Let It Go - Peter Walsh Page 0,37
everyone. This is serious business and should be handled as such.
“Officers and stakeholders” in your downsizing business will have differing degrees of voting power—maybe a lot (your spouse when downsizing your own home or your parents with full cognitive ability who are downsizing theirs), maybe a little (a parent who’s completely incapacitated due to stroke or dementia and didn’t leave any wishes in writing), and maybe somewhere in between, based on the mood of the group (like spouses, cousins, or grown children).
But sometimes a different sort of Businessperson with a capital B arises. This is:
The unofficial accountant who halts the process by making sure all distributions are equal to the penny
The brother with inside knowledge on the local real estate market who is trying to get dibs on rental property that will gain more value
The sister who wants formal rules that allow no wiggle room
The hard-nosed tycoon, the sneaky wheeler-dealer, the inside trader, or the hostile-takeover planner in your midst
These are the more extreme cases. Chances are, the Businessperson who arrives at your downsizing is a family member who simply sees his business acumen and experience as invaluable to the project. This person may often seem to be more about the process than empathy. In the face of high emotions, his hard-nosed business sense can seem insensitive and rub others the wrong way.
Even if you’d like her to be a little less CEO and a little more kid sister, when dealing with the Businessperson, your best strategy is to acknowledge her expertise and use the business tools of project management, agendas, to-do lists, accountability, and task assignments to steer her energy.
Sample scripts to consider include:
“Amy, if I speak with the family and put together a list of everyone’s main concerns, could you draw up an agenda for our first meeting and perhaps chair it so we stay on task?”
“John, we have a lot of tasks to get done in a short period of time. Could you possibly get everyone on board with a timeline, then project-manage for the next couple of weeks?”
“Erica, can you suggest the best way to track the expenses each of us will have when downsizing the house so we can be sure everyone is reimbursed when we’re done?”
The Provocateur
Remember when grandma let you have that silk scarf when you were 12, but you shouldn’t have gotten it because you were grounded? No? Your cousin certainly does, and all these years later, she’s ready to even the score. Many families harbor a Provocateur like this who will emerge during tense times such as downsizing.
This person will try to disrupt the delicate decision-making process that the other participants have agreed upon, stir up dissent, and use this opportunity to settle injustices that no one else recalls.
It may be abundantly clear when you’re dealing with a Provocateur. Sometimes they operate openly in their daily lives, and they’ve brought drama to a long line of family decisions (you know, the person who stirs up trouble every holiday and isn’t happy at a special occasion until someone’s crying). But you might be surprised when an unexpected Provocateur pops out of the closet.
The Provocateur could be an out-of-state aunt or uncle who announces a claim to a family possession, a brother- or sister-in-law pulling strings behind the scenes while working through one of your siblings, or even a parent who’s playing family members against each other by giving valuables to a favored child.
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Real-World Downsizing Discovery
Tauna says: A few years ago, my mom and I were looking through holiday photos, and she noticed how cluttered everything looked with her normal things out in addition to her holiday decorations. She proceeded to try to thin some things out but was having a difficult time with it. I came over and helped her to remember to ask herself if each thing had any meaning and if it made her happy in any way.
Also, I often look through local Facebook pages and Craigslist ads for people in need of things, most often from great loss such as fires or separations from abusive relationships, and let my mom know about them so she can decide if she would like to donate anything. We especially enjoy doing this, because we know it will greatly improve someone’s quality of living and really could mean the world to someone. She has told me that she often feels like a small weight has been lifted from her shoulders after going through and getting rid of things.
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