“Mental health conditions are a form of pandemic in society, from classroom teachers to students to family offices and family businesses,” says Peter Jaskiewicz, director of the Family Enterprise Legacy Institute (FELI) at the University of Ottawa.
“With growing tensions, more escalation of conflicts, risks and trade wars, you have quickly rising uncertainties. The foundation that you build is constantly shifting.” Business leaders especially struggle in this climate, he says, “because it impedes them in making strategic decisions.”
FELI is currently entering the second stage of a multi-year research project that explores mental health among business families and its implications for the enterprise. The work will fill a gap in the academic literature, since “we realized that, because it is so stigmatized, very often it stays hidden,” Jaskiewicz says.
FELI is collaborating on the project with the Global Family Business Center (GFBC) at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) and the Family Business Network (FBN), which are both based in Lausanne, Switzerland. The first stage took the form of a survey of 246 family enterprise members in 37 countries, culminating in the publication last September of The Global Family Enterprise Mental Health Report, a first-of-its-kind work authored by study lead Elizabeth Tetzlaff with Jaskiewicz, Peter Vogel, Katrina Barclay and Alexis du Roy du Blicquy.
“I realized there was a gap in the research,” says Tetzlaff, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University as well as a fellow at FELI. She also serves as a visiting research scholar with the GFBC.
“Because I’m an academic, I go to the academic literature, and I couldn’t find customized resources for business families. I saw a question that I wanted answered,” Tetzlaff says. “For me, it’s about trying to truly understand from the family’s perspective how they perceive that their businesses are impacted when one of their family members who’s also involved in the business is affected by a mental health disorder, and what can we do about it?”
The study essentially takes the pulse of global business families, correlating factors relating to family dynamics, history and mental health awareness. It also examines potential implications for the third generation.
If knowledge is power, and knowledge is how we take on what we fear, then I see this as providing families with resources for understanding how to engage it. That is the benefit of this research.
Elizabeth Tetzlaff
Among other findings, the surveyed families reported a disconnect in support: the mental health clinician may not understand the business context, while the business advisor may not appreciate the significance of the mental health component.
The findings
More than half of respondents reported that a family member had been diagnosed with a mental health condition and/or learning disability. Nearly one-third reported having received a lifetime diagnosis of a mental health disorder themselves, and, of these, 69 per cent said it had affected the family enterprise.
Tetzlaff says she was surprised by the relatively high level of mental health literacy within the business community. However, she points out that 31 per cent of respondents were unsure whether their own mental health challenges were having an impact on the family enterprise, and 24 per cent could not tell whether a family member’s mental health was affecting it.
“In some ways, it takes more courage to say you don’t know, but I wonder whether, if we created more resources that were specific to the business family, there might be more clarity,” she says. “If knowledge is power, and knowledge is how we take on what we fear, then I see this as providing families with resources for understanding how to engage it. That is the benefit of this research.”
Confronting mental health issues
The report includes a set of practical approaches to addressing mental health concerns within enterprising families, such as acknowledging the issue compassionately and separating mental health conditions from assumptions about capability or commitment. The next stages of the project will further develop these ideas.
“Our report shows that, like in the general population, this is widespread. This is normal for most people, to struggle at some point in life. We focus on family enterprise right now, realizing that these people have responsibility for making decisions that can have a tremendous impact on the community and on the country at large,” Jaskiewicz says.
“We must train members of business families how to talk about these things, how to create protocols and processes so these things can be handled, like the flu or a broken leg,” he explains, pointing out that some families and organizations are already well equipped to deal with these challenges, while others are still looking for answers.
“The community has brought this topic to us,” he adds. “We’ve been positively overwhelmed by the openness of major families. We know this is such a sensitive topic; it’s been overwhelming to see the trust that people give us.”
Tetzlaff says she was “really surprised by the warmth and welcome of this research. I didn’t expect the feedback that ‘The need is great—we really need this!’”
Next stage of the project
With Stage 1 completed, the next phase of the project will see the researchers analyzing evidence on global families and identifying best practices to support families and firms in addressing the issues identified in the survey. Jaskiewicz has secured $281,836 in funding through an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to carry the project through its next five years.
He explains that the second stage will pursue two streams. One will focus on families that have successfully learned how to deal with mental health situations—possibly for many years or even several generations—and to identify the practices that have led to this success.
“I’ll be interviewing about 60 Canadian business owners and trying to drill down into impact to help mitigate adverse effects,” says Tetzlaff. “The first part is to understand the different potential outcomes.”
The second stream will involve the collection and analysis of data that currently reside in various forms within other universities and research centres. This will enable the researchers “to compare to what extent particular factors might extenuate certain indicators of mental-health conditions or maybe even turn them into something positive,” Jaskiewicz says, adding that such factors might include anything from pharmaceutical or therapeutic treatment to healthy personal relationships.
“At the end of the day, it’s exciting,” he says. “Our goal with this program is to come up with best practices that hopefully will become a standard within the next decade. That would be extremely meaningful.”
“Mental health is health,” says Tetzlaff, “and our study shows that this is a topic that matters for business families, and particularly for the next generation.”
Sarah B. Hood is a Toronto-based writer and book author. She has served as editor of three national magazines and written weekly columns for the National Post. She also serves on the editorial board of Spacing magazine. She writes frequently on business, urban affairs and culture. As a food writer, her work has been translated into Japanese and Arabic. She has taught writing at George Brown College for more than 20 years.
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