Therapy can be just the business for those in a troubled relationship

By SELWYN PARKER

I once worked for a publishing company where the managing director would surreptitiously open the door of his office, look carefully down the corridor to make sure the managing editor wasn't there, and then scuttle down the stairs as quickly as he could.

The reason? He didn't want to have to acknowledge the managing editor's presence.

These two most senior people in the organisation were at war. They disagreed on just about everything to do with the business and bickered over it constantly. Inevitably, the business was struggling.

Both stubborn and egotistical, they never resolved their differences and the business went under within a year. Yet if they had seen a business therapist, they would have been emotionally and materially much richer.

According to Fortune magazine, there are 1000 business therapists in the United States who regularly save commercial ventures, especially newly launched ones, from ruin by restoring peace between their estranged partners. In personal terms, a troubled business is basically like a troubled marriage, says Sylvia Schoenfeld, a psychotherapist who specialises in business therapy.

"It's getting people to talk to each other in a constructive way," she says.

Generally, Ms Schoenfeld starts by sitting the protagonists down in a neutral place and encouraging them to discuss the issues while she acts as moderator.

Not afraid to jolt her clients, she sometimes interrupts with comments such as: "It seems you have trouble taking advice."

Other business therapists work with executives whose outsized egos make them insensitive to staff.

Apparently, there's nothing quite like asking top guns something like, "How might that sound to somebody else?" to make them think.

How do you know your business relationships are in trouble? There are several giveaways:

* The prospect of going to the office is upsetting because that person will be there.

* You communicate only by email or memos.

* At home, you constantly denigrate that person to your partner.

* You plot ways of getting things done behind your business partner's back.