My father and I have a generally good relationship. But when the opportunity to merge our professional forces and work together presented itself, I was concerned.
I had slowly been growing my public relations agency, Chirichella Associates, based in Italy, which I began in 2021. My specialty is working with female-run businesses and Italian businesses.
My company started growing very quickly, and I began receiving requests on a weekly basis. I knew that soon, I wouldn’t be able to handle it all, and I didn’t want my work to suffer. I was going to need to bring someone on.
That’s when I turned to my father, a public relations executive with over 30 years of experience.
I worried about what hiring him would do to our relationship
I knew he was the right man for the job, but I wasn’t sure it was the best idea to bring him on board as my new coworker.
We already lived in the same town in Italy, just a 10-minute walk apart. We saw each other daily, whether for dinner or picking up my kids for a trip to the park.
I kept asking myself: Would working with my father be a good long-term idea? Would it be so bad that it would just be a short-term solution? How could it damage our relationship? Would we spend too much time together and end up hating each other?
Accepting the unknown, I decided to hire my father to help out at my agency despite my concerns.
Thankfully, hiring him was for the best
After nearly two years of working together, our relationship is stronger than ever.
Being coworkers has given us the opportunity to see one another in a different light. Now, we have a newfound respect for one another.
My father, for example, sees who I have become as someone passionate about my career. He sees it firsthand when we get on calls with clients and when we have strategy meetings. He sees the effort I put into everything I do, and he sees how open I am to his feedback.
I now see my father as someone I can learn from. He’s been in this business for decades, so he has so much to teach me. I’m constantly looking to learn and grow, and who better to learn from than my father, who happens to be my coworker?
I also have gotten the chance to see my dad in a different light. I see how hard he works and how much time and effort he puts into every pitch, every strategy, and every client.
I never saw that part of my dad, the public relations executive.
I now love working alongside my dad
My father and I meet regularly, whether on Zoom calls with clients or brainstorming sessions. Some of those sessions will be done out of our office, or maybe I will work from home that day, and we’ll share a coffee discussing a media strategy as my toddler runs circles around us.
It’s funny because when I was a little girl, I didn’t really know what my dad did for work. All I knew was that he put on a suit every day and worked in a big skyscraper in Manhattan.
But now I see all the effort that he put into his work. All that passion was to make sure he gave our family the best possible life.
Now, we get a chance to share that life together, as father and daughter, and as coworkers.
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