After years of helping families and family businesses learn to better communicate and create a process to handle conflict resolution, I noticed a common pattern that is now so obvious to me, it’s hard to ignore. Testimony from adults, kids, teens, and executives—family after family—makes it clear why they can’t work out conflict and move to a common resolution. Families in communication turmoil have been raised in a conditional family culture that did not teach them how to talk to each other while growing up. Healthy communication was not a priority.

Resilient families, on the other hand, are raised in an unconditional family culture that supports and teaches healthy communication skills. These families create and use a process to help them resolve differences as they arise. They understand that conflict resolution is a learned skill. Children grow up with communication tools and processes that keep the family close.

In my experience as an expert in communication and conflict resolution, and corroborated by research, the length of a family relationship is determined by how conflict is dealt with between family members.