Family Coaching Process

The Ultimate Investment In Your Family’s Future--Best Practices
Family coaching is deeper and more commitment-focused than the Family Mission Days. It is a long-term transformational process that involves one-on-one coaching with the entire family, including spouses, fiancées and children/grandchildren over 16.

Over time, family members learn the language of trust, communication, commitment, the meaning of promises, and the benefits of openness and transparency.

  • Learn new communication skills and practice together as a family. These are designed to move the family to a point where intergenerational harmony and unity become a reality.
  • Develop the Family Mission Statement, accompanied by a Glossary of Terms and post-transition© strategy
  • Identify roles of the heirs vital to attain the Family Mission and post-transition© strategy
  • Learn how to use philanthropy as a meaningful training ground in teaching children values, mission and accountability
  • Make relevant adjustments to your estate plan as conditions with the family change. At your request, the Institute for Preparing Heirs will consult with your professional advisors.
  • Provide periodic mentoring, evaluation and self-development as requested by family members

 Family coaching process consists of phases.

  1. Private interviews with family members to identify individual conflicts, goals, aspirations, resentments, and assumptions about the trust and communication levels within the family. Interviews take from three to eight hours per family member and provide extraordinary insight to the overall family.
  2. Family meetings. The initial family meeting begins the focus on developing trust and communication and extends to subsequent meetings. Prior to the first all-family meeting, a meeting is set with the parents to apprise them of what has been learned from the interviews (interviews remain confidential), what may come up in the family meeting(s), and what is expected of the family leader in those meetings. Family meetings typically take place over two days and are led by the principal coach.
  3. General family coaching continues to intensify. Attention is paid to repairing breaches in trust, and instilling the importance of teams and the notion of explicit requests/promises.
  4. By this stage in the process, the Family Mission Statement has been drafted. The focus shifts to defining the strategy and tactics needed to achieve the Family Mission goal, the roles of the heirs as they relate to managing the assets, and standards to measure the heirs’ performance. Once completed, the plan is shared with the family’s advisors who are asked to extend their skills to the inheriting generation.
  5. General family coaching shifts to individual needs. This may include individual mentoring, broadening the family office skills and responsibilities, shaping philanthropy to be an educational and communication tool for emerging generations, special programs to unify the upcoming generation and cohere the family in future generations.

Contact us for further information on family coaching.