The family retreat is one of the tools, where family members come together to address common interests. All family members – who are active in business, not active in the business, the spouses of the family members and even young adults, are encouraged to participate. It is conducted off-site and is generally guided by a facilitator to navigate through the process.

Managing family expectations, working through conflict, and creating family unity are often the biggest concerns for Family Business owners. Different dynamics, personal emotions, unresolved past conflict, and in-laws have an impact on the business. Understanding these Family Business dynamics is vital, so that when a family faces them, they develop the tools and skills to address conflict before and as it arises, to maintain a sense of family unity and cohesion.

The retreat helps to integrate and connect the personal and professional goals of each family member to the family’s strategic vision for the business. It helps to strengthen family ties by building trust and creating clarity of vision for both the family and the business. It establishes balance between business responsibilities and family obligations and provide the best environment for family members to share their dreams and expectations about the legacy of the family business.

The intention of the Family Retreat is to create fun and educational opportunities that build and nurture family relationships. It is important to be purposeful about how we want to BE together, just as much as what we want to DO together. Knowing each other better is the first step to start a retreat process.

Communication and transparency are the corner stone of any successful and sustaining family business. As the family grows, the family needs to plan events to be together – where they can understand each other, communicate their views, and develop a shared goal for the family and the business. This is an important activity, as the family now comprises of people from different age group, with different life experiences, possesses different skill sets, and has different exposure.

Life is a process; we all go through range of emotions like satisfaction, dissatisfaction, happiness, sadness, failures, success all these are a normal part of everybody’s life journey. Experiences are acquired through our journey in life. Each one of us have our own personal experiences. Our beliefs, our opinions are based on our experiences in life.

A family retreat aims at enhancing the process of becoming and create self- awareness. Understanding the Perception which each one of us have and learning how to deal with it. By knowing our basic personality traits, it helps us to:
o Know the way we prefer to look at the world
o How we process the information?
o How it influences our behavior?

This equips us to know one self-better.

Self- awareness is important but not enough. We also need to understand others, relate to them effectively to work together. During the retreat we discuss, learn, and enhance our understanding of importance of skills for productive inter-personal relationships. At the end, being aware of one’s personality type and knowing others helps us become more productive.

There’s lots to discuss!

The discussion topics during a family retreat can include a wide range of issues such as compensation, individual roles in the business, succession management, retirement planning, financial performance of the business, strategic objectives for the business, how family values and culture influence the family business, corporate governance, business policies and to communicate the strategic goals and objectives of the family to the executive management team of the business.

It is important to note that the retreat is not an event – it is the beginning of a process that will enable the family business to grow and prosper and to help ensure that family members maintain and develop healthy relationships.

Does Your Family Business Need Help?
With extensive hands-on experience in assisting family businesses, we understand the challenges families face as they work together to build a thriving family business generation after generation. Through orientation programs, one to one and group meetings, workshops, public talks, mentoring, coaching, family retreats, and private family business consulting services, we help family business owners chart their way through family business issues of all shapes and sizes.