I love my family. We were on a group tour recently. One of our fellow tour members, a woman we didn’t know prior to the trip, who had shared a bus, hikes and meals with us for a few days, said,  “I can tell you all really enjoy being around each other.” It was one of the nicest compliments I’d ever gotten. Our family isn’t perfect, but our observer was right, we do enjoy being around each other. I realized in that moment, creating a happy family is about multiple relationships. Each person has an individual relationship with every other member. In a family of four, there are 12 relationships. Each person has a personal relationship with the other three. That’s six total relationships. Then there are two sides to each relationship, so that means 12 dynamics in play. The same exponential relationship model applies at work.  Even if everyone has a good relationship with the leader, if one team member dislikes another, it has a chilling effect on the entire group. Case in point, my younger brother and I ruined many a family trip (and dinners, and TV nights, and zoo, museum, Dairy Queen trips, and just about every other thing my mother tried to plan) with our constant fighting.  In any group, if one relationship, or even one side of one relationship is out of whack, it makes every single other relationship worse. My colleague Seth Kahan, (www.visionaryleadership.com) says the exponential relationship dynamic is actually a mathematical ​formula:  2 n– (n + 1) where n is the number of people in the group. This formula factors in the sub groups, trios, quads, etc., that occur in any group of more than two.  For http://www.mcleodandmore.com/2014/02/25/why-happy-families-require-12-great-relationships-or-maybe-11/