Turning personality conflicts into complements that create healthy relationships and positive outcomes is a powerful process that is within the reach of every person in every family and team. It starts with this basic belief system. The people who are in our family are there for a purpose.  They are there to complete or balance us in some way. The people we work with in business are there to make your work and life more effective.  Because of this, it is worth investing time to understand the unique strengths and contributions each person in our family and each person in our business team can best make to create great relationships and outcomes. Three Keys to Better Relationships in Family and in Business Understand your own unique behavioral strengths. This is the key to personal growth and finding roles where you will be most effective. Recognize and respect the behavioral strengths of others. This is the key to effective interdependence in families and in teams. Learn to blend the differences between people in your family and on your work teams in a way that best utilizes the unique strengths of each person in each situation or project. This will result in greater harmony, productivity and effectiveness. Core and Adapted Personality Styles We all have a core behavioral style that comes most naturally to us and that we revert back to especially when under pressure or stress.  This core personality style does not change much from late teen years throughout life unless you experience a life-changing personal event like the death of a spouse or child. We also have the amazing ability to adapt our behavioral style based on what we believe it takes to be successful in our current family or team dynamics.  These adaptations are generally a very healthy part of good human relationships. Be aware however, that significant adaptations in your overall behavioral style, over long periods of time, can cause personal stress and lack of effectiveness because you aren’t operating in your natural sweat spot. Communication Adaptations Another key to success in family and business relationships is for individuals to learn to adapt their natural communication style with others so it is most effective for others.  Without great intentionality, we tend to communicate with others based on the way we like to be communicated with.  However, servant leaders are always looking for ways to serve the people they do life with more effectively and will therefore seek to adapt their communication style to the style of the person they are communicating with.  This means that we must understand our own strengths and weaknesses and understand and value the strengths and weaknesses of others. Ideally, this is a two-way street where both parties are seeking to understand and adapt to what the other person needs.  So consider what you might need to do to express to your family or team members how you want to be communicated with based on your personality strengths.  At the same time, take responsibility to proactively find out how others prefer to be communicated with and then communicate with them in this way.  If you do this, your relationships and your effectiveness will increase over time. The Law of Differences to Build or Destroy Relationships This law is as predictable as the law of gravity.  When I experience someone who has different strengths (or something that based on my strength, appears to be a weakness), I have a choice to make.  I can choose to judge that person and see that difference as a weakness.  This will lead to isolation (physical and/or emotional) which eventually leads to death in the relationship.  You may physically spend less time together, choose not to go over and talk to them at events, no longer comment on Facebook posts where you once did, stop responding the same way to texts, etc.  Judging a differe