Spouses of leaders, first transmitters of the entrepreneurial spirit
A long tradition of entrepreneurial research has repeatedly highlighted the importance of the family in the genesis and transmission of entrepreneurial skills and behaviors.
Some researchers have attributed this effect to the phenomenon of role models, which explains how, within a family, parents are observed and then imitated by children, which affects both children’s goals, once they become adults, as well as their aspirations and attitudes.
Empirical studies of entrepreneurial families have shown that children born in these families are more likely to become entrepreneurs than children born in families without an entrepreneurial model. Because the behavior of parents, when they are entrepreneurs, influences both the motivation of the children to this profession and their desire to follow the example of their elders in order to achieve similar success and fulfillment.
However, what remained little known in this context is the role played by the non-entrepreneur parent, in our case, the role played by the spouse of the family business leader. From 2015 to 2018, ICHEC Families in Businesses Chair carried out a survey among 52 male and female spouses, 168 leaders and 169 Next Gen, whose results are very interesting.
First of all, there is a significant disconnect between what the leader feels he or she is passing on to his or her children and what the children say they have received from him or her.
While the leaders feel responsible for transmitting the entrepreneurial spirit to his children, their children emphasize the role of their mother (or their father when he is the husband of the head of the company). The wives and husbands of leaders, through stories told to children, do cultivate in young people a taste for entrepreneurship and respect for the history of the company, they are the ones who make young people want to continue their entrepreneurial adventure. The communication first takes place through the parent, who is not directly involved as the head of the family business. The leader appears as a “distant” role model, who has little availability to interact with children and young people in the family on a regular, sustained and consistent basis.
For the entrepreneurial spirit to be passed on to young people, the spouse of the leader must speak of entrepreneurship in an embodied way, giving examples, highlighting a pivotal moment in the enterprise, emphasizing the importance of certain attitudes and values for the survival and development of the family business. But our interviews have put us in front of modest people, often unaware of this fundamental role, and more inclined to recognize their mission as emotional valve, their involvement in facilitating exchanges within the family, their role in supporting the leader and children, rather than a key role in transmitting the entrepreneurial spirit to young people. Spouses therefore see themselves as secondary actors whereas children are those who bring these “shadow parents” to the forefront and who point out and appreciate their vital role.
Nevertheless the leaders’spouses we interviewed had reasons to feel more confident about their role in the entrepreneurial dynamic within the family. The socio-demographic information we gathered indicates that these spouses mainly come from entrepreneurial families and this in a higher proportion than the rest of the population (51% of the spouses in our sample have entrepreneurial, self-employed or professional parents). In other words, one might think that if spouses tell entrepreneurial stories that inspire and train children, this is also possible because they are already familiar with the narrative structure of these types of stories for having been, in the past, children to whom entrepreneurial stories used to be told.
Wives and husbands of leaders therefore know in their great majority and intimacy what entrepreneurship is, what it entails in terms of effort, commitment, renunciation, passion and perseverance. They know the risks and costs of an entrepreneur’s career as well as the benefits of an entrepreneur’s life from having lived it in their birth family.
Once they are parents, they pass on this knowledge and these values in reference to the company run by their spouse. And the message seems to be effective because young people are sensitive to it, receptive to it, and they show gratitude to those parents who could be described as “role models” at the heart of the entrepreneurial dynamics of business families.
Valérie Denis, Director of ICHEC Families in Businesses Chair
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