Fiona Spence-McNeil is a self-described Domestic Dragon Slayer, most commonly known as a Director of Residences, Chief of Staff and Estate Manager. Having spent her early career as a private nanny, personal assistant and training construction manager, she found her perfect home within a Family Office and speaks to Agreus today about what that involves every day. She also explores how everyone has a hidden resume, why Family Offices operate behind the mask and why etiquette and an exceptional team is the secret to Family Office success.
You describe yourself as a Domestic Dragon Slayer. What does this involve on a daily basis?
Of course, there is no typical day but as the line says, you find many dragons in a day to slay and they can come thick and fast.
For anyone in my position and most possibly, everyone within the Family Office world, you start your day with a to-do list and often get to the end of the day having rarely completed anything on the list because of the other 15 fires to put out in any one day. It can really be difficult to plan ahead but first and foremost, you deal with your Principals, serve their purposes and then deal with a multitude of other things that exist in any one day from construction projects to event planning, simply performing a walk-through or training your staff. The list is endless and so while no day is the same, it is a case of trying to implement as much structure to your day as possible.
With no two days being the same, how do you wear so many hats and does each require a different version of yourself?
From dragon to chameleon you really do have to be able to change and camouflage to your environment and I believe, while an old-fashioned word, it all comes down to etiquette. You could walk into work one day and have to deal with a celebrity or a royal. You have to know certain etiquette to deal with varying levels of people and naturally, each requires a different version of myself.
To do this, and to answer the first part of the question, it is vital that you surround yourself with a great team. You have to learn quickly in this industry that if you want to do it all by yourself you are going to fail very quickly. Team work is paramount and building that great team has produced most of my successes. I think that is where a lot of people in my role can typically fail.
For me it is about mentoring my staff, being a teacher to them and allowing them to teach me as well. It works both ways and in an environment where there is a great amount to do, in an organisation which does not typically over-employ, every person has a specific purpose and you need to work together. Communication is vital as is this ability to reverse-mentor and ultimately, it is about being able to have the trust in your staff to be able to delegate to your downline in the long-term.
Is there a ritual or routine that helps you make a success out of every day?
I live by two mantras and the first is to remember to always smile. Family Offices can be incredibly tough environments to work in, things can go wrong and quickly, people can go from being calm and collected to being irate. You can have someone screaming in your face but if you remember to smile, you can turn things around and they immediately let go. It is a really powerful thing.
The second is to treat everyone how you wish to be treated. This is such a quick-flowing industry, again, where things can go very wrong very quickly that it can be quite easy to treat someone poorly or act hastily in the moment but if you remember to treat people well, you can avoid potentially disruptive and unpleasant situations.
What is the most memorable day you have had in the Family Office world?
It would be very easy to sit here and say it was that day I got to meet so and so and they were famous or because I attended this black tie gala or because I flew on the jet to an exotic location and while I have done all of those things, the most memorable was a project we completed recently.
Just a few months ago, a Principal came to me and said I think we are going to move into this house that has been listed for sale. It was in fact a house they had bought and developed some time ago which they had decided to sell but suddenly decided it was in fact their perfect home.
They gave me and my team three and a half weeks to remove all furniture from this staged house and furnish it for their needs all without any of their own furniture.
It was the craziest three and a half weeks of my life but upon completing the project, it was the best day of my entire career and it was all because of the team I had around me. I had my housekeeping staff cleaning, accountants from the Family Office ironing sheets and hanging curtains. Everyone pulled together and to have the backing of everyone to pull something extraordinary off together, it was amazing and the perfect example of a Family Office.
How do you continually sharpen your skill-set?
There are schools and academies for various skillsets that can certainly aid development but I think for most of us in this industry, we learn from the seat of our pants. We learn on the job for the most part because there are so many different and odd requests that no book or qualification can prepare you for. The biggest learning opportunity is community, speaking to others in the industry and if you looked at google searches for our industry you would probably see the craziest searches and it is because of these often crazy requests.
We do train in many aspects and take time to learn and develop but it is mostly on the job and also, a lot of the time through failure. Failure in Family Office can be good because you learn what not to do next time. You are very much front and centre, there is nothing to hide behind. Especially at that top level, you are being seen. The housekeeper is seen by matriarch and patriarch every day and so you get better at everything. If you miss a spot they will tell you about it and you certainly will not do it again.
How did you enter the Family Office world?
My mother who is now in her 80s worked at a nursery nurse way back when. When I was young, as we did then, I wanted to follow in her footsteps and so I trained as an English nanny. England I believe is one of the only countries to still offer nannying as a qualification and I used this to became a nanny for a few private families. Many believe this was my route into the Family Office but it wasn’t. What it did do however was offer a great insight into the roles that many Chief of Staff’s or Heads of Family Office, without doing the role themselves, do not appreciate. It was this role, my time as a Personal Assistant and my time within Project Management in the Construction Industry and Interior Design that followed that fully prepared me for my role and that alongside what I call my service heart is what brought me into the Director of Residences role. A perfect blend of Estate Management, Chief of Staff and service. I love to serve and get pleasure in the happiness and success of my Principals. Their success is my success.
What is the secret to this success?
As a Leader, you are only as successful as the team you develop and I think much of my success can be attributable to them.
In our community, we work behind a mask. When you work in a corporate office, your boss can put on a mask to who they are and who they want you to think they are but in the industry we work in, you are behind their masks. You are in their homes and their personal, intimate space they share with their families and their habits. We all have them; we all have quirks and eccentricities but they have no choice but to show them off.
In this industry, we work behind the mask and behind the wall and so the success we create comes from ensuring we have that extra layer of leadership, loyalty and dedication because it is a very tough working environment when that mask is off and your staff need to navigate the raw personality of the Family Office and its leaders.
How do you know when a prospective Family Office employee is able to navigate this raw personality?
I often say there is a hidden resume. In this hidden resume are the things we often forget. When people interview we tend to interview on a corporate level, career and educational driven but again, in the Family Office world and behind the mask, you need to find the basis and the source of the person. In doing that I now say I’ve found the hidden resume. You will find skillsets that people never put on their resume that in this industry are so helpful.
I hired a housekeeper for instance who upon joining mentioned that she was a trained florist. She hadn’t deemed this relevant but it was amazing. I could suddenly save thousands of dollars each year on professional flower arrangements, she also told me that she had been an Executive Assistant previously, again great, now you can help out on the administrative tasks, another had been an engineer in her own country, great you can help out with mechanical tasks. There is a hidden resume for everybody and I think it is something that is missed but can be so useful. Things like languages, hobbies. For most corporate roles they are deemed irrelevant but in our reality, it is amazing.
It is about humanising your staff and by doing so producing success. Your team is everything and how you treat them determines your level of success. It is 50% skillset and 50% personality.