She’s “the glue that holds us all together.”
It’s a phrase we are all familiar with and one that we can recognise within our own families. The ‘go-to’ person, the confidante, the one person you feel safe to open up to. Always there to listen and offer support, they are the invisible bridge that unites and repairs.
In family businesses it’s a role that is one of the most important, yet most undervalued. Acting as the scaffolding to keep the foundations secure, what happens when your scaffolding is taken away? Are your foundations strong enough to sustain and support the system without them?
The human dynamics that play out in family businesses are complex and therefore require a robust framework to support it. This framework has often been found in the “Chief Emotional Officer,” an informal function usually filled by a family member or close advisor, also known as ‘the glue.” Providing not just the emotional support, their job description is expansive. From maintaining family harmony, to ensuring the well-being of family members to managing the communication channels between individual members, it can be exhausting.
Much like conversations around succession, discussions surrounding the relational dynamics within the family system are often unspoken, avoided or met with hostility. With much of the focus on who will be the new patriarch of the family, there is little attention paid to who will be the next “Chief Emotional Officer” (CEMO).
Historically, the founder is the husband and his wife is the ‘CEMO.’ Likely to also be the father and mother of the family, ‘the glue’ can become especially weak during periods of change and uncertainty. This is where ‘formalizing the informal’ aspects of family business can offer a gateway between the generations. You might think it is an unnecessary step to take because you are family, but this is exactly why you need to do it.
I’ll share a story with you that I hope serves as an example. A family I used to work with several years ago came to me because father, son and daughter were at loggerheads. They would enter meetings and instead of being able to have conductive conversations with each other, they would bring all their emotional baggage to the table too. The mother, and ‘CEMO’ did her best to act as an intermediary, but often felt disrespected and unheard. Nothing actually got done, decisions were never made, and the family wealth was severely compromised.
I worked with them to create a behavioural structure that provided a solid foundation for how family members treated each other. With increased self-awareness, they learnt how to manage their emotions and how to stop them from bleeding into the boardroom. Boundaries were set and with a shared agreement of trust, respect and inclusion, everyone knew what was acceptable behavior, leaving no margin for misunderstanding. Achievements were recognised, celebrated and the weight of the Chief Emotional Officer didn’t fall to one person.
We can all offer each other tremendous amounts of emotional support to one another, both in our lives as well as our leadership roles. Contributions made by the collective and not just the individual can ensure that if one part of the foundation becomes a little ‘unglued,’ the whole system doesn’t crash and burn.
While identifying and recruiting a CEMO from within the family may seem the obvious solution, it can be detrimental due to the challenges for family members to be both ‘inside and outside’ their own family system. This is where engaging with an external advisor can be hugely beneficial in regulating the emotional balance of family members. Having an outside perspective can bring fresh ideas, impartiality and the integration of ‘formal informality.’
Formalizing the informal aspects of a family business doesn’t mean stripping away its unique characteristics or values, it just means embedding solid structures and systems to support its growth. You wouldn’t build your dream home without preparing and ensuring you have the best foundations in place, so don’t take the same risk with your financial and human capital. Invest in the groundwork from the beginning, so that when the time comes to remove the scaffolding, your past, present and future legacy doesn’t collapse with it.