Nan-b de Gaspé Beaubien: From therapist to HR pioneer

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It can be a unique path for women in Canada’s enterprising families. We profile some of their stories in our Women and Canadian Business Families series.

Nan-b de Gaspé Beaubien was working as a family therapist. Her husband, Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien II was running Telemedia, a Montreal-based Canada-wide media company founded in 1968, especially known for its magazines and radio-station network, which were sold by 2002.

Though they may seem like entirely different pursuits, when she decided to join her husband in his business, she realized that her therapy skills could come in handy.

She built the growing company’s nascent human resources function, ending up as the business’s executive vice-president of human resources, and, in the 1970s, was among the first women to create such a role in the workplace in Canada.

What she also realized was that that human element was also not a priority in their enterprising family and she set about boosting their family relations skills.

The de Gaspé Beaubiens also started a foundation to help other enterprising families with their family dynamics, to prevent the wheels falling off in subsequent generations.

She is now co-chair of the de Gaspé Beaubien Foundation, which focuses on community and water preservation initiatives.

De Gaspé Beaubien has served as a director for numerous companies, both private and public, including Campbell Soup Co., and Four Seasons Hotels Inc., and she was often the first woman to do so.

Here she discusses the deep connection she shares with her husband, as well as her firm belief that fostering healthy family conversations is the path to success in family enterprise.

Tell us about your role marrying in to a multigenerational enterprising family.

“I married into a very successful, multigenerational [enterprising family]. My husband, to whom I’ve been married for 68 years, comes from a 400-year line of successful and not so successful entrepreneurs. They’ve really been in every business you can imagine, from fur to fish to real estate, to beer, and we were in media.

Every generation has been able to produce at least one entrepreneur who would build a business, but they had a lot of issues with succession.

As you really delve into family business, you find that succession is a very difficult thing. It, oftentimes is the end of the family.

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I think that’s one of the saddest things about family business. I’m a psychologist by training, so I’ve always been interested in the family element, the emotional element, and the human element. What I have found is that what most family offices neglect is the human relations aspect. Yes, we talk about succession in the business, but what about succession in the family?

What holds the family together? Where is the glue? Where does it come from? Oftentimes it’s the mother. If the mother dies, then what? Who takes over for that, or have there been any plans for that?

If you want the business to continue, you really need the family to continue. It’s the continuity of the family that’s the most important. A lot of people have forgotten that, or never realized it.”

How did you come to get involved in your husband’s business, Telemedia?

“Philippe left his father, because he was in a family business but he couldn’t get along with his dad, and his dad couldn’t get along with his son. This is a very typical picture. So Philippe left to start his own world.

At first, he ran Expo ’67, and that was an incredible time. He was a very young man and took on that huge position.

After that, he went into media, which was Telemedia.

We were able to borrow money to purchase some radio stations, and it kept growing.

We were partners right from the beginning –meaning we share everything. I eventually came to work in Telemedia. I left what I was doing [family therapy] and came to work with him. He said, ‘I’m either going to join you, or you’re going to join me.’

And since I couldn’t see him doing family therapy, I said, ‘Okay, I’ll join you,’ thinking that it was never going to work. But it did. It worked very well.

My role with the business grew as the business grew. I took over the HR [function]. I came into Telemedia when it was already a growing company, but it didn’t have the organization, it didn’t have the structure. When you scale up a small business, you’ve got to also scale up the human element. A lot of companies have a lot of trouble with that.”

Did you encounter any doubts about your role in the early years?

“In the beginning, I thought, ‘How can this work? How can I, with my background, come into the business and understand how to make it work there?’

But, you see, humans are humans, so it worked very well. When I came into Telemedia, yes, they had a personnel department, which kept track of who was there, and when they joined and when they would leave, vacation, payroll, and so on, but not anything else. I realized that when people come to work, they want to develop and grow. You have to have a plan for them that fits in with the strategic plan of the business; so, you have to meld both.

This was in the early 1970s, and there was no such thing.”

There were very few women in leadership roles at this time. How did you contribute to change?

“When I joined Telemedia there were no women in managerial positions. Women were only secretaries, at most.

I looked around and I said, ‘That’s not right.’ What I realized was that, in order for men to understand women and in order for them to be able to communicate, we had to bring in what I called communications workshops. We held them with all our managers within the company at the time [and conducted them] exactly as you do with families in therapy.

It was so fascinating, because they were all male managers at the time, and they started to understand how they could listen to their wives and children. What we were doing for the business was also helping them in their personal lives.

We started, within the HR system, what we called the ‘other double [bottom] line.’ Yes, you have to make a profit or else you’re not in business, but we have the second double [bottom] line, which was people.

It was important for us to make sure that our people could grow along with the company. We were, as a result, named among the best companies to work for in Canada.”

Successful family relations can feature difficult conversations. How can families navigate these?

“I think you have to prepare your children when they’re younger for how to have those difficult conversations. You have to give them the tools.

Every time we meet – at our three family meetings a year – we always have a book that we discuss together. Everybody reads it and we all bring our opinions to the table. One of us will lead the discussion – one time it could be a grandchild, another time it could be one of my children. Everyone has a chance to lead the discussion.

This year our book was, for the second time around, How to Have That Difficult Conversation, by Henry Cloud [and John Townsend]. It’s a wonderful book. Every family should have that on their shelf and should use it and should practice it together. It opens up those conversations, and you can drop your mask. You can be yourself and be accepted for who you are … If you cannot do that together, you will never build that trust.”

How are the next generations involved in the family legacy?

“I think it’s in our DNA to be entrepreneurs. Our three children all started their own businesses. Our family business is therefore made up a of a number of family businesses.

And now the next generation is already talking about it. They’re risk takers. We don’t have a family business that would be passed on, we have what we would call the legacy of the family that would be passed on, and that’s the most important to me. A strong family will build many strong businesses, but I’ve never seen a strong business build a strong family.

I think if there’s one thing that Philippe and I brought to the family business, it was this emphasis on family, that family is exceedingly important. If you look at the three-circle model, family was always there, but it was never given the honour that it should, and so the people that occupied that position – and it was often the women [in the family] – were not given the honour they should have been given either, and not given the respect that was due to them.

Philippe and I set up BFF [The Business Families Foundation – a non-profit charitable organization established in Canada to help business families in Canada and abroad].

So, we went through the business [circle in the three-circle model of enterprising families], but we spent even more time on the family circle. That’s where we found most families needed help. They had great consultants on the business, they had good consultants on ownership, and not many on the family. That’s where Philippe and I spent most of our time, and hopefully it made a difference.”

What advice do you have for women in enterprising families?

“When I look around me, I see so many divorces and so many breakups. I would like to say to young women of today, you know you are probably going to have a long life. Please enjoy each phase. Give each phase the time and patience that it takes.

You can’t do it all at once; you can’t have it all at once. You’re going to have a long life, so the time that you’re bringing up children – enjoy every moment; it’s not going to come back. It’s precious.

I always come back to a metaphor that I use, of crystal balls versus rubber balls. As women we have many different roles that we play. We’re daughter; we’re wife; we’re friend. Sometimes we become overwhelmed. If we take them one at a time and say, ‘Well, which of these is my crystal ball? If, as I’m juggling, a crystal ball dropped, it’s going to smash, so I’ve got to keep that one up in the air. Whereas the rubber balls – they will bounce back.’

For me, my family, my children, my husband are crystal. I never let those drop, which is why I have been lucky to have a marriage – a very happy marriage – of 68 years and a wonderful family, because our children all get along.

But my friends sometimes suffered a bit, because they had a longer wait between getting together [with us]. But we were able to pick up what we had dropped for a while, and we were strong enough to bring those friendships back together. That’s why in each phase of our life we need to ask which are our crystal balls. That will allow women to share their special gifts, not only in business, but in life.”

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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