Does Ambidextrous Leadership Support the Continuity of Family Businesses?

by Paolo Morosetti, Founding Partner

The Amadori Group is an Italian family business competing in the agrifood industry. It had a consolidated turnover of over 1.3 billion euros in 2021 and a market share of about 30% of Italian poultry meat. The Group was founded by Francesco Amadori in 1969, together with two brothers who were bought out over the years. The second generation comprises four siblings: Denis, Flavio, Loretta and Patrizia. Denis and Flavio are actively involved in the business, while Patrizia and Loretta are only owners. The founders decided to transfer ownership by giving each of their two sons 27% of the ownership, while each of their daughters received 23%.

In recent years, the Amadori family has been in the spotlight twice as family dynamics spilt over into their business life rather than their achievements as a leading player in their market. First, Francesca, daughter of Flavio and a third-generation member of the entrepreneurial family, was fired by the Group CEO, who was not a member of the family. At the time, her father and uncle were chairman and vice chairman of the board. To protect her rights, Francesca challenged the decision in court, and in early 2023, she reached a consensual agreement with the Amadori Group to settle the litigation. Both parties declared that the agreement was intended to protect the business as an asset to the family, its employees and the entire community. Next, the two daughters of the founder, Loretta and Patrizia, neither of whom is involved in the company’s management, sued their brothers because they had transferred their own shares to a new company, thereby giving themselves the absolute majority in the Italian poultry giant.

The outcome of the latest legal battle will only be revealed in the months to come, if not in years. However, reading the company news from the last two years raises a more general question: Is it possible to have a leadership style in family businesses that prevents conflicts of this nature?

The Notion Of Ambidexterity

Scholars of management and family business maintain that when leadership is ambidextrous, a company is better able to combine the business domain with the family domain, thereby enabling continuity and longevity. Normally, ambidexterity refers to the ability, innate or acquired, to use both hands equally well. In management, the concept refers to the ability to balance exploitation activities, that is, the optimisation of existing processes and products, with exploration activities that search for new opportunities and innovations. Translating the concept into the context of a family business requires the ability to lead jointly and effectively both the business system and the family system. For instance, in the Amadori case, ambidextrous leadership might have prevented the overt firing of a family member, such as Francesca, a potential future owner, after 18 years of work with the group.

Ambidexterity thus not only recognizes the existence of two systems—here, business and family—with their interdependencies and contradictions, but it also respects the values and operating models of each system by finding solutions that are inspired by the “best of both” principle. It becomes clear that this form of leadership can be a means for addressing the various recurring risks that compromise the continuity of family businesses, such as nepotism, a poor ability to innovate strategically, an excessively slow rate of change and family and ownership conflicts. To prevent these risks from becoming causes for concern, concrete worry or failure in a family and entrepreneurial project, it is essential that when leaders are chosen, they should be assessed for their ability to understand the ties between family and business and to evaluate how their decisions will influence both systems. The alternative is to focus on candidates who are qualified to protect either the business interests or the family interests. While such a choice might be effective in the short term, it is unlikely to be so in the long term.

Ambidextrous Leadership Behaviours

How is it possible to recognize ambidextrous leaders? Ambidextrous leadership combines IQ and EQ: intelligence quotient and emotional quotient. Being able to understand the emotional sphere of people, whether they are part of the company or the family, and how that affects their behaviour is a valuable skill for building effective dialogue and for recognizing the often-unseen system dynamics and contractions that are likely to shape the future. Whether from the family or from a non-family background, ambidextrous leaders are distinguished by their superb ability to govern the interdependencies between the emotional and business dynamics, to build sustainability in the entire family business system and to create socio-economic and emotional value in the long term. Examples of virtuous behaviours that identify these talents are discussed below.

• Ability to navigate paradoxes: The ambidextrous leader understands when choices must be made to satisfy both the family and business systems, even when the alternatives do not seem to make this possible initially. When the ambidextrous leader faces a critical decision-making paradox or dilemma—pursuing the interests of the company or the family—they will quickly find a solution that can satisfy both categories of interest rather than polarising the choice. For example, a decision such as hiring or firing a family member based on merit can inevitably create family conflicts, tensions or fallout in family harmony or ownership cohesion. An ambidextrous leader, having ascertained the delicacy of such a situation and its possible emotional implications, will try to find a solution that does not compromise the principle of meritocracy but instead devises a decision-making process that is as fair and inclusive as possible to prepare the family for such a choice and to manage their emotional reactions.
• Ability to aggregate consensus on an integrated, responsible vision: A vision is integrated when it considers the expectations and needs of the family and ownership and not just the need to align the characteristics of the internal context with those of the external context and to build an edge. A vision is responsible when it is crafted with the understanding that the family or ownership will act responsibly and want to provide the business with the opportunity to access capital resources and the modern professional governance and leadership systems that will make it possible to realise such a vision. In pursuing responsible ownership behaviours, the ambidextrous leader bridges the business and family gap, giving centrality to business needs while channelling family dynamics in a constructive and common-sense way.
• Responsiveness rooted in family values: An ambidextrous leader is skilled at navigating complexity in relation to competencies and cognitive abilities, while leveraging family and entrepreneurial values to remove barriers to change and to motivate action. By respecting the past, it is easier to set up a shared vision for change that is quicker to implement.
• Flexible thinking: There are situations in which a decision must be made with a clear understanding of whether it is a business or family logic that is being pursued; that is, where the intellectual challenge does not consist of managing the paradox but of choosing the correct field without hesitation. In these moments, the ambidextrous leader can direct and keep the discussion moving in the right direction, adopting the correct mental schemes to enable others to face it. The ambidextrous leader can also change his or her work setting, moving from a decision-making process that focuses on the company to one that concerns the family. By changing the reference context, flexible thinking avoids using the wrong decision-making scheme.?

Ambidexterity And The Ripple Effects

Returning to the Amadory case, the news shows how multidimensional relationships within a family and business make many decisions much more than straightforward business or family calls. The four siblings are now at a crossroads and must decide whether they want to navigate the paradoxes or undertake a path towards make-or-break relationships. Ambidexterity could help them handle the ripple effects or unintended consequences of choices that occur frequently and are deceptively complicated in the family business domain. If they succeed in this endeavour, they will maintain and perpetuate not only a great business but also a great business family.

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The copyright on this article is held by Paolo Morosetti.