'Mary Barrett and Ken Moores pointed out in their earlier book, Learning Family Business: Paradoxes and Pathways, that depending on the definition of a family firm, businesses run by families are estimated to contribute somewhere between 12% and 49% of GDP in the US. In all developed countries they employ a major proportion of the workforce. Most important of all, family firms are the incubators for the next generation of entrepreneurs, because they provide the example, support and a lot of the know-how that people need to see themselves as business-owners.

Despite this, family businesses are still an area of mystery. The overlap between 'family' and 'business' gives them a special set of problems and also some special advantages. Despite a gradual acceptance that women as well as men make good leaders of family firms, they are still an untapped resource for many family firms. In their latest book, Women in Family Business Leadership Roles: Daughters on the Stage, Mary Barrett and Ken Moores point out some lessons for family business women and others in the family firm who want to make sure their female members have the best possible business development for leadership. These lessons include:

1. Give promising women early learning opportunities in a firm outside of - but similar to - the family firm, and a clear route back to the family firm. This means that women, like men, need to know they are as likely as men to be considered for senior roles in the family firm, perhaps even the CEO position.
2. Be wary of ‘touchy-feely’ stereotypes of women’s approach to management. Women in family firms may do well as the 'Chief Emotional Officer', but this should not be taken as being their 'natural' or 'inevitable' role in the firm. Barrett and Moores's research shows that women are not so different as many people think. For example, women and men manage the big-ticket issue for family firms, succession, in very similar ways.
3. Women’s unconventional experience requires creating legitimacy for their leadership. Often women don't follow a straightforward path towards a leadership role in the family firm. They may have trained experience which is valuable but easy to overlook because they haven't been picked out early as the heir to the firm's leadership. It is important to make sure they have the same formal trappings and endorsement of leadership as men more often enjoy.
4. When choosing mentors for potential women leaders, find people who are ‘in’ but not ‘of’ the family firm. Good mentors are people who have an excellent knowledge of the firm but have already established their careers in it, and don't need to compete with the potential new leader.
5. Both 'visibility' and 'invisibility' are potential leadership strategies for women. Women may choose an open, participative management style in the family firm, drawing attention to problems that have been invisible for a long time. But they may also choose to lead from a position of deliberate invisibility behind the scenes. If women take the 'invisibility' route, however, it must be a genuine choice, and not a case of being pushed out of positions of prominence where they can gain experience.
6. Women need a home base, a reminder about where they have been, and support for their multiple identities if they are to develop a family firm. Society typically demands multiple roles from women, and the family firm - just as much as a conventional workplace - needs to provide them with various forms of anchorage and various ways to be themselves.
7. It is usually a bad idea for a woman to assume a leadership role in the family firm merely to solve a problem in the 'family' part of the business rather than to pursue a business opportunity. This often has the result that she falls victim to 'politics'.'

The book has important lessons for anyone - female or male - who wants to make sure that women in the family firm make the most of their potential. It will also help anyone person who wants to learn the secrets of longevity of family businesses. The book points out many ways that any business can act like a family firm.

For information about how to buy the book, contact Unishop at the University of Wollongong: 02 4221 8050 or unishop@uow.edu.au

To read about the book launch visit http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW067624.html