Family Dynamics: Culture, Conflicts, Relationships and Individual Issues

“I don’t know why they call these people issues the ‘soft issues’. They are not at all soft or easy. They should call them the ‘even harder’ issues.”

We all aspire to create and perpetuate a flourishing family. Yet managing family dynamics, relationships and complex personal issues faced by individual family members may be the most complicated, but also the most important, task facing family leaders.In the modern world, and in particular within the legacy family, there are multiple layers at which problems and unique assets can be found in the way a family operate.

Just like countries, companies and other social groups, legacy families are characterized by a unique culture, set of relationships and individual issues that influences how that family lives and works together across generations, between branches and through relationships of all kinds.

Culture is made up of a unique set of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that differ from one family to another. Culture shapes the visions we pursue and the values we respect, it affects how we relate to each other, communicate, and create bonds (or not) between each other.

Family relationships can be positive, supportive, trusting and even loving, or negative, resentful, conflictual and riddled with disputes. They also change over time and with accumulated experience, so understanding and managing (as best we can) this part of family dynamics is challenging, but absolutely essential: it may make all the difference between keeping a family together and watching it tear itself apart.

Individuals, and individual issues, can also make a profound impact on the wealth and wellbeing of a family, and can shape its legacy indelibly for better or worse.

Every family needs to address these ‘even harder’ issues well if they are to find a positive and rewarding individual and collective way of being, finding the forward pathway to stay together, work together, and create something that is both fulfilling at an individual level and leads to the achievement of something together as a family that is greater than that which would be possible individually.

Objectives

In this course, we take a look at the ”even harder” human issues of the legacy family at all levels, from the individual to the holistic. Here you will learn how to analyse and shape culture for the future, foster positive relationships, identify potential risks and challenges, resolve family disputes, provide support to individual family members on their most important issues and define and pursue a broader definition of true family wealth for your own family.

This will allow you to avoid or address conflicts and concerns, and also to capitalize on the full set of opportunities in front of you to build toward the best possible future for your family and all of its members.

Instructors

Robert Batt, Mark Haynes Daniell