The invisible dynamics of Family Businesses
Psychogenealogy, hidden loyalties, unconscious roles : what governance doesn’t see… but governs everything.
Hi all 👋
I’ve been reflecting for many years on the development of my inner world - not to survive, but to fully embody my existence, aligning my actions with the body (emotion), the heart (connection) and the mind.
In this field that I find so fascinating - finance - it’s not easy to inject body and heart. And yet… it’s not only necessary. It’s everywhere. Most of us just don’t see it (I’ve been there). Out of fear, denial or habit.
For years, I’ve been re-reading the patterns at play in my life every single day: my decisions, my reactions, my relationships → nothing is random. This exercise, when done honestly, is mind-blowingly precise. It shakes you… and brings immense clarity to others too.
When we’re born, we enter a family system. We don’t choose. And yet everything shapes us : family narratives, silence, daily comments, unspoken expectations, things left unsaid. We observe, imitate, adapt. Mimicry is our first language. We absorb beliefs, fears (often without naming them). We also inherit unresolved conflicts, invisible loyalties, burdens we never asked for.
So we move forward with a distorted lens, thinking we’re free… while we’re simply replaying stories written long before us. It’s a bit dark when you think about it but it’s real.
And this doesn’t stop at the personal level. In entrepreneurial families, family businesses, shareholder boards… these same patterns are playing out, unnoticed.
I believe Julien Lescs, my guest this week, is one of the most insightful people I know when it comes to connecting finance, governance and these invisible dynamics. He talks about genograms as a strategic tool for family businesses and masters the Karpman Triangle (rescuer / victim / persecutor) - not as theory, but as a highly practical lens to decode what blocks many family and decision-making circles.
The psyche : Absent and yet everywhere in Business
Becoming aware of the psyche in business still feels out of place - even inappropriate - and yet it inhabits our companies, our boards, our ExCos, our shareholder agreements, our daily decisions. It’s everywhere, but it acts in the shadows, unnamed.
Beyond the still-shy idea of “bringing a psychologist into the company” or launching a podcast on mental health at work, what continues to shock me (even after all these years) is how little people in leadership know about this field. I don’t think it’s rejection. I think it’s collective repression - the inability to name the intimate in spaces we believe to be rational and technical.
Some of the people I talk to (even brilliant, open-minded ones) still reduce this awareness to a self-management tool: “It helps you know yourself better”, “manage your stress”, “take some distance”. But that’s not it. Or rather: it’s just the first layer.
The psyche isn’t here to regulate us. It shapes our behaviors. It drives our collective dynamics. It decides for us when we refuse to look at it. It creates our alliances and our silent wars. It governs our transitions and our failures. It shows up in the unspoken parts of agreements, in power games, in the quiet rivalries that hide behind supposedly rational decisions.
Everything we do, build, think we control in business is haunted by our psyche : unfinished stories, invisible loyalties, emotional inheritances left unresolved, primal fears dressed up as strategy.
We’ve learned to read balance sheets, business models… but we haven’t learned to read the emotional systems we’re trapped in.
And that’s what makes governance shaky, succession violent, and boards silently dysfunctional.
Tools like genograms or the Karpman triangle aren’t gadgets to “humanize” relationships. To me, they are audit tools - as powerful as financial analysis. They are maps to navigate the invisible, the one that, if left unseen, always ends up poisoning everything.
This isn’t about wellness. It’s about lucidity.
And this kind of lucidity, I’m convinced, will be the rare skill of leaders, businesses and entrepreneurial families able to weather the storms ahead.
It’s in this context that psychogenealogy becomes essential. It helps reveal what legal or organisational structures never show : emotional transmissions, recurring patterns, unspoken rules that govern in place of family charters.
How many families found themselves stuck in patterns where a child “chooses” not to take over the company… when in fact they’re trapped in loyalty to a grandfather who was excluded or ruined ?
How many brilliant women, trained and ready to contribute, end up sabotaging themselves in board meetings - reenacting a silent prohibition carried through three generations ?
This isn’t pop psychology. These are unconscious governance dynamics and therefore unmanageable.
In this light, the genogram becomes key. It’s a family tree, enriched - not just with birthdates and formal inheritances, but also with alliances, breaks, secrets, unresolved grief, exclusions, and transgenerational repetitions. Seeing that the company itself may be a “member” of the family system - one that takes all the space or that no one wants to carry - is often a shocking but healing realisation. That’s where real structuring work can begin. Not before.
And then, there’s the Karpman Triangle. That one… I see it everywhere. Truly everywhere. The founder who plays savior and decides everything “to protect the business”, the senior analyst who places themselves as a victim for never having had a shot, the CFO who becomes persecutor by controlling every budget line in the name of “rigor”. They don’t even realise they’re playing a role. And yet the theater is perfectly running. This triangle is dangerous because it works, until everything breaks. And as long as it stays unconscious, it repeats endlessly - no matter how talented the team is, how noble the intentions, or how well-crafted the bylaws.
What I’m trying to say is: the world of business runs on psychic dynamics far more powerful than Excel sheets suggest. Unless we open that door (i.e. shed light on the invisible systems) we can pile up diagnoses, org charts, shareholder pacts, codes of conduct… and still, nothing will truly hold.
Bringing in these tools not as a “nice-to-have” or a touch of soul, but as a core strategic lens, is a quiet revolution. An urgent one.
My discussion with Julien Lescs
In this conversation with Julien, we went where few dare: the intersection of wealth, transmission and invisible dynamics.
Julien doesn’t speak about governance the way people do in committees or boards. He speaks of a living ecosystem, of narratives passed across generations, of decisions often made unconsciously and the absolute necessity to professionalise not only the company… but the family itself.
He shares stories of families he advises, heirs unknowingly replaying ancestral stories, exhausted leaders stuck in roles they never chose. And he brings a vision: that of regenerative wealth.
What struck me the most in this exchange was his ability to bring dignity back to what we often feel ashamed of. To say, without flinching, that the passive heir isn’t always who we think. And that effective governance begins only when we stop acting a role and start seeing what’s truly there.
My conclusion
This work on invisible dynamics, the psyche, family stories and emotional loyalties… can only exist in a space of radical non-judgment. To me, this is the core condition for true alignment.
Non-judgment toward ourselves, first : to dare to look at what we’re replaying, what we’re dragging along, what we’re repeating.
And non-judgment toward others : parents, partners, children, associates, even when their choices disturb us or disappoint us.
Only from there (from that clarity without blame) can systems start to self-regulate in another way.
Not through governance charts, but through loving lucidity. Demanding, but deeply human.
And that, yes, I believe it’s the only kind of governance that truly matters. The one that transforms… as much as it transmits.