Family meetings provide a platform for families to discuss their future, explore values, relationships, careers, and generational perspectives, and strengthen connections. Increasingly, enterprising families are adopting this practice as a scalable tradition that can grow to scaffold increasing governance and relationship complexity over time. These meetings offer opportunities to celebrate milestones, address challenges, practice communication, and more. This brief essay outlines considerations for families and advisors to start and sustain regular family meetings effectively.
Expanding the concept of wealth
Family wealth expert James Hughes Jr. advocates broadening the definition of “financial capital” to include five components of family capital: human, intellectual, spiritual, social, and financial. Families who engage in discussions that cultivate these “family capitals” can gain significant benefits from regular family meetings, which can help foster stronger connections, shared purpose, and effective management of wealth and legacy.
When to begin
The concept of a formal family meeting typically describes a process that may involve financial learning, continuity planning, leadership development, learning effective communication, and conversations about legacy and philanthropy. Such formal meetings usually involve members of young adults and older, but informal practices can begin much earlier. With adjustments, family meetings can begin as early as ages 4 or 5, with age-appropriate topics that evolve over time. For young children, meetings might involve sharing something they’re proud of and a challenge they face, allowing parents to listen and model openness. Frequent meetings allow the development of a family culture that emphasises listening, learning, and supporting one another. As children grow, conversations can expand to include daily life topics such as chores, school, and allowances.
As families mature, meetings can include structured agendas and discussions about wealth, purpose, and shared values. Formal family meetings offer opportunities to learn together, develop skills, and collaborate on strategies for future challenges. These rituals can grow in complexity, from simple gatherings to sophisticated, multi-day meetings with advisors and experts.
What to include
A basic structure for family meetings might involve:
- Ritual Opening: Start with a game, a check-in, a poem, or sharing recent successes or exciting plans.
- Main Topics: Focus on one or more relevant themes, such as family values, financial literacy, or legacy planning.
- Shared Listening: Create space for all members to share and be heard.
- Action Plan: Conclude with actionable steps for follow-up.
As families grow into the practice, these meetings can serve as platforms for learning collaborative decision-making, discussing philanthropy, and fostering financial literacy. For multi-generational families, family meetings also become opportunities to celebrate rites of passage, share wisdom, and integrate the perspectives of both older and younger generations.
When to outsource
For families transitioning to more formal, structured meetings, outsourced facilitation can provide invaluable support. Expert facilitators can help navigate sensitive topics, resolve conflicts, and create effective future planning strategies.
When a family member acts as the facilitator, they face inherent challenges in balancing their dual roles as both participant and mediator, which can impact power dynamics and impartiality. Bringing in a neutral facilitator allows for:
- Managing complex discussions with impartiality
- Providing educational components on communication, financial literacy, decision-making, leadership, and more
- Collaboratively planning meeting objectives and structure
Professional facilitators ensure that meetings remain productive and aligned with the family’s goals, helping them to maximize the value of this important practice.
In conclusion
Family meetings, when thoughtfully designed and implemented, provide a powerful tool for fostering deeper connections, shared purpose, and intergenerational continuity. By starting simple and scaling as needed, families can create a lasting tradition that supports their collective success and legacy, and offers significant opportunities for shared understanding, strong family culture, and practices that support a long runway for generational family connections.
