Marlis Jansen is co-founder and CEO of Graddha, which provides coaching and consulting services for family offices and high net worth individuals, couples and families. She talks about what she has learned — both as a licensed psychotherapist and certified coach, and as a sixth-generation member of a wealthy family — about the psychology of wealth:
How did you get into this work?
I grew up in a family of wealth, but I was very, very ignorant of some of the roles that I would end up having to play in terms of family philanthropy, being a beneficiary and even just basic financial literacy.
When I was 18, I started going to portfolio management meetings. I had no idea what was going on, and I was too embarrassed to admit how much I didn’t know. I like to say I was offered a seat at the table, but I didn’t know how to take the seat.
I focused on my own career — I went into health care and became interested in psychology. I decided I wanted to work at the intersection of psychology and wealth. I wanted to start understanding what had happened in my own family. There were a number of splits: a number of operating businesses generations back, a lot of different family offices. I don’t think my family is unique in this way. Families scatter; they change.
I also wanted to help other families have productive conversations around wealth and purpose and relationships, and not have their rising generations feel kind of adrift, like I did.
Today, one of the services we offer to families is financial literacy training – I teamed up with my husband, whose background is in finance and investing, to offer a combination of technical financial skills and psychological support and coaching.
You said that families usually scatter. Do you think it’s possible to keep the family united around one family office or business as that happens?
I do think it’s possible. They have to make sure that the rising generation, which is going to have different values than the preceding generations, is invited in and feels truly integrated into the organization. It takes commitment and intention, but I think it’s possible.
One obstacle is not creating a succession plan that is realistic. Another is not including the rising generation from an early age and creating a fun kind of family culture. People will not stay unless it’s fun, or unless there’s significant upside.
What other challenges do you see in the families you work with?
When we come in through the family, we see that most families collaborate on business issues: family office governance, who’s going to work in the family office or, if they have an operating business, business strategy. They’re not necessarily thinking about: How do we support the family? We try to help families see that they need to build the family in its own right, alongside building the business, and we help them figure out how to do that.
When we come in through the family office side, it’s often about: How do we support the family in all of the non-financial capital, human capital development, family learning? How do we prepare the rising generation?
Whatever dynamic exists in the family often is mirrored in the family office, which is often not healthy for a rising generation. For example, if there’s an ultra-powerful patriarch in the family, which is often the case, the family office is usually managing everything through him.
Some of your work focuses on married-in family members. What are the issues that come up for them?
When you all of a sudden have access to financial resources that you never had before, it can be a shock to your identity. There are all kinds of attitudes about wealth. For example, if you are suddenly vastly more wealthy than your friend group, it can destabilize friendships, and so it can be a profoundly destabilizing force in somebody’s life.
A person who has married into wealth often needs to find a way to reorganize so that they feel purposeful and happy in their lives — and so the money doesn’t end up being a painful, stressful force more than it is an opportunity for impact and purpose and connection.
