Family Teamwork = Better Caregiving

Part 2

Author's Note: This series of posts was written in alliance with Carebuzz, a site that offers resources for caregivers. Please visit their site at http://carebuzz.com.


In the first post in this series we discussed building a high performing family team by keeping the information and conversation going to better serve the loved one. Here’s another recommendation for family caregivers on how to build a supportive team.



Whether in the workplace or in the family, use all the resources at hand. It’s important that family members discuss how to share responsibilities to achieve a common goal of providing the best care. Too often one person tries to do it all, quickly becomes overwhelmed, and then resents that no one else pitches in to help.

Because of geography, skills or financial resources, caregiving usually falls to one or two family members, and the rest are left to wonder what’s going on and why they’re out of the loop. They may want to help but don’t know how and hesitate to offer their services. The primary caregiver may be too stressed out to think about how to divide up the work or simply doesn’t want to ask others for help.

Neither the care recipient nor the family members benefits from one person taking on all the work. Think about a football team; each player or group of players has a different role, and all the roles need to work together effectively for the team to win consistently. The quarterback may call the plays, but if he tries to do everything himself, disaster follows.

In my own family experience, others have helped with everything from researching the medical condition or facility to supplying “insider” medical knowledge, doing laundry, running errands and pet sitting. Everyone has a talent that can help in sharing the load and making caregiving a more pleasant experience for all. Those at a distance from the care recipient can still accomplish a lot via the internet, phone or library. Those who can’t contribute financially can help with household chores or other work.

And remember that, in many cases, the care recipient also has gifts to offer to the family team. If they are still able to do things such as writing notes or making phone calls, those small tasks help keep them connected to others. When my mother was in a nursing facility, she insisted on filling out her own menus; it saved us time and helped her feel useful. The most effective teams use everyone’s strengths to the best advantage.

What has been your experience with using all the talents in your family to provide better care?

Family Teamwork = Better Caregiving

Part 1

Author's Note: This series of posts was written in alliance with Carebuzz, a site that offers resources for caregivers. Please visit their site at: http://carebuzz.com

When helping mom and dad, siblings often face issues such as coordinating their medical appointment schedule, home care and health crises. Applying “team building” concepts to family caregiving can ease stress and greatly improve a loved one’s care.

In this series of posts, we’ll explore the major keys to building a high performing family caregiving team.



The first key is communication. Lack of it often trips up the family team and prevents the best care. Usually one person in the family is the primary caregiver and is often overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done. He or she simply does not have the time to keep all family members updated.

Absence of communication then sets up a situation where others make incorrect assumptions about the family member’s condition or the caregiver’s intentions. We have all seen what happens when people make assumptions, don’t bother to check if they’re correct, and then act on them.

Pretty soon you have a lot of needless worrying, finger pointing and anger that tends to get worse as time goes on. Some family members may completely withdraw from any caregiving responsibilities; others will form “cliques” within the family and criticize the main caregiver or other family members. None of these behaviors contributes to improved care.

In many situations siblings do not have a plan for keeping each other up to date. Because everyone doesn’t have the same information, they disagree on what constitutes “best care” for parents and experience dysfunctional behavior. So what can families do to prevent that from happening and improve communication?

It’s a good idea for family members to agree, ideally when the caregiving begins, on a means of communicating, the items to be communicated, and frequency. If family members are comfortable using the internet, there are great sites such as CaringBridge and GenerationsUnite where they can set up a page to update everyone. Family members can reply, ask questions, send greetings, suggestions and offers of help. Even Facebook and Twitter can be used to keep the information flowing, although privacy concerns must be addressed on public sites.

A less high tech method is for the primary caregiver to phone a designated family member at regular intervals or during a medical crisis, and have that designated person then call everyone else or set up a phone tree to complete the calls. The phone call method is simple and has worked well for my husband’s large family. Whatever the method, the goal is to continue the conversation with each other. In a later post, we’ll look at how to handle conflict when it occurs—and it will.


What communication tools do you use to enhance family teamwork?

How I Got Unstuck and Found Freedom

“Being ‘pattern aware’ is an important component of mature leadership,” says Sylvia Lafair, author of the recently published book, Don’t Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns that Limit Success. Her book is an exploration of how patterns that were created to help us cope with family situations end up tying us in knots (and “nots”) in our careers. You will absolutely recognize yourself and your colleagues in Dr. Lafair’s “13 most common destructive patterns in the workplace.”

So let’s get personal here. I’ll own up to a pattern I wrestled to the ground to illustrate how we get stuck in family baggage and how I found the way out. Dr. Lafair says there are 3 steps to becoming pattern aware and finding the way OUT:

1. Observe your behavior to identify patterns.
2. Understand the origins of those patterns.
3. Transform behavior by taking action.

I had no trouble identifying my non-serving patterns, but it took a while to understand how I came to be a world-class “martyr” (one of the 13 patterns). The book describes a martyr as someone who “will do everyone’s work, bend over backwards, go above and beyond the call of duty.” As one of my colleagues said, “[I] took over-functioning to a new level.” If that sounds like a good person to have in the workplace, you aren’t factoring in the guilt exacted by martyrs, who love to suffer and let everyone know, over and over, how hard they are working and how guilty others should feel for underappreciating them. Yeah, that used to be me. Over the years I must have annoyed quite a few people, who were probably thinking to themselves, “We’d be glad to pitch in if she’d just ask for help.”

The book relates the typical family experience that creates the martyr pattern: “Parents could not fulfill their dreams or gave up their dreams to help their child, and the child takes on the burdens.” Now my pattern was making more sense. Neither my father nor his father was able to fulfill his dreams. My grandfather had creative writing and musical talent that was set aside to earn a living as a self-employed roofer; he was electrocuted in a roofing accident when my father was only 4. My father was studying to be a doctor when he ran out of money and went to work for a steel foundry, which was horribly unsuited to his gifts even though he became successful. My mother gave up her career as a nurse to be a homemaker, because that’s what most women did in the 1950’s. Both my parents pinned all their unfulfilled hopes and dreams on me, their only child, and I spent most of my life doing my best to realize everyone else’s dreams.

Now came the really hard part: transforming my martyr (and sometimes victim) pattern into one that would better serve me, my family and my colleagues. To get unstuck, I went back to my family history through a process called Sankofa Mapping (described in the book) and discovered wonderful, positive legacies passed on by my ancestors. Sankofa is a West African word that means “heal the past to free the present.” Wikipedia states that it “symbolizes one taking from the past what is good and bringing it into the present in order to make positive progress.” That’s exactly how I used my new understanding of my family history.

The story that stood out for me was that of my great great grandfather, who had been a leader of tenant farmers in Ireland. In a last ditch attempt to seek redress for injustices, he led the tenants in a collective lawsuit against the landlord. Although the court ruled in favor of the tenants, their demands bankrupted the landlord. My ancestor, along with the rest of the tenants, lost his home and livelihood. As the story was told to me, he said to his family, “We’re going to America. There’s no future here.” With their last few dollars and an undying faith in God, he, his wife and 10 children came to the United States to seek a better life.

He could easily have fallen into an annoying litany of “poor me” or “you owe me,” but instead he stepped up to his role as family/community leader and expressed gratitude for the opportunity he found in a new land. His heirs continued to provide strong yet compassionate leadership in a variety of fields from business to education to missionary service in developing countries.

Reminding myself of that story of their strength, persistence and faith in the face of almost overwhelming odds has given me alternate patterns with which to carry on my own leadership legacy. Dr. Lafair says that the martyr transforms into the “integrator” who asks for help and gets others involved in sharing the burdens. Instead of carrying my family burdens on my back, I can now stand on the shoulders of my ancestors as I move forward in my own journey and ask others to walk beside me to help carry the load.

By dropping the heavy load and the poor me excuses, I’m becoming—at 60—the person I was always meant to be. And it feels great! Ultimately, as Dr. Lafair points out, transforming our patterns is about freeing ourselves to live fully—not only in the workplace, but in all aspects of our lives. Who doesn’t want that kind of freedom?