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While defining their employment guidelines, one of my client families concluded their discussion with the following:

“Family employees must be both competent and passionate about business to be successful at our company. Family employees who feel an obligation or duty to be successors, but are not passionate, will become miserable going to work every day and should, therefore not be employed at the company. Instead the family should support, nurture and encourage them to pursue their true passions.”

Warren Buffet’s son, Peter, also emphasized the importance of passion in a recent interview with Campden Media  when he said  “…next-­gens need to forge their own path in life, based on what interests them, instead of simply entering the family business.” Furthermore he emphasized that “support [from his parents] didn’t come in the form of a check. It came in the form of love and nurturing and respect for us finding our way, falling down [and] figuring out how to get up ourselves.”

Family members are often drawn to the family business either through the obligations of legacy or the security of employment and fail to discover their own true journey to live a life of meaning and fulfillment.

To move forward on the journey to embrace one’s passions, successors and their families should consider the following:

1.      Leave Home – In Homer’s classic tale, Odysseus leaves home on his hero’s journey, faces many challenges, finds himself and then returns home.  This pattern is repeated in the more contemporary stories of Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter.  Members of family businesses need to leave home to become their own persons, not just to gain technical competence and business knowledge.

2.      Be Intentional – As Socrates said during his trial for heresy, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Beyond a personal mission statement and a clear statement of goals, I encourage family members to evaluate the following:  What should you continue doing that is working well for your life? What should you start doing to find fulfillment and reach your goals?  But perhaps the most challenging question is: What should you stop doing that does not support your dream?  What old patterns keep you stuck?

3.      Be Proactive – To develop a meaningful career demands being proactive; namely, taking the necessary risks and actions to actually implement your dream.  The most successful next generation family members have the courage to speak for themselves and clearly articulate their own needs. They establish appropriate boundaries as adults and then move forward – one step at a time – to find the best ways to live out of their own passions successfully in the world.

4.      Letting Go – The flip side of leaving home is letting go.  Most family business literature focuses on the problem of the senior generation letting go at the time of retirement. Equally important is letting go of adult children by encouraging them to seek out their own dreams. This includes examining the unwritten “deals” that often lure the next generation back to the family businesses with promises of excellent compensation, flexibility and career advancement. Odysseus, for example, had to be tied to the ship’s mast in order not to be lured to shore by the songs of the Sirens.

5.      Living Your Passion – Many next generation successors will discover meaning and fulfillment outside the family business. But others will discover that they do have a passion for business and particularly for their own family business. And with this commitment these family members will be able to meet the employment criteria articulated so well by my client: “Family employees must be both competent and passionate about business to be successful at our company.”

To see a demonstration of the Assessment Process, please click here.

• Forums for Family Business meet every month for a half-day. Membership is limited to family members actively employed in their family owned businesses.

• Family Business Presidents - We are actively looking for Presidents and CEOs who could benefit from membership in our Advisory Board process. A group of Presidents meets every month for a half-day to explore the unique issues and challenges that have a strategic impact on their family business.