‘We have to find a way to work together’: Melinda Rogers-Hixon says it’s time to move past the boardroom battle for the sake of family and company

By Alexandra Posadzki

Ted Rogers, the founder of Rogers Communications Inc., used to encourage his children to debate issues related to the family business over dinner.

But there was a twist: Partway through, both parties would have to switch sides and argue the opposite position. The exercise was intended to teach them how to understand the other person’s perspective, as well as to challenge their own assumptions, he explained.

Now, as she reflects on the past several months, Melinda Rogers-Hixon, one of the late founder’s daughters, muses that perhaps the exercise could have prevented the very public spat that fractured her family and plunged Canada’s largest wireless carrier into turmoil.

“I wonder where that would have taken us, and would we be in the same position?” Ms. Rogers-Hixon said Thursday in her first interview since a boardroom battle over the company’s leadership found her, two of her family members and the majority of the company’s independent directors pitted against her brother, Edward Rogers.

Published by the Globe and Mail.