Introduction
This book focuses on women leaders with large sources of wealth. The authors have interviewed some 34 women leaders, some half of which are new to wealth, with the other half being inheritors of wealth.
Their methodology is focused on lengthy conversations with each, and thus with no analysis based on data. Rather the authors try to understand how each of these women came to wealth, their roles in their families, what were major obstacles that they had to overcome, and how they prepared the next generation.
The book falls into three parts: Part one – women new to wealth; part two – women who have inherited wealth; and part three – applying the key lessons detected from the interviews conducted to form part one and two.
The study has been sponsored by Pitcairn, a US-based venture fund, located in New York and Philadelphia. This company’s major focus is on supporting women entrepreneurs, owners and leaders. All of the women who participated in the study were US-based clients of Pitcairn. Thus, there is clearly a potentially serious bias in the study, in that those wealthy women leaders from Europe as well as from the rest of the world are not included.
However, this book is indeed important. Many of the findings of this study are significant. This reflects, perhaps, that women are now increasingly finding their rightful roles in business. We have seen a welcome increase of women pursuing higher level education (now more or less 50/50 with male counterparts in the US). We have equally seen female political leaders becoming more and more prominent worldwide. Still, in business leadership functions today there are relatively few women leaders. But progress is being made here too, and the present book is likely to contribute to this. A sense of perspective must be kept when it comes to this, however. After all, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act came about in 1976 only, i.e., relatively late. Only then, were women in the US given the right to obtain credit without the consent of their husbands. In many parts of the world, restrictions such as these, and others, still exist.
Before delving into the three sections of the book, let me briefly present the authors:
Amy Hart Clyne is the Chief Knowledge and Learning Officer at Pitcairn, and a leading expert on how to support wealthy families with relevant education.
Dennis T. Jaffe is an emeritus professor of family business, organizational systems and psychology at Saybrook University, San Francisco, and a leading consultant on family business. He is also a world recognized author of books on family wealth.
Now to the book, starting with part one.
New to Wealth
Most of the women in this category had husbands who were leading actors/entrepreneurs in their own right. The spouses found their role to support this, i.e., the partnerships with their husbands. Strong determination and inner drive were key characteristics of these women, and they shared these values with their husbands.
Women leaders were seen to play key supporting, complementing roles, critically important for allowing a family enterprise to succeed. These such alternatives were identified:
A complementary one, such as supporting a wine-making husband with finance and marketing functions.
Working behind the scenes, being an essential confidante.
Pursuing an independent business career, such as being an “as needed” partner after the death of her husband.
This group of women leaders typically played two critical roles, namely that of raising children as well as being involved in businesses spearheaded by their husbands. This amazing duality typically called for a lot of energy, to be able to “do it all”! Above all, to impact the children to respect good governance, guiding the next generation in one or more of the following five ways seems key:
Developing the children to recognize relationships
Raising the children to be active in business
Instilling a strong sense of gratitude in the children for having such access to wealth
Instilling stories and solutions to illustrate how one’s family might be governed
Encouraging the children to be creative – no limits!
When husbands died, the wives typically had to step out of the shadows and assume much greater leadership responsibilities. Often the women leaders may have more or less different leadership styles than their late husbands, but to cement a legacy, so that the next generation might eventually take over would be central. At times, parts of a business may be transferred to now-distant relatives.
Re-marriage is of course typically also a challenge. To connect with stepchildren, and even with the former wife, can be a challenge indeed. New wives might not be able to shift the tenor of a family, to build/sustain family connections, and even act as mentors to the “new children”.
As a way of summarizing the various roles of the new to wealth, first generation women leaders, the following four arch-types are identified:
To be an essential business partner and contributor.
To act as a catalyst to foster multi-generational family business success.
To stimulate business creativity at the next generational level.
To instill “sound” family values, especially when it comes to coping with wealth.
The authors were, however, also cognizant of the need to conduct more research to “fill in” at least eight more or less “open” areas for how to delineate what might constitute a successful woman leader new to wealth:
What might be key dimensions of proper preparation?
The inner drive and confidence: what is healthy versus dysfunctional?
The husband: what is proactive support from him?
The female leader may essentially be “alone”. But how might she cope with this so as not to be “lonely”?
To build awareness when it comes to effective leadership would be key. But how?
How might a successful women leader be able to identify what might be an essential business “gap”, and to fill this?
The husband versus the rest of his family. How to be an effective mediator?
How might children’s developments be driven as effectively as possible?
Let us now move to part two, where the focus is Inheritors of Wealth.
Most of these women, while taking on leaderships of often considerable sources of wealth, often ran into preconceptions that made their leadership tasks more difficult. Above all, there were often biases that made family members be better equipped to lead. There might also be trustees along the way. There were typically few role models, if any, for the female leader to be effective. Still, there are more and more examples of female leaders stepping up to the task of leading established family businesses, often having to challenge traditional standards.
Many of these leaders who were inheritors of wealth saw their key task as “serving as family diplomats” to enhance transitions to new generations of family members in one or more of the following three ways:
To ensure the continuation of a positive impact of a glowing future.
To spearhead new women leader role models in families of established business ownership.
To impact the traditional family dynamics when it comes to leading family businesses, perhaps especially by impacting a lessening of traditional male dominances.
The authors identified seven traditional cultural dimensions that successful female leaders would have to cope with:
How to fit in when it comes to well-defined family cultures?
How to ensure frugality, i.e., the preservation of wealth.
How to cope with traditional “hierarchical” family set-ups.
Dealing with secrecy regarding one family’s wealth.
Coping with “hidden” alliances that may have been formed by some family members.
How to remain relatively independent from a family’s growing pool of wealth.
Coping with marriage. Can this enhance a women leader’s “power”, or “weaken” it?
The authors then identify four stages that successful women leaders cum inheritors of wealth tend to go through:
Making the choice to challenge their families’ established core cultures. This includes coping with strong bonds with other family members, perhaps most often with their fathers, coping with their own sense of self (above all, idiosyncratic interests), and views regarding formal education, often seen as effective vehicles to challenge established family cultures.
Entering the family enterprise. This might be linked with coping with particular challenges, such as finding ways to co-exist with other siblings, including perhaps having to buy them out, and so on.
Balancing business and family relationships. This challenge is basically similar to what has been discussed in part one. Transforming one’s family culture and norms represents perhaps a particularly important aspect of this.
Moving into leadership. To take over the CEO role from a father, or a mother, is critical here.
To attempt to impact strong family governance so as to enhance family harmony and unity would perhaps often be a particularly significant task for women leaders who are inheritors of wealth. This might both have to do with developing practices for shared decision-making with a family, as well as for other shared family practices. Also, it might have to do with instilling shared educational activities within a given family. The authors have come up with a set of four “lessons” regarding a good family governance here:
To focus on governance that is “creative” in nature, so as to stimulate self-discovery and self-realization, in contrast to governing procedures that might be overly focused on control, or to “maintain the status quo”, for instance.
To find a leadership style, reflecting the way a family governance process is implemented, that might be seen as truly unique for a given family.
Family and work are to be complementary, equally important, aspects of a family’s governance. Thus, a female leader cum inheritor of wealth, might be prepared to cope with both business and family, perhaps in contrast with what we saw in part one, where the family considerations come first.
Openness and opportunity-seeking seem to be key when it comes to effective family governance approaches. This is perhaps quite similar to what we have already discussed above as the “first” requirement for good family governance.
In the relatively short part three of the book, the authors discuss some key lessons for applying what has been delineated in the previous to parts. The main point here for effective women leaders of wealthy families, whether new to such wealth or inheritors of wealth, seems to be explicit and clear regarding the split focus they face between work and the home (raising children in particular). This should not be seen as a dilemma and should not be delayed. The authors have come up with a total of seven factors for successful women leaders to deal with this conundrum:
Encourage self-discovery, with a focus on finding new ways of coping with a good work/home balance, rather than seeing this as a major problem.
Refresh and model values. This seems to have a lot to do with impacting family members to embrace the ways to cope with the work/home balance conundrum.
Teach a stewardship mindset. To focus on how to pass on values to next generations, rather than on “owning” as such, might ameliorate many sources of resistance from various other family members.
An entrepreneurial spirit is paramount, and a successful woman leader must embody this.
Staying together as a family seems to be important, thus calling for moderating a female leader’s business approaches if so needed.
The key mentoring role. The successful female leader might have a main task when it comes to this, illustrating what it might take to cope with specific work/family tradeoffs.
“When in doubt, do the right thing” to quote General Schwarzkopf’s famous slogan. The successful woman leader might wish to highlight “right” decisions when it comes to dealing with core work/family dilemmas.
This effectively ends the reporting on the research provided in this book. An additional chapter discussed how outside advisors might play an effective role. There, in this short final chapter, the authors recap four central insights that have earlier already been reported in the book, namely bridgebuilding/ “connectors”, influencing the family culture, the use of “soft” power rather than of dominance, and how to overcome obstacles without creating “winners or losers”.
Having completed the reading of this book, I am left with three major thoughts:
The authors have done a pioneering job in researching how female leaders in wealthy families are effectively coping. The authors should be congratulated for their groundbreaking research.
But we have probably merely seen a relatively early attempt at understanding what it might take to be an effective women leader in wealthy family business. I am anticipating that more research shall come, and I shall be looking forward to learning more from this.
I am recommending this book wholeheartedly. Not only is the topic that is being covered essential, but the book is also a true delight to read. A must not only for those involved in the management of family business, but for all of us!
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