It is common to hear founders say: “My business is my baby”. An emotional metaphor, but which speaks volumes about the intimate relationship which is woven between a leader and his creation. For some, this merger identity becomes total: the company ceases to be a professional project and becomes a double, an extension of themselves. If this symbiosis can be an engine of energy and commitment, it is not without danger. Fragile governance, transmission difficulties, personal exhaustion: when the boundaries between personal identity and corporate identity are erased, the risk is real.
The company as a mirror of the founder
Creating a business is often implementing a personal vision of the world. The values of the manager become those of the company; his obsessions, strategic priorities; His relational style, a managerial culture. This is what makes a start-up sometimes seems to “breathe” to the rhythm of its creator. Its market vision, its aesthetic tastes, to its language, irrigate the whole business.
In luxury, fashion or gastronomy, this phenomenon is visible: impossible to imagine Chanel without Gabrielle, or Tesla without Elon Musk. But he also finds himself in less media sectors: the boss of an industrial SME, whose direct and combative style is printed in each meeting, or the creator of a digital agency whose collaborative culture reflects his associative career.
When the founder and the company merge
Beyond cultural influence, some leaders take an additional step: they completely identify their business.
- Their successes are their own: a successful fundraising becomes personal validation.
- Their failures crush them: a lost contract is experienced as an intimate injury.
- Their time merges: holidays, evenings, weekends disappear, everything is absorbed by the company.
- Their social identity is reduced: we only know them as “the boss of X”, never as a full -fledged individual.
The benefits of an identity merger
However, it would be unfair to see only a danger. This total identification can also be a great resource.
First, it can be an energy engine. The manager puts all his being at the service of the project, galvanizing his teams by his conviction.
Then it can become a culture accelerator. Indeed, identity clarity makes it possible to install strong consistency, recognizable by customers and partners.
Finally it sometimes represents a talent magnet. The personal aura of the founder attracts collaborators seduced by a personality before a product.
It is this intensity that makes the charm of the first years of an entrepreneurial adventure: we no longer know where the man stops and where the business begins.
Risks for governance
But in the medium and long term, the confusion of identities can weaken the organization.
1/ Absence of counterpowers
When the founder and the company are only one, any criticism of the company is experienced as a criticism of the person. This makes it difficult to set up an effective board of directors, or even internal constructive contradiction.
2/ biased decisions
The founder can favor choices that flatter his ego or confirm his image, rather than rational options for the company.
3/ Fragility in the event of a crisis
An attack on the reputation of the company becomes an attack on the integrity of the manager. The risk of emotional reactions, sometimes irrational, is high.
The transmission test
The question of transmission crystallizes this problem. If the company is double the founder, how to consider giving it?
In family SMEs, the passage of witness can be dramatic: the patriarch refuses to let go of the reins, unable to think outside of his business. In start-ups, some founders repel the arrival of experienced managers indefinitely, for fear of losing control of “their” baby.
The psychological effects on the leader
This merger identity also has a deep personal impact and can be characterized by exhaustion and that the founder sometimes does not allow himself any respite, convinced that to rest is betrayed his business. Then, by isolation: the more he advances, the less he can share his doubts. His relatives do not understand his total investment, his teams do not dare to question him. Finally, at the extreme, we can see an existential fragility since if the company fails, its whole identity is collapsing. Some leaders, after a bankruptcy, sink into distress comparable to mourning.
How to avoid total confusion?
For leaders, the challenge is not to cut the link (impossible and undoubtedly undesirable) but to clean it. Some tracks:
1/ Build a personal identity outside the company
Having living spaces that do not depend on the status of manager: family, friendships, passions. The more the leader exists apart from his role, the more he can put into perspective the vicissitudes of his business.
2/ set up real governance
A board of directors, a strategic committee, mentors … so many counterpowers which make it possible to distinguish the interest of the company from that of the person.
3/ Cultivate a reflexive consciousness
Accept support – coaching, supervision, therapy – to identify your confusion areas, personal projections.
4/ Prepare the transmission upstream
Do not wait to be forced (by age, a crisis, a buyout) to think of the succession. The more anticipated the transmission, the less experienced it is as a brutal dispossession.
The balance to find
Basically, the question is not whether to radically separate the manager of his business. Any entrepreneurial adventure has a personal dimension. The real question is that of balance.
A company can be the mirror of a founder, but it should not be its prisoner. It can embody a personal vision, but must be able to evolve beyond.
The leader must learn to define himself other than by his role. “I am more than my business” : this sentence, seemingly simple, is often the most difficult to pronounce.
