Behind Every Great Man is a Great Woman – Another Expression that Needs a Rewrite
I was at the Indigo bookstore at the Manulife Center the other night watching an interview Heather Reisman, CEO of Chapters/Indigo interview Gerald Schwartz, Chairman and CEO of Onex Corporation. The talk was about entrepreneuralism, and I found both of them very inspiring. Heather talked about how life is long, so even if you can’t "have it all" right now, you can have it all in your lifetime – citing that she started her company, Indigo, when she was 48.
Gerry was a realist – admitting that he worried about the risks that took and about the mistakes that he made. He also mentioned that when assessing a risk, he spent much more of his time weighing the potential pitfalls in the risk, rather than the potential upside, which I found to be very good advice for an entrepreneur.
Perhaps since Heather and Gerry are married, a questioner at the end of the interview said something to the effect that "behind every great man is a great woman", to which Gerry replied:
I don’t think that is true. Some entrepreneurs are single. Some are homosexual. Some are women themselves. But, I will tell you about how great it is to have a partner.
I thought this was a wonderful response, because Gerry as an older, straight man could have taken the traditional route and waxed poetic about his wife and her supporting role in his life. Although his statement did not reflect the reality and questioning the fairness that a woman is ‘behind’ a man, I thought that his answer was a great step in the right direction.
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