Recognize the need
There comes a point when many families realize—often quietly at first—that the existing ways of communicating no longer feel sufficient.
Important conversations about wealth, responsibility, and the future get squeezed into the wrong settings—on vacation, at dinner, on the sidelines of a game. They start, stop, and rarely go very far. Or they don’t happen at all.
At the same time, the family’s financial situation is evolving and becoming more complex. Decisions carry more weight and have growing implications beyond the current generation. There is a growing sense that there are conversations worth having—but no real place to have them.
This is often when family meetings enter the picture.
Most families come to the idea with some hesitation. They have heard others are doing it. An advisor has suggested it. Or they simply feel they should be having more intentional conversations. Yet they aren’t quite sure what a family meeting looks like in practice.
At their best, family meetings are about creating a consistent space where the family can slow down, think together, and engage in the conversations that matter. They allow families to step out of day-to-day interactions and ask questions that otherwise tend to get deferred:
- Who are we as a family?
- How do we want to show up in the world?
- What do we believe about money?
- What do we want to carry forward?
- What could we be doing differently?
Those conversations rarely happen by accident, and their unfamiliarity or even awkwardness keeps many families from dipping a toe in the waters. Below we offer some guidance, based on our experience, for families thinking about how to incorporate this type of communication into their lives.
Start simply
One of the more helpful shifts is to think of family meetings as a practice rather than an event. Families often assume they should begin once things feel complex or pressing. In reality, starting earlier—and more simply—tends to work better.
For younger families, this might be informal. A short conversation. A simple topic. The goal is not depth. It is familiarity. Over time, that familiarity becomes a kind of cultural norm: this is something we do.
Without that foundation, meetings introduced later can feel forced. They can carry more weight than they need to, and participation can feel uneven.
Resist the pull of presentations
Building the practice of family meetings feels uncomfortable for some families. Safety is often sought by starting with meetings that are more about sharing than engaging. A typical pattern:
- Professional advisors join and provide updates.
- Parents share context or decisions.
- Others listen.
The meeting feels efficient. Information is shared. Time is well used. No one caused a problem. But very little changes—and little progress is made towards what matters most to the family. This is better understood as a listening session, not a family meeting.
There is nothing wrong with including updates. But when that becomes the center of the meeting, the family is not practicing the skills that create thriving families: listening to one another, asking questions, accepting complexity, working through differences.
For families who decide to hold meetings as a way of developing the rising generation, it’s important to recognize that younger family members are typically looking for more than information. They are trying to understand how to make sense of their situation – and they are looking for a voice in the family system. There is only so long a family member can feel unheard before they become disinterested and unengaged, or worse. Presentations do not help a family find their voice or learn how to use it effectively.
“Can we stumble through this together?” is very different than “Listen to this”.
Resist the pull of the assets
Another common trap is allowing the family’s financial assets to become the primary focus of the meeting. This is understandable. There is often much to learn, discuss, and decide regarding investments, trusts, taxes, and governance structures. And many family meetings begin because the advisors responsible for those assets encourage them.
But families should be careful about the message this sends. If meetings consistently begin with or revolve around the money, it subtly communicates that the money is the most important thing to the family.
In our experience, thriving families make clear that the assets exist to support the family, not the other way around. Effective family meetings reinforce that priority by focusing first on the health, functioning, and fulfillment of the people entrusted with those assets.
Move beyond the superficial
As families get more comfortable, there is usually a natural point where the meetings can either remain light—or begin to take on more substance. This shift does not happen automatically—in our experience, it requires some intentionality.
A family we worked with had been meeting for a couple of years. The meetings were well organized. Everyone showed up. The conversations were pleasant. But they were also careful. No one was really saying what they were thinking and the meetings began to feel performative rather than useful.
Then in one pre-meeting conversation, a next-generation family member said, “We talk about values again and again, but we’ve never actually addressed all the decisions we make that don’t reflect those values”.
That became the turning point. The next meeting was structured around a simple question: What is the gap between our reality and our aspirations?
It was not a perfect conversation. But it was a real one.
That is often what moving “deeper” looks like—not more complex topics, but more honest ones. Examples of where families often go at this stage include:
- how wealth has influenced our lens on the world
- how we want to define – or redefine – success
- where our life choices don’t match the aspirations we’ve discussed
- how we are investing in becoming a great family
- how decisions are made and who is involved
- what responsibility means in practice
- how we need to evolve in an evolving world
- why we aren’t addressing the ghosts in the room
These conversations are not always comfortable. And they create some risk. But they tend to be the ones that create real progress in moving families towards their preferred life.
Ships are safest in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.
Prepare for meetings
What happens before a meeting often determines what happens during it. Taking the time to speak with family members individually can surface perspectives that might not otherwise come forward—or might surface in unhealthy ways. Knowing that a family member intends to detonate a family meeting is very different than being surprised by it during the meeting. Pre-meeting conversations also allow for some light coaching—helping people think about how they want to show up in the conversation.
Setting expectations and rules for how everyone shows up and treats each other helps stop misinterpretation and conflict before it starts.
Perhaps the most powerful preparation for any family meeting is asking the question “What should we be talking about?” Without that preparation, meetings tend to be reactive. With it, they are more intentional and focused.
The role of facilitation
Families often ask whether they need a facilitator. There isn’t a single right answer.
Some families are able to lead their own meetings effectively, particularly once they’ve built some experience and rhythm. Others benefit from bringing someone in—especially early on, when all family members want to show up fully as a participant, or when conversations begin to carry more weight.
Where facilitators tend to be most helpful is not just in “running the meeting” but in what they bring from outside the family.
A good facilitator has seen many families navigate similar moments. They’ve observed patterns—how conversations tend to unfold, where they stall, what dynamics tend to surface, and what usually happens next. That perspective allows them to recognize things in real time that can be difficult for a family to see from the inside.
Even when a family member can sense a dynamic, it’s often hard for them to address it. They are part of the system—with all the relationships, history, and sensitivities that come with it. A facilitator’s neutrality gives them both the permission and the responsibility to name what’s happening, especially when it’s getting in the way, and to do so in a manner that keeps the conversation constructive.
They also bring tools: simple techniques for structuring dialogue, helping to ensure all voices are heard, or managing moments when the conversation becomes unbalanced or unproductive. These tools can make the difference between a meeting that feels productive in the moment and one that actually moves the family forward.
Keep it practical
There is no single right format or cadence. Some families meet quarterly for shorter conversations and gather annually for a longer session. Others adapt based on what is happening in their lives.
What tends to matter most is consistency and relevance. Meetings that feel useful continue. Meetings that feel imposed tend not to.
From meetings to culture
Over time, the most effective families stop thinking of these as discrete meetings.
Instead, they become part of how the family operates.
A way of checking in.
A way of surfacing important topics.
A way of making decisions.
A way of understanding one another more fully.
The meeting itself becomes less important than what it supports: a family that is able to talk, to listen, and to work through things together.
A final thought
Family meetings are often introduced as a “best practice”.
In reality, they are simply a structured way to create something most families say they want, but rarely make time for: thoughtful, honest conversation.
The question is not whether to have them perfectly.
It is whether to create the space—and gradually build the capacity—to engage in the conversations that matter.
