Adopting a Mentorship Role

Listen to Margaret-Jean Mannix discuss the various ways in which she plays a mentorship role in her family.

As far as the mentorship role I hope I play for other people in the family that relates to spouses, new spouses in the family, my intent is that I help to create a safe environment for them to ask any kind of question, if they’re like I don’t understand why uncle so-and-so does this, or that, I try to position myself as someone who’s non-judgemental about any of those questions because I appreciate how tough it can be coming into a very strong family. So that’s one area where I hope I play a mentorship role. I have siblings who are in their 20’s, so a fair amount younger than me, different life stages, and we definitely have good conversations around their career plans and their hopes and dreams and desires and I hope that’s where I can also lend assistance from a mentorship perspective to really follow their dreams. I love Ivan Lansberg’s work on dreams and the importance of the individual to really live their own true dreams and I find in family business, people can lose themselves and lose sight of what’s meaningful for them and what’s valuable for them and try to fit other molds and I think the healthiest family businesses are the ones that can integrate and build upon the individual dreams.