties. She has worked in a variety of organizational and cultural contexts, helping leaders, teams and individuals to face issues of change, transition and conflict and the emotional dimension of organizational life. She is the author of Work Matters – Consulting to Leaders and Organizations in in the Tavistock Tradition (Routledge, 2020).

'In this insightful and moving book, Francesca Cardona reveals the way our family experiences, past and present, real and imagined, infuse and inform our work. We do not just bring our selves to the workplace, she reminds us. We also bring those who have had a role in shaping our selves. And once you think of family that way, work becomes a place where we might repeat or change the ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that make us who we are. It is a deeply human and very practical way of approaching work. Whether you see your work and family are intertwined, as in a family business, or you believe that they are separate, you will benefit – and enjoy – the cases, insights, and lessons in this book.'

Gianpiero Petriglieri, MD, associate professor of organisational behaviour, INSEAD

'Francesca Cardona masterfully illuminates the often invisible threads connecting our earliest family roles to our most pressing workplace challenges, showing us how the "unthought known" quietly shapes our professional identities, relationships, choices and effectiveness. Through a psychodynamic lens, she transforms what might seem like ordinary workplace dynamics in both family and non-family businesses—rivalry with colleagues, difficulty with authority, fear of succession—into profound opportunities for self-understanding and growth. This book is essential reading for leaders and consultants seeking insight on how to be more fully present and effective in our professional lives and workplaces.'

Debbie Bing, president, CFAR Consulting and Coaching, chair of the Family Firm Institute

'We spend much of our adult lives at work. Yet how much do we consider the internal templates that we bring into the workplace - the ‘family in our mind’ – which shapes how much work is a source of creativity and fulfilment or frustration and struggle. In this brilliantly engaging book, Francesca Cardona brings this to life for us. She draws deftly on psychoanalytic theory, using compelling stories from her experience as a consultant to organisations, to show us that such understanding may enable us to find our way toward new thinking and development, where previously we had been caught in frustrating repetition. I have always thought the psychoanalytic understanding of our organisational world, and how we function within this, is one that needs to reach a wider audience. Francesca Cardona speaks to all of us who spend much of our time in organisations– with this fascinating, and above all, supremely helpful book, which opens the door on how the private life of our internal worlds is expressed in the public realm of our working lives.'

Andrew Balfour PhD, CPsychol, chief executive consultant, clinical psychologist, adult & couple psychotherapist