Family Dynamics Coaching.
"The family is a microcosm of the world: issues such as power, intimacy, autonomy, trust, and communication skills are vital parts underlying how we live in the world. To change the world is to change the family."
- Virginia Satir
Families that manage large corporations, investments, or philanthropic organizations not only deal with the typical family dynamics: The outsize responsibilities they carry create additional challenges for the family as a whole. Trust, honest communication, and the willingness to continuously adapt become mission-critical.
Just as any other family, they experience various interpersonal generational and trans-generational challenges, need to establish effective and open ways of communication, and constantly adapt the family system to the fact that family members are growing up and entering different life phases.
In addition to the "regular" family challenges however, they also need to manage a whole slew of potential conflicts created by the obligations of the business: Transitioning leadership roles from one generation to another, dividing leadership responsibility equitability yet also taking into account demands of the business and diverse capabilities of family members.
In the best cases families manage to develop an open communication about feelings, hurts, conflicts, and tensions but also hopes, wishes and shared values and goals. Like top-team workshops family coaching usually involves a combination of individual coaching and a series of retreats in which the family comes together.
In most cases these retreats follow a sequence of first establishing clear and productive lines of communication, address old hurts, then move to establish family norms and values by which the family wants to interact and then address strategic and business issues.