ELEPHANTS, PART II
Business Owners as Elder Bulls
Many young people entering our companies today aren’t just learning a trade. They’re learning to navigate frustration, authority, failure, and responsibility. And increasingly, they’re doing so without strong role models elsewhere in their lives.
Without elders, young men often drift. They can become reckless, reactive, or overly driven by ego and insecurity. Growth becomes a stand-in for identity. Money, a stand-in for meaning.
In that sense, the role of a business owner has quietly expanded. They are no longer just employers or managers. They have become reference points. This doesn’t mean giving speeches or dispensing pearls of wisdom on command. It means modeling something steadier: restraint, consistency, accountability, and care.
Most business owners didn’t sign up for this.
Most started businesses to make a living, build something, or gain independence. But somewhere along the way it stopped being purely transactional.
And so we adapt. Because people don’t just bring their labor to work. They bring their confusion, their anxiety, their unfinished stories.
The business world today, like the world at large, has become a volatile place, filled with economic uncertainty, generational transitions, acquisitions, and relentless change. It’s no wonder some employees quietly look to their leaders for steadiness. They may never say it out loud or even recognize it, but I believe the signals are there.
Show me how to stand. Show me how to act. Show me where the edges are. Show me what matters.
The Role of Eldering
Fr. Richard Rohr writes that every culture depends on mature adults who act as elders—mentors, guides, initiators. People who embody responsibility, humility, and restraint. Not perfection but presence.
Modern Western culture has largely lost this function. We’ve replaced elders with influencers, initiation with consumption, and formation with information.
But something interesting happens in well-run businesses. Eldering sneaks back in. It shows up in the discipline of weekly meetings, in calm responses instead of explosive ones, in holding standards without humiliation, in caring enough to confront and caring enough to listen.
One of my colleagues at Violand recently referred to this as “the gray hair effect.” Whether or not we actually have gray hair, the point stands. Experience carries weight, and calm carries authority.
For someone who’s never had that modeled consistently, it can be life-altering. We may not always see it while they’re employed by us, but at some point in their lives it will emerge.
