Birth Order Dynamics | Making Sense of Family Business

Cause #22

In this episode, I explore the Birth Order Lottery and how birth order dynamics quietly shape personalities, roles, and conflict in family businesses. I explain how early family roles formed in childhood - whether as the firstborn leader, the overlooked middle child, or the adaptable youngest - can become entrenched relational scripts that resurface in succession decisions, leadership expectations, and workplace behaviour. I also discuss how favouritism, entitlement, and unexamined family patterns can intensify conflict, and why early awareness, open family conversations, clear structures, and deliberate role design are essential to help families leverage diversity rather than be divided by it.