Trusted Communication

Trusted Communication, for a family is the ability to connect with the confidence that no voice is going to be dismissed.

You scored 0 points in the communication category.

Your score indicate that connection in your family is in danger of breaking down… if it hasn’t already. Sensitive issues are usually avoided and when they can no longer be avoided they break down into conflicts. You start talking about a topic and conversation derails into emotional outbursts. You either talk a lot to each other but nothing ever seems to get solved, or you stop communicating altogether, and keep only to the safety of the social chatter.

Not getting communication right can have dire and long lasting consequences: strained relationships, bitterness, lawsuits, unintended division (segmentation) of the family money.

You may already feel the effects of avoiding topics and not having consensus when making key decisions. You may have noticed that some members are barely hanging onto the family because they just don’t feel heard in areas that count… to them.

Purpose Driven Family Money

Purpose Driven Family Money – Family Money should support the unifying purpose of the family. It is meant to benefit an entire community of people that extends through many generations. Family money is clearly differentiated from each person’s individually earned money.

You have scored 0 points in the Purpose Driven Family Money category. Your score indicates that you and your family do not share the same purpose when it comes to the family money. Some want more for themselves. Some want the money to grow. Some want it to fund education. Others want it for something else entirely. When money subjects do come up you know it will mean opposing views with disparate agendas.

Your score indicates that you, your children and grandchildren have completely different views on the meaning of the money. This is a problem when you want the money preserved through and for the generations to come. The money you worked so hard to build will become an object of discord alienating the family harmony.

As a result, your family has a strong likelihood of losing its wealth by the time your grandchildren are old enough to pass it forward.

The third vital area to keeping wealth growing for generations is trusted communication.

Unifying Purpose

A Unifying Purpose is the family’s common reason for being. With it families are able to stand united behind a bigger picture rather than individual agendas.

You scored 0 points in the Unifying Purpose category. Your score indicates that your family members operate more as independent silos than as an integrated and cohesive group. You see this in most aspects of your family life. People further their own agendas without thinking of how they impact the family as a whole. Overtime this can lead to bigger and bigger disagreements that can undermine the integrity of the family.

Your score also indicates that your family meets only for the occasional set events like weddings, funerals or some holidays. Without having a deeper common purpose, over time, your family runs the great risk that the events will become less compelling, lack meaning and lose their relevance. It’s amazing how distance or time can reduce the desire for family gathering when meaning and purpose are missing.

A family, in order to continue has to build its own identity, one that is bigger than the individuals themselves yet flexible enough to incorporate each generation’s best ideas. Without an identity your family will most likely break up. They will fight over the wealth, lose contact with each other and lose the reasons to come together on more than the important events. In one or two generations members of your family will become strangers to one another.