Family Business Consulting

“The measure of your life will not be in what you accumulate, but in what you give away.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer

A unified and healthy family is a critical component in ensuring the sustainability of a family business. However, often more effort is put into the business strategy than into the family strategy. A family strategy addresses a wide range of critical questions including:

Why we continue to be in business together?
What are the values that drives the family and business?
What are the expectations and desires around ownership and liquidity and financial return?
What are the employment opportunities for current and next generation?
How can we support education, succession, and governance?
How can we build family cohesion and bonds for successor generations?

Our customized engagements around family strategy provide a facilitated framework and safe environment for families to have respectful and productive conversations on potentially tough challenges and questions.

Communication & Conflict Transformation

“The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.”

Dalai Lama

We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions. Others judge us based on the impact we had on them. ARC helps families disentangle impact and intention through the development of communication and conflict transformation skills.

Conflict is an inevitable and, when done well, an effective part of family communication and progress. Instead of managing or resolving conflict directly, ARC helps families examine and reflect the dynamic communication patterns families hold that keep them stuck. The combination of improved communication skills and insights about patterns of communication offer the opportunity to transform a conflict into constructive way forward. As psychologically minded professionals, we have experience helping families to:

Understand the nature of conflict triggers
Develop active and empathic listening skills
Learn how to validate while not necessarily agreeing
Make room for differences without breaking the relationship

“The voyage of discovery is not seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Marcel Proust

Family Business Consulting

ARC Leadership Associates understands the challenges family businesses experience turning the page and helps them to write their next chapter.

Staying together without coming apart. Navigating between equal and fair. Moving closer through the conversation we were afraid to have.

Determining succession plans and negotiating them into being is unique for each family business. As seasoned business and psychologically attuned professionals, we guide families to have the productive conversations that need to be had. These conversations often address underlying family relationship dynamics which can obstruct or propel business and family success. As such, the process of working through productive conflict and to sincere alignment is fundamental to the governance structures, or other formal agreements and solutions created.

Our process assesses the situation, establishes priorities, and then facilitates the family’s alignment in pursuit their goals.

Build communication and conflict skills

Develop family cohesion

Exploration & Alignment

Conduct a kick-off meeting. Explore issues, opportunities, outcomes and deliverables. Establish ground rules; discuss boundaries and confidentiality. How do you work best together? Talk about next steps and timelines.

Situational Analysis

Gather background information; interview family members, distill key messages and review past/current work relevant to goals.

Goals & Action Plans

Consolidate results and report findings to key stakeholders. Align goals with action plan (both one-on-one and as a family). Revisit family support and commitment; agree on next steps.

Implementation & Accountability

Create robust individual/family action plans. Report on individual and family progress; revise and adjust as needed.

Services

Coaching

Next Generation Development

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

Mark Twain

Expectations of the next generation regarding responsible family business ownership and the role in the family enterprise can be high. Developing the next generations in a thoughtful and supportive way is a critical piece of successful succession and healthy family relationships. FBSA has deep experience in coaching the next generation using a process that includes:

a confidential dialogue with the next generation to define a path forward
a structured process to share results with the organization – with contracting up front and milestones to review progress
input and involvement by key stakeholders
personality and behavioral assessment for deep insights, self-reflection
creation and execution of a development plan designed to stretch and grow
specific skill-building resources and support to achieve the goal

We engage next generation leaders to define a goal that leverages their strengths and desires and develops the skills needed to get there.

Executive Development

“Respect the past, but always do what is right for the future.”

Bill Wrigley

Family businesses are not static. They continually face new challenges across several fronts including changes in market conditions, ownership needs and desires, and employee bench-strength. Even seasoned executives may need to step into their leadership in new ways. Executive coaching provides both a safe environment and a rigorous process in which executives can accelerate their professional growth. Executive coaching outcomes:

Increased self-awareness through behavioral feedback and insight
Accountability to a specific action plan
Resources to provide deeper understanding of leadership topics
A confidential sounding board to process real-time issues along the way