To make visible a gap that owners of family businesses who send their children abroad to study — and these young people themselves — most often live through, unknowingly, during the education years.
As someone who talks a great deal with the owners of family businesses, I have been observing the same pattern for years. When the child is sent abroad, there is a plan. The right university, the right major; engineering, business administration, or some field that the family business will need. For these young people, the choice usually falls on programs that won't give them trouble when they return, or that will be useful to the business.
The intention is strategic, the expectation high. And the thinking generally goes like this: "Education over there will take care of everything. They'll come back as graduates."
But very few come back "ready."
What does ready mean? Graduating and receiving the diploma?
No. Being ready means knowing where and how you will create value when you return to the family business. It means having discovered your own area of interest within the business functions. And it means coming back having made this visible — to yourself and to your family — through concrete output.
Seen from this angle, most young people do not come back ready. And this is not the young person's fault.
Now, let's stop and think: the young person goes to university. They attend classes, take their exams, and complete their projects. But outside of school — in their own private life — they are not in a structured process of discovery specific to the family business or to their own personal development. School has its own order, but outside that order lies a gap.
Whether during undergraduate or graduate study, the students who fall into this scope — those whose families own a business — set out to prove themselves. They try to show that they are doing something, that they are useful, that they are putting in effort. But a structured environment in which they could discover what to build on and which business function their true talent lies in most often does not exist.
And this gap deepens the anxieties on both sides.
The anxieties created by this gap grow on both sides, but most often, silently.
On the family's side, even when left unspoken, there are questions turning over in their minds: "The child will go, stay there, and not come back." **Or a quieter anxiety: **"They'll come back, but they won't have learned anything."
On the young person's side, there are similar questions, but most cannot say them to anyone: "If I go back, I'll be the boss's child; if I don't, I'll drift away from the family." Or simply: "I don't actually know what I'm going to do."
If you are curious about how widespread these anxieties are, you can read — in an article published on Spalda Academy's LinkedIn page — about what the children of business owners talk about among themselves in the middle of the night. The group of sleepless owners is a bonus.
Both sides' anxieties are real and human. But as long as they remain distant from each other, they carry these anxieties within themselves. And as the lack of communication grows, so do the individual anxieties.
So can this be managed? Yes. With work done at the right time and in the right measure, it can be managed for both sides.
In the families where I work with young people of different ages, here is what I see:
When a young person, while still at university, begins to discover their own area of interest within the business functions, this is not about "inserting" them into the family business — it means they are beginning to find their own talent. Something starts to shift.
When they produce output during this discovery, and the family sees it, a natural channel of communication opens between the two sides. They do not need to spend much time together. At certain points, it is enough for them to share information with each other, to be aware of what the other is doing.
This discovery can also be nourished by work aligned with the field in which the family operates. Even while still a student, the young person can run small projects related to the family business, carry out research, and develop different perspectives.
The same logic holds after education ends. The graduate may prefer to work at another company rather than returning to the family business right away — and this can be a perfectly healthy choice. What matters is that their development remains trackable during that period as well. Once an order of equivalence, alignment, and measurability is established, the young person — wherever they work — can maintain their bond with the family.
The aim is to establish a simple yet structured communication order in which both sides remain aware of each other. Because when this order is not in place, communication often tenses up on its own, owing to the generational difference and the failure to talk expectations through. Yet small, regular points of contact turn the question “what are you working on?” from surveillance into curiosity; and for the young person, they turn the feeling of “they’re keeping tabs on me” into “they see me.”
In the end, the issue is not “do you have to return to the family business?”
The issue is this: will you spend those years merely attending classes — or will you, at the same time, discover your own area of interest and, through the output of your work, show something both to yourself and to your family?
This difference reveals itself when you return — or even if you don't. The foundation for being able to sit at that table as someone who understands what is being discussed, who is respected when they speak, and who knows their own talent is laid in those years.
Most young people realise this only later. And some, much later.