When the boss has an affair, the whole family business can pay the price

Detailed summary

Fallout from ex-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair is the latest reminder of the shared toll paid when patriarchs cheatFrom Profumo to Petraeus to Gary Hart, Bill Gates and Bill…

Fallout from ex-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair is the latest reminder of the shared toll paid when patriarchs cheat

From Profumo to Petraeus to Gary Hart, Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, history is littered with older men in positions of great responsibility having affairs with mostly younger women that put their jobs, businesses and reputations at great risk. Now we have the former Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang.

These men – smart, respected, powerful – make decisions that simply baffle the rest of us. If they’re so intelligent, how could they not see how things were going to end up? The answer is they’re men. And when there’s a younger woman who shows interest, well …

We all love a bit of schadenfreude now and again. But it’s not so fun for the employees, shareholders, partners and others who work alongside these men. And it’s deeply unpleasant for their families, particularly when they work in the same business.

Jensen Huang’s family is feeling that right now. His son, daughter and son-in-law all have prominent positions at his company. His daughter is married to another Nvidia executive. And they’re not alone. And when it happens at a smaller business, the impact is even worse.

Huang’s company is so well known that the world knows of his indiscretions. But people live in their own worlds, and in my client’s world, pretty much everyone in the company knows what’s going on with the cheating spouse.

Some surveys claim that as many as 20% of people have admitted to cheating on their partners. There are 34m small businesses in the US with almost a third being family owned. So the odds are that there are other moms and dads (probably dads, given that 61% of businesses are still owned by men) making the same mistakes. I have clients in this position. And their children working in their businesses are going through the same horrible experience.

Hopefully, the children working in family businesses have positions where they are not directly reporting to mom and dad.

But unfortunately…

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Guardian Business. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.