Synchronizing Generations in Family Enterprises

Introduction

Achieving intergenerational synchronicity is the responsibility of all generations in vivo which is often problematic because of the entrapment in generational belief-bubbles.

Belief-bubbles originate from our subjective ‘mental model of the world’ that is shaped by our experiences and learnings over time. It drives our behaviours and is the lens through which we perceive social information and respond to it.

Recursively, we like to confirm our mental model of the world resp. our beliefs by selective perceptions of social cues, a phenomenon dubbed the ‘confirmation bias’. It’s a perception bias that favours and skews information to fit our mental model of the world resp. our belief-system and discounts contradicting information.

Within a generation, individuals are exposed to similar stimuli, which creates greater overlaps of mental models of the world and makes individuals co-create ‘generational belief bubbles’.

The attractor-force that synchronizes social systems and belief-bubbles is similarity e.g., of attitudes, thoughts, and feelings. The eco-chamber effect contributes to belief bubbles because generational peers mutually reinforce their beliefs.

The ‘generational divide’ and the arising potential for conflicts can be linked to a state of higher intragenerational synchronization and lower intergenerational synchronization.

Generational Belief-Bubbles

Each generation features a typical set of beliefs resp. belief-systems which are captured in intragenerational belief-bubbles.

In the first generation, everyone follows the chief with the utmost authority and obedience is the way to survive for everyone in the pack, which we can describe as the ‘Belief in Tribal Organization’. The next generation beliefs in structural organization. The chief has loyal deputies with formal roles and a certain status. Compliant behaviours are essential for survival in the social system and critical thinking and diversity is not encouraged. We can define this as the ‘Conformist Belief-Bubble’.

The next generation creates another set of beliefs. Business administration by an organizational structure is no longer good enough, instead they demand that business is driven by KPIs (key performance indicators) to level the playing field. They also demand a pluralistic world view with diversity and critical thinking. They want to feel empowered to bring forward different opinions which is not congruent with the ‘Conformist Belief-Bubble’ or the ‘Tribal Belief-Bubble’. Neither is the last belief-bubble ‘Meaning’. The belief is that what the family-enterprise does must be meaningful for all stakeholders, it must have purpose beyond making money in a world of overlapping networks rather than separated silos of human action.

We can already see how the different belief-bubbles are incompatible and how this bears the risk for misunderstandings and intergenerational conflicts.

Yet, generational belief-bubbles are not palpably. They have rather partial overlaps with varying degrees depending on the external social environment and experience / education the generation. Thus, clusters of various belief-bubbles emerge:

Graph 2

In this family, G3 has some tribal ideas left, but the greatest weight is attributed to the Conformist-Belief-Bubble’ as indicated by the size of its relative to the tribal belief-bubble.

G4 is still highly influenced thanks to the way they were conditioned in their upbringing by their parents and the immediate social environment. However, careers in banking, business management and other professions, new belief-bubbles emerge, and the weightings change over time.

Graph 3

G4 has lost most of the ‘Conformist Belief-Bubble’, G5 lost it all together which may increase the potential for inter-generational conflict.

A further dimension of belief-bubbles can be introduced by considering the different belief-bubbles that are created in the family business around rational decision-making, contractual commitments, formal language, and beliefs concerning the family with moral commitments, best effort approaches as well as emotional andinformal language.

The different belief-bubble clusters create different realities that may clash from time to time.

Synchronizing Belief-Bubbles

It starts with becoming aware of the various intra-generational and inter-generational belief-bubbles by the way of social exchange. Each generation must understand where they are coming from and what formed their belief-bubbles in the business and in the family domain.

Those not involved in the business need to learn about business and the family-business to connect with the business system.

The previous generations need to be open to understand the belief-bubbles of the following generations.

The lack of social understanding and mutual appreciation of other belief-bubbles leads to intergenerational de-synchronization that makes the social system prone to conflict and chaos.

Pricking the various belief-bubbles

This is easier said than done, because of ‘ego’, or rather the need for self-protection in a social environment which does not feel safe for the individuals and where misunderstandings often lead to uncontrolled emotional reactions and conflict.

After all, our belief-system gives us a sense of security which defines our comfort zone.

Leaving the comfort zone requires courage and emotional stability which comes with emotional intelligence [EQ], a learnable skill everyone can learn.

Emotional intelligence is expressed in emotional self-regulation which influences emotional states of self and others in a social process. It includes accepting emotions by creating emotional vocabulary, emotional reappraisal by reframing, controlling impulses and to create a space for choices, which is the gap between stimulus and response (Viktor Frankl). When this gap is zero, we are reactive and impulsive, so we are subject to cognitive control failures. Conversely, a wide gap allows us to make conscious choices and decisions for better outcomes of social processes.

From EQ, social intelligence [SQ] can emerge, which is pivotal for social interaction of any kind. At the core of SQ is empathy, which is even physically grounded in the mirror-neuron system discovered by Giacomo Rizzolatti (2004)[1]. It is responsible for social connections and for the social understandings resp. to achieve inter brain synchronicity [IBS].

Cognitive empathy or the Theory of Mind [ToM], is the ability mentalize other people’s states of being, and emotional empathy the ability to share emotional states with others.

Emotional and cognitive empathy is essential to join another person in their subjective reality, which is created by their individual mental model of the world. Consequentially, we need to be more open, i.e., to stop making assumptions, unlearn the old way of seeking belief confirmation and learn to take others’ perspectives, i.e., leaving the comforting ‘first person position’ to take a ‘second person position’ and walk a mile in the boots of the other person. This creates a profound social understanding and contributes to a psychological safe space, which is pivotal in family systems for synchronization to emerge[2].

Synchronicity is a social-system state in which social transaction costs are minimised. In such an environment, incompatible preferences can be dealt with productively and diversity can contribute to the creation of collective intelligence resp. generative collaboration where the output of a social system is greater than the sum of its parts suggest.

Conflict is likely to be productive as people can accept different opinions without feeling offended, forgiveness becomes a real possibility. So, people can start listening actively without judgement and learn from one another. Thus, behavioural patterns emerge that foster family cohesion resp. socio-emotional wealth creation.

In this environment, the founder generation and current generation become sponsors of each other and of the next generation, challenge, mentor, and coach them based on their rich knowledge and experience resp. learn from their responses rather than behaving in a way that causes psychological reactance in other people.

In succession processes, the predecessor generation is supposed to ‘let go and to hand over’ to the next generation.

The main inhibitor of this process is the ‘ego’ or the need to defend one’s identity as patriarch and traditional purpose of the patriarch’s life.

But with synchronized belief-bubbles, the predecessor is more likely to understand what the next generation wants to achieve, and the next generation can help the predecessor to let go and benefit from his sponsorship which can become his new purpose.

Rather, it becomes a matter of how to optimally support the next generation and co-create the future of the family legacy for generations to come.

Narratives

Narratives are a great way to prick belief-bubbles resp. to connect generations and close the generational gap because they are conducive to creating a shared reality and ideal for attractors to emerge, i.e., a point where the whole family gravitates to as it becomes aware that there is something everyone can relate to, and this ‘something’ is greater than the individual ego.

It also gives the older generations a platform to present themselves and share their stories with the next generation and vice versa.

The first stage of narrative creation is the establishment of a narrative fragment inventory [NFI] by involving all family members from all generations in vivo in combination with desk research. Extracting narrative fragments from family members should be done by a psychologically trained professional, since some narrative fragments may be consciously or subconsciously supressed, others may be presented and with emotional load, which is additional information. The interpretation of the same narrative fragment of 2 different people may be rather different which allows conclusions about the person’s subjective mental model of the world.

The second stage is a group coaching exercise to co-create a rough outline of the narrative, which will require mediation skills of the facilitator because the task at hand is to create a shared reality — a version of the family narrative everyone agrees on.

To make it a flowing, readable, and relatable document, a gifted author should turn the draft from the second stage into a coherent story, filling in the gaps which occur naturally in particular in old families. S/he should dramatize the story and pad out the peaks and troughs of the family history in a way that it elicits strong emotional reactions in the reader. It goes without saying that the finalised family narrative is not for publishing!

After the family narrative is ratified by all family members it is pivotal that the family meets periodically and discusses the most important elements of the family narrative and interprets and re-interprets the content with an open mind, as some interpretations may change over time with an ever-evolving social context. Additionally, more narrative fragments are being created e.g.: the next generation creates businesses that become unicorns etc. which needs to be reflected in the narrative.

This work is very important because narratives create attractors and build a frame of reference for perceived information and interpretation on which we base our actions on. But attractors / reference frames can be outdated and are therefore dysfunctional. Thus, it is key to keep an open mindset for an ever-evolving world.

Conclusion

Every generation creates a belief-system with belief-bubbles on a macro level and on a micro-level which are unique to the individual. They build the basis for social processes and if incongruent, it may lead to inefficient social processes leading to long lasting conflicts which may be inherited by following generations. Conflicts must be solved in the very generation that created it, because inherited conflicts are almost impossible to solve in future generations.

If we take care and exhibit social interest, we can understand more about the various belief-bubbles in our family which is the most important first step for an authentic and sustainable social understanding for intergenerational synchronization.

Furthermore, belief-systems change and can be changed for better social process outcomes.

It starts with the willingness and the social awareness levels of the protagonists and requires a mutually respected facilitator who initiates the processes and nudges the social system towards more social-system

[1] The Mirror Neuron System, Giacomo Rizzolatti and Laila Craighero, Annual Review Neuroscience, 2004

[2]Psychological Safety, Dominik v. Eynern, Family Hippocampus, 2023