When Rishi Behari returned home after obtaining an MBA at Queen’s University, he found himself at odds with his father, a successful entrepreneur who had launched a multifaceted business empire on the success of a line of eco-friendly cleaning products.
“I took a vacation after one of the toughest years in my life, and I got fired via an email while I was away. I was very upset, very angry,” says Behari, who left the family enterprise to run his own business, Flowstate Coaching & Consulting, in Saskatoon.
Behari’s father had come to Canada from India as a young man, while Behari refers to himself as a “Canindian.” It wasn’t until after the younger Behari met Jim Grubman, the Boston-area principal with Family Wealth Consulting and author of two books about how families manage wealth and change across generations, that he realized the disconnection from his father wasn’t personal or even generational: It was cultural.
Later, when he participated in research for a book by James Weiner about the children of prominent parents, he realized how common it is for formal education outside the home culture to precipitate a rift.
Canada’s diversity is frequently mentioned as an advantage of its professional family-office community, but it also brings about challenges for families. As younger generations become more acclimatized to “mainstream” Canadian culture, they may find themselves in conflict with the values of the founding generation. The pain of such clashes is real, and advisors need to understand both sides in order to help the family realign themselves.
This is a situation that Grubman understands well. He explains that most world cultures essentially conform to one of three basic types.
“Traditionally we’ve talked about East and West, which is a two-culture model,” says Grubman. However, in 2011, researchers Angela Leung and Dov Cohen identified a third type, “honour culture,” which brings together such locales as Latin America, southern Europe, the Middle East and India.
The three-culture model thus includes:
- “Individualist” cultures of Northern Europe, North America, Britain and Australia, which value rational thinking and personal dignity.
- “Collective harmony” cultures of East Asia, which focus on tradition, family loyalty and maintaining “face.”
- “Honour” cultures, which put a premium on tradition and family, and tend to rank authority above harmony.
Being aware of these cultural differences is relevant, Grubman says, “because the first-generation wealth creators may be rooted in one of the original cultures, but in generation 2 or 3, the business grows, and you send your kids off to London or Vancouver to study.”
“It’s one of the major transformations that can occur in a family,” he says. It can go well, or it can be stressful.
Pitfalls await clueless advisors
The strained dynamics of blended families are (often humorously) illustrated in popular films, including My Big Fat Greek Wedding (honour plus individualism) and Crazy Rich Asians (harmony plus individualism).
But in real life, these attitudinal differences are far from a laughing matter. Pitfalls await the family advisor who fails to take cultural expectations and communication styles into account.
For instance, individualists are comfortable with direct communication, but other cultures are not.
“Let’s say your father was an entrepreneur multimillionaire or billionaire in China, and you do not know what the transition plan is for the family enterprise,” Grubman suggests. “In individualist culture, you are expected to ask. In most other cultures, it’s considered very rude or very risky.
“Indirectness is a really powerful thing around the world.”
Working with harmony clients
With honour or harmony clients, he suggests, advisors can take an indirect approach “by talking about what other families do. You tell stories, perhaps saying, ‘I read about this very successful family who began to talk about involvement of the next generation of the family …’. Sometimes a peer or family friend can assist with a private conversation that obliquely suggests the desirability of engaging with the issue in question.
As the granddaughter of an Italian immigrant, financial coach and FCPA Patricia Saputo, co-founder of Crysalia Inc., a Montreal-based advisory office for business families, understands her honour-culture heritage. The Saputo family founded its well-known cheese and dairy company in the 1950s, and although 17 of 21 third-generation family members are female, she says, patriarchal honour culture dictated that none were expected to rise in the ranks of the business.
However, she says, “as you find yourself in a new country, with new rules, more and more women started taking on those positions. I was raised as one of five daughters, knowing that I would never be at the executive level of the family business. In the end, when the company went public in 1997, I was asked to sit on the board of directors.”
Saputo says it’s important for advisors to be direct in referring to the cultural differences within families, so both older and younger generations feel they are being considered appropriately.
“If you don’t address the elephant in the room, then you’re not going to be there for the continuity between generations. It really is based on knowing who you’re speaking to and understanding to what extent the old rules of engagement still apply,” she says.
A rebuilt father-son relationship
“Normally the world bends around my dad, so your own communication style won’t work. You either have to adapt or leave,” he says.
For instance, when his father recently asked him to attend an important meeting, and he thought it was a bad idea to do so, “my normal reaction from individualist culture would be to say, ‘This is a terrible idea.’ Instead, I asked, ‘If I were going to do this, I would have to take time off this new role I’ve started: Is this something you would want me to do?’ And he said no, so I was able to bypass this whole problem.”
The pool of research data and professional experience in this area is gradually increasing.
“The availability of advisors from other cultures in Canada is a strength, and it may be easier to find, in the network of family offices – people who can provide advice and networking,” Grubman says.
Behari says, “Hopefully this can help people to make good decisions for their businesses and their families. My hope is that other families don’t have to go through years of separation.”
More from Canadian Family Offices:
- Five smart ways to transfer wealth to your children, grandchildren
- How Canada’s new luxury tax works
- How to bulletproof your will
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