Putting family dynamics to work

The rules of the modern workplace don’t always apply when you’re working with family.

Financial advisors whose practice includes a spouse, child or parent often find that specialized people skills come into play when you’re trying to maximize productivity without straining your relationship.

Highly successful family teams have found a number of ways to balance the professional and the personal.

Give them space

“Friends and colleagues will often say to us, ‘Wow, how do you guys work together? That is, like, a lot of together time!’” said Robin Shimkovitz, who works alongside her husband, Mark Shimkovitz, at Living Richer Wealth Management of Raymond James Ltd. in Toronto. “I think the trick for us is that we do very different things in the office, and we respect each other’s expertise.”

She described the melding of their strengths — his wealth management skills and her marketing and communications background — as “a natural progression.” They have separate projects and tasks, but with the common goal of growing the practice.

Mark said that division of labour has been fruitful.

“I had to step back and allow her to take control of some things so I could focus on bringing in assets, managing clients and managing portfolios,” he said. “I think having those specific goals was really critical.”

Set realistic expectations

When wealth advisor Jamie Woodhead joined his mother, Madeline Woodhead, at Woodhead Wealth Management Group in St. Catharines, Ont., last year, the first thing he wanted to understand were her expectations.

“I would recommend that to anyone who is going to work with family: Have an open and honest conversation about what the expectations are,” he said. “And it needs to be candid. ‘Starting time is 9 a.m. and this is not Easy Street for you. We’re blood, but you need to be willing to put the same pound of flesh on the scale that I am.’”

Madeline was more than happy to have that talk.

“He needed to know exactly what he was coming into,” she said. “What is it going to look like? What is he going to do? And when you disagree, like any partnership, how are you going to resolve it?”

Don’t be too casual

It’s hard to disguise the natural comfort that family members have with each other. For the sake of clients and coworkers, however, it’s important to maintain a professional demeanor in the office.

“You can’t expect your son to be deferential to you on professional matters just because you’re the parent. The office has a different dynamic,” Madeline said.

She and Jamie work with an administrative assistant, and for the sake of office professionalism and efficiency, they have adjusted their communication style to avoid being overly personal.

“One thing I struggled with is what he should call me in the office. I didn’t want him to call me Mom, because that’s not peer to peer. And he felt a little awkward calling me by my first name. We just had to work that out.”

“Yeah, Maddie has a hard time checking out of ‘mom mode’ every once in a while. Let’s just say a lot of unsolicited advice comes my way,” Jamie said with a grin. “It’s fine, though. I know it comes from a good place.”

Keep ‘home’ out of the office

Robin said she and Mark rarely let family problems disrupt their work.

“We try to solve things when they happen,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a day where we’ve come to the office and been like, ‘Oh, I really don’t want to see your face right now.’”

Mark said the office should be seen as neutral territory.

“We had lots of discussions, before we started working together, about how much time we were going to put in the business, and what boundaries we would set between work and home,” he said. 

“It really does come down to the mutual respect that all couples — whether you’re working together or not — should strive for. You need to move forward, if you want to have a happy relationship or if you want to have a happy practice — it starts with respect.”

Learn to turn business off

Too much of a good thing is definitely possible when you’re working with family.

“We love what we do. And so we naturally speak about work things at home. But there are times when you just want to say, ‘I’m done. I just can’t talk about this right now,’” Robin said. “And we respect that. We know we can pick it back up again tomorrow.”

Mark said it is also important not to cut coworkers out of the loop.

“Everybody on the team should be part of the conversation,” he said.

He acknowledges that since Covid, the delineation between work hours and personal hours has been blurred.

“We all have our laptops and it does become a little bit more difficult to turn things off,” he said. “That can often be a real challenge.”

For Jamie, understanding his mother’s propensity to work after hours has been a real insight.

“I don’t love the text message at 7:30 or 8:00 at night saying, ‘We’ve got this in the pipeline. What are your thoughts?’ Or, ‘Can you put this proposal together for me?’” he said.

For her part, Madeline said she’s learning to turn that impulse off. Her ongoing goal is to “compartmentalize” work and her personal life, acknowledging that it’s all too easy to slide into a work conversation when you’re off the clock.

“It’s not fair — not just to Jamie, but to other family members that might be present. They want family time. They do not want to experience an extension of your office,” she said.

Enjoy it 

“There is a lot of fun in having Jamie in the office,” Madeline said. “The teenager that made you crazy is now a successful young professional, and it sort of validates all of your parental efforts.”

More to the point, it strengthens the company’s image as a family-run business, and gives them a head start on succession planning.

“The reality is 10 or 15 years from now, he’ll be running the business,” she said. “Individuals that are eventually going to take over the family business have got to start imprinting it a bit.”

For Jamie, the chance to spend more time with his mother while raising a family and developing his career is a bonus.

“I’m really happy that I joined the company. It has been great so far,” Jamie said. “I think any time you have a chance to spend more time with family, take advantage of it.”

Mark said while there are challenges whenever families work together, the rewards can far outweigh them. “For us, the overriding lesson is that the success of our practice is directly tied to the success of our relationship,” he said.

As a couple, they’ve been able to develop stronger relationships with client-couples — whether it’s at a nice restaurant or on the pickleball court.

“We meet them socially, and we get to know them as couples. That really takes the relationship to the next level, which is something I think all advisors would like to do,” Robin said. “We hear from clients all the time that they like working with us.”

Embracing the family dynamic can really pay off, she added.

“Done right, I think it not only can work very well for business, but it can enhance and help the relationship grow and become stronger.”