Finding Your Voice in the Family as a Spouse

How do you introduce a spouse into the family business? Listen to Margaret-Jean Mannix discuss the delicate balance of bringing in a new family member.

I think that some of the biggest challenges that spouse’s face when joining a family business, the personal challenges, relate to how they find their own voice within a family. I’d say in my family, the opposite of speaking is not listening, it’s waiting to speak. So we’re very accustomed to a lot of direct straight forward, not necessarily antagonistic, but definitely vociferous conversation. And if spouses are not as straight forward or a little more timid or maybe not as confident because they might not know the family yet, that’s a pretty intimidating environment. So whatever a family can do to make sure that there’s an easing in period or time or activity or introduction so that we can create a safe environment for family members to come and feel like they can participate as equals. Another personal challenge is trying to find your own space as your nuclear family within your larger family. I mean you marry, we call come from our own kind of nuclear families, we marry someone, we’re on the road of creating our own nuclear family, but when you’re coming in as a spouse to someone who’s part of a family business all of a sudden it’s not just a nuclear family your marrying, which is not abnormal to anybody getting married, but there’s an intensity I think in the family business space when your spouse is working 24/7 in the business and it becomes the dominating topic of conversation so from an individual, being married, bringing someone into the family, it’s important for me to manage how much air time is the family business getting, is our coupledom getting enough air time.