This post was originally published on gothamCulture’s blog. As a trusted partner of WeVue, gothamCulture works on identifying the underlying causes of organizational obstacles and assisting leaders to develop and execute breakthrough strategies that elevate their performance. One of the most common things I hear when talking to companies about their culture is, “our culture is like a family” OR “I want our culture to feel like a family.” Clients often cite examples of supporting sick coworkers and open communication, but are there deeper elements of a healthy family structure to consider? I decided to look at what really makes a successful family and apply those same principles to building a better company based on research from leading psychologists in the fields of marital stability, divorce prediction, and couples therapy. No one knows what a healthy family looks like better than psychologists John and Julie Gottman. Thirty-five years ago, the Gottmans founded the “Love Lab” at the University of Washington. At the “lab”, they brought couples into a fake bed and breakfast. Over the course of a weekend, they studied how the pair interacted and measured their physiological responses to the ways they communicated. They then went on to follow those same couples over the course of their relationships, studying how they continued to interact with each other through marriage, divorce, having children, and in some cases, as they approached death. After years of study, they found that with fifteen minutes of observation they could predict with 94% accuracy what the outcome […]