Accomplishing Family Goals
To accomplish the goals of the family, we assess the needs of the family system and use combinations of the following tools to sort out differences, create clear statements of the family’s mission, vision and values; align family members and resolve the impediments to their desired family success. Specific tools that contribute to improved communication and trust may include:
Snapshot Assessments – telephone and personal interviews, assessment, and feedback
Retreats – family member on-site meeting: visioning, dispute resolution, problem-solving
Interventions – follow up to assessment: solving specific issues and concerns
Individual Transition Programs– customized staff ratio 2:1 renewal and interactive learning
Couples Transition Programs – customized staff ratio 2:2 renewal and interactive learning
Professional Service Firm Consulting – co-facilitation of client challenges with topic experts
Myers-Briggs Assessments – individual or family MBTI inventory, analysis and presentation
Focus on Family Relations
Spencer Legacy Group offers families and family businesses neutral counsel and facilitation on how to preserve and protect their assets by improving family relationships. This suite of confidential services is called FFR. These challenge areas are approached with customized intervention strategies to help the family achieve its desired strategic objectives for wealth continuity and family success, and may include various elements.
- Assessment
- Family, Work and Individual Issues
- Family Relationships
- Managing Family Disputes
- Family Future Visioning
- Mentoring
- Family Dynamics / Decision-making
- Family Relationship Audit
- Family Problem Solving Retreats
- Dialogue and Gentle Confrontation
- One-to-One interventions
- Diagnostic and Psychological Reviews
- Collaborative Divorce and Co-Parentling Plans
- Grief and Loss Issues
- Myers-Briggs Assessments
- Family Health (dementia, alcohol or drug abuse)
- Conflict Resolution
- Family Issue Collaborative Problem Solving
- Divorce-related Conflict
- Family Business Challenges and Transition
- Voting Rights and Family Representation
- Succession Planning
- Leadership Selection and Leadership Development
- Timetable Planning / Change Management Goals
- Relationships to Family Offices, Advisors, Professional Managers
- Transition Planning for senior family members (often the wealth creators)
Questions on Family Dynamics
A family business, or means of creating family wealth is like the goose that lays the Golden Eggs for the benefit of family members. Keeping the goose healthy is often an overlooked part of family wealth management. Professional advisors need expert assistance in assessing or problem-solving the very private challenges of the care and feeding of their goose. With individual family members focused on their own egg, the health of the goose can get lost in the dynamics of family issues. SLG helps families, and the professionals who serve them, align and work together to keep the goose healthy and the family successful.
Personal wealth management is often tied to the unique dynamics and challenges of each family. To protect the continuity of family member wealth, an intervention may be required to align the family on topics such as shared family values and vision of family success, desired family legacy and ways to improve family trust and communication. SLG helps families overcome these risks to their family success.
Questions on Family Dynamics
Relationship management is key to the success of family wealth professionals whose mission and livelihood is supporting families to achieve their desired strategic outcomes. Honestly, family members themselves can get in the way of the experts they hire and trust to support the family. Often the experience and conflict resolution skills of third parties like SLG can assist the trusted advisors of families as they try to remove barriers to serving families. SLG often partners with other professionals to provide deep conflict resolution skills to better serve families.
Family success is more than the continued creation of wealth. It involves creating the desired legacy of families, seeking alignment around their chosen effect on society and culture, if any, and the shared contributions of the family to one another in the ongoing relationships. Getting on the same page is not as easy as one might expect when dealing with multiple generations. The values of the original wealth creators and the subsequent generations may differ, their interests and needs may vary widely and to ensure the continued success of the family requires work.