The Trapeze Act of Family Succession

trapeze

The Psychology of Letting Go

By Darrell Beck, Ph.D., CMC

You have, no doubt, seen a circus trapeze act, in person or on film. There are two participants, the trapeze artist (the flyer, or aerialist) and his helper (catcher). There are three main activities to the act, in addition to the buildup, as the artist climbs up the high pole. He is followed by a spotlight and the drama of the announcer’s spiel to the perch high in the big top. High on another pole at the other end of the tent is the helper, waiting to send the receiving trapeze bar to the artist at just the right time. The helper may be an understudy successor to the artist or another family member since circus acts are often family affairs. But whatever his or her relationship, the helper must be totally trustworthy. The helper is introduced, and briefly brushed with the spotlight, which then returns to focus on the star of the act. After the fanfare and buildup, the main act begins. The artist pushes off the high platform, holding the trapeze bar. At just the right time with just the right thrust, the helper pushes the receiving bar. When the trapeze artist has reached the proper arc in his swing, he lets go, flying into the void with no support. If all goes well, just as his upward momentum begins to falter, the next trapeze bar shows up. He seizes the bar, goes through the downward arc, then swings upward to the platform where the helper awaits, ending in thunderous applause.

The trapeze act is a metaphor for family succession and in exploring the metaphor we can learn how to be of greater value in helping succession go well. It is not a part of the scope here to discuss the other business system complexities of family succession. There is extensive literature that does this. William Bridges work on transitions [1], drawing on his study of cultural anthropology, psychotherapy, and sociology, provides an overlay for the three parts of our succession trapeze act metaphor. The first stage of the trapeze act involves a decisive act that begins with pushing off and ends with letting go. The second stage is that of risk and uncertainty, having no hold on safety. The third stage is that of new beginnings, or the other side, seizing the second trapeze bar sent by the helper, and finishing the journey to safety. For the founder leaving leadership of his business, as well as for the trapeze artist letting go of the first trapeze bar, the first stage of this process is Loss. For the departing family leader, loss may contain several elements. When the act is over, the performer has retired, and the spotlight is on someone else. What is the loss of the spotlight? It provided several elements of identity that confer status and definition. If I am not who I was, who will I be?

Here are some of the main categories of loss feared or faced by departing family business leaders. Adapted from Bridges’ work to fit the family business, they are:

Identity

  • Who will I be? How will I think of myself and how will I be regarded by others? I know who I am now, but who will I be if I no longer have this role, this title?

Status

  • What will be my position in the family? The Business? The community? Will the same people take my calls, welcome my company, pay attention to my ideas?

Power

  • I now have the power of expertise and position—will I be powerless when I leave?

Future

  • I now can fill my days with meaningful work. What will I do in the future? I can’t see clear answers.

Purpose

  • Leading the family business and providing for the wellbeing of employees and shareholders is a clear and elevating purpose for life. What purpose will I have when I leave this?

Connections

  • I now have many rich connections with people as a part of the role I occupy. Will these be diminished or lost when I leave this role?

The more that these fears of loss are unspoken or unconscious, the more that they will serve as tethers to the status quo, to resisting succession. Often times a person’s resistance to change that seems irrational from the outsider’s view seems quite rational from the insider’s point of view. A family may feel why won’t dad retire? By his own admission he’s tired of the rat race, he doesn’t like the direction the Board is pressuring him to take, and he’s disappointed in the company’s weak performance. Why doesn’t he start the process of transition?

From dad’s point of view, he may have clear feelings and fears about what he will lose by vacating his post, and an unclear sense of what, if anything, he will gain. From his perspective resistance makes a lot of sense. Change expert Robert Tannenbaum once said, “sometimes people prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.” In addition to the help that can come from family members, trusted advisors can add great value here. They may be professionals-accountants, attorneys, or consultants-who have served the family business well and earned the trust of all. They can play the role of advisors and change agents. Characteristics of people who can play this role include:

  • knowledge of the business and of the family,
  • good communication skills,
  • trust accorded to them by all, and
  • the perception that they are motivated to help, not motivated by self-interest.

Good change agents understand the counter intuitive nature of how change often happens.

Drawing from the work of Kurt Lewin (Cartwright, 1951 [2]) we can think of two kinds of forces that affect the equilibrium of the change process—driving forces and restraining forces. Driving forces are those things that exist or can be created that will push the change process. Here are some possible driving forces in our example.

  • The Board sees the business suffering under dad’s leadership.
  • The family shareholders are disappointed in the performance of the business.
  • Good professional people have left the company because of dad’s leadership.
  • Lenders are getting more frustrated by the lack of change.
  • Dad’s health is suffering, no doubt due to stress, but he still puts in long hours.
  • Dad is not happy with much these days.
  • Dad argues constantly with his son and daughter. Either could be a viable successor; either would support the other, yet dad has refused to name either.

It might seem intuitive and tempting to force change by increasing the pressure of driving forces. Yet change theory says that when we increase driving forces we almost always increase resistance. A truth about people is that, very few like to feel forced to do something against their will, even if it “makes sense,” or “is for your own good.”

So first, reduce, offset, or eliminate as many restraining forces as you can. Here, the restraining forces are the unanswered fears of loss, listed above. One of the best ways to do this is to help the departing successor create or find a meaningful role on the other side of the trapeze act. This can be something done by the role of the helper on the other side, or in the family business, expanding the “helper” role to include “helpful mechanisms.” It can also be the role of a trusted advisor. Families in business should create meaningful roles on the other side of succession for senior family members. These meaningful roles, especially if they are created before immediate time of need, can help the retiring successor see a desired future state on the other side of the trapeze act. Here are the characteristics of meaningful roles.

  • They must really add value. Make-work roles will be seen as such by the retiring family member, who will resist a hollow sinecure. Also, empty roles won’t be supported by the family.
  • They should fill some of the needs listed in the fears of loss, cited above.
  • They should be recognized, valued, honored and celebrated in family gatherings.
  • They should be filled with almost a match-maker’s sense of fit between position and person. They should not be filled in an automatic way, such that the next retiring family leader will head up the family giving function, whether that person has the skills, values, traits or desire to do so or not.

Fit works the same here as it does when we place a person in a job. We ask first, what are the deliverables, competencies, skills, traits, and values required for success in the job? Then, what are the competencies, skills, traits, and values of the individuals we are considering for the job? Finally, what’s the best match, and where there are gaps in the individual-job fit, how can we best deal with them? These roles should not be filled in an automatic way, such that a retiring or transitioning family member automatically is expected to move to a vacant role. Dad might be “expected” to stay on as a Board member. But he might already be at odds with the Board’s direction and be perceived as holding the business back. So, a role on the Board might be bad for him as well as bad for the business, prolonging an unhealthy tug-of-war, not a healthy difference of perspectives.

Or, in another instance, Aunt Carol, a retiring vice president, might be a poor fit with a vacant family giving role since the function is in disarray with poor controls and loose fiduciary oversight. It needs a tough-minded leader with keen financial skills to realign it with the goals of its creation. Carol might be more tender-minded and people oriented than number oriented, and her values center more in advising, mentoring and coaching than in controlling. Thus, she would not be a good fit for this role. She probably would not find it meaningful and might not even do it well. But she could be highly effective as senior states woman on the family council, helping young family members join the council, develop skills, learn about the business, and figure out what role they could best play when they grow up and join the family business.

So, the helper or helpful mechanisms are persons or processes to develop key roles for senior family leaders to fill. Having such roles benefits the family, the family business, and the transitioning individual. Erik Erikson’s [3] work on the stages of human development applies here. He identified the seventh and final stage of development for the mature person as generativity versus stagnation. Generativity is guiding the next generation. It is wanting to give back of oneself to others, with no ledgers kept no mind set of personal gain. Stagnation is continuing in a role past the time of value and usefulness—getting stuck and getting stale. The more we can provide transitioning successors with a meaningful future role that fits them, that is recognized, valued and honored by the family, the more they are likely to see their own succession as a natural and positive evolution, rather than as a loss. The more our succession trapeze artist knows and values what will be waiting on the other side, the more he or she will be willing to push off and let go. The period between letting go of the first trapeze, and taking hold of the second trapeze, is the neutral zone, or the zone of uncertainty. In the trapeze act it passes by quickly, and its value lies in heightening the risk and drama, and thus the audience appeal of the act. But the real world differs from the trapeze act, so it’s time to let go of the trapeze metaphor and add in some of the complexities of real world succession transitions.

In western cultures we often place little positive value on the neutral zone and rush from the ending of one state to the beginning of a new state. We tend to prefer decisiveness and action over reflection and introspection. Think of the rebound romances you’ve known, where the person rushed from a failed relationship to someone different, only to be disappointed yet again. Or someone who left a job or career with some disappointment and rushed into something else only to find it different but equally disappointing. Bridges points out the value that other cultures attach to the neutral zone, which can be a time of reflection on the past, and of intelligent, emotionally mature preparation for the future. But in family business succession these kinds of questions are asked and answered more fruitfully before succession hand off, or as a part of it. Otherwise, the retiring successor may resist leaving, or leave, yet meddle and second guess the successor, or resist developing the successor, seeing him or her as a threat-instead of moving on to a role of value.

Safety Nets

Very few trapeze artists work without a safety net. Most use a net, knowing that without one, one mistake ends the act—and the life. Safety nets allow you to take risks, fail, yet live to risk again. Family business safety nets can take several forms. They may be:

  • disaster plans, which many family businesses don’t have;
  • short-term contingency plans for untimely deaths, which many family businesses don’t have as well.
  • written succession plans, which 71% of family businesses don’t have (Laird Norton Tyee, 2007[4]) and,
  • written strategic plans, which 46% of family businesses don’t have as well (Laird Norton Tyee, 2007)

Working without safety nets is foolish, both in the circus big top and in the family business. It invites untenable risk, to no demonstrable benefit. We can help the person and the business best by getting the concerns of loss out on the table, to be discussed explicitly. Then a best-fit next role or roles need to be identified, whether on the Board or elsewhere in the family business. These two things often happen in tandem with successor identification, development, and the handing off of knowledge and authority. But the more we delay addressing them explicitly, the more we risk ambivalence, resistance or refusal on the part of the retiring person, to the detriment of all. Only in making spoken the unspoken, conscious the unconscious, can we manage the true causes of resistance. Thus, can we help the transitioning successor move from stagnation to generativity, and guide the next generation.

  1. Bridges, W. (1988) Surviving Corporate Transition (William Bridges & Associates)
    Bridges, W. (1980) Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.) ↩︎
  2. Cartwright, D. (1951) Foreword to the 1951 Edition. Field Theory in Social Science and Selected Theoretical Papers-Kurt Lewin. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1997. Originally published by Harper & Row. ↩︎
  3. Erikson, E. H. (1959) Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: International Universities Press. ↩︎
  4. Laird Norton Tyee. (2007) Family Business Survey. ↩︎