February 2026: Family Flourishing

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in”

-Greek Proverb

Greetings!

Several years ago, a family reached out to me eager and ready to launch their family foundation. The three generations had deeply held values around education and opportunity, along with significant financial resources to make meaningful impact. They wanted my coaching support with establishing the structure, crafting a mission statement, and identifying organizations to support. They were ready to get to work!

Within the first several hours of our conversations, I noticed something hovering beneath the surface. When I asked each family member what mattered most to them about education, the answers ranged across the spectrum. The grandparents spoke passionately about opportunities that shaped their own success, access to quality schools and their dedication to supporting their alma maters. Their daughter talked about scholarships and mentorship, believing deeply in young people’s untapped potential. The young adult grandchildren raised harder questions: Was the goal equal access to the same system, or was it time to ask whether the system itself needed to change? All were circling the same core value, but they had never spoken with each other to understand how each family member and each generation viewed the education issue.

When I asked about how they typically made decisions as a family, there were awkward glances. The founding generation assumed the next generation would naturally carry forward their philanthropic vision, although they had never formally articulated what that vision looks like. The next generations didn’t know that they had permission to co-create a vision themselves. I then suggested that they wait before rushing into the launch of the Foundation and spend purposeful time building the foundation first.

By the time they were ready to formalize their philanthropic giving, something had shifted. The Foundation they eventually created looked different from what any single member had originally envisioned, and it was stronger because of it. More importantly, they discovered that becoming a family that could collaborate with respect, where joy and collective participation mattered as much as the grantmaking, was the real achievement.

When I think about what this family built together, I picture the “roots”, the growth that happens beneath the surface. Invisible. Patient. Essential. Before they could reach outward into the world through philanthropy, they needed to establish what would allow them to flourish together. They planted the capacity to hold disagreement with love, to honor each voice, to find joy in collaboration. They became rooted in shared purpose and action.

I keep returning to James Hughes’ Complete Family Wealth: Wealth as Well-Being (Second Edition). While Hughes writes primarily for ultra-high-net-worth families, the core principles about what makes families thrive apply to any family navigating resources and relationships across generations. Hughes and his co-authors challenge the fundamental assumption that wealth equals money. They argue that families should measure their success beyond the financial capital preserved across generations, by whether they’re growing their human capital (the individual flourishing of each family member), their intellectual capital (the family’s systems, knowledge, and governance wisdom), and their social capital (the quality of relationships and ability to work together).

Hughes writes that true family wealth is found in the answer to this question: “Are individual family members flourishing? Is the family flourishing as a family?”

This reframe is liberating. It means that any family regardless of the size of their financial resources can build genuine, lasting “wealth” by investing in the development of each person, the strength of their relationships, and the wisdom they pass forward.

The book’s subtitle captures the paradigm shift: wealth as well-being. Hughes suggests that the families who thrive across generations understand that financial capital is meant to serve the flourishing of family members and the family as a whole, not the other way around. When well-being is sacrificed to preserve wealth, the family ultimately loses what matters most.

Hughes offers a concrete picture of what flourishing looks like through what he calls the “Five Ls”: the capacity to learn continuously, to labor with purpose, to love and be loved, to laugh and find joy, and to let go when it’s time to release what no longer serves. When I read Hughes’ framework, I recognized my own family’s values reflected back:

“We approach wealth with balance, viewing money as a tool to amplify life, not define it. We embrace the cycle of make it, save it, spend it, and share it, acknowledging our good fortune and our responsibility to give back.

We prioritize experiences and fulfillment, actively incorporating living, learning, laughing, and loving into our lives now,

rather than postponing joy.”

—Amy, Kenny, Greg, and Danny Holdsman

Recently, I came across a framework developed by the UHNW Institute called the “Ten Domains of Family Wealth” that maps what any family needs to thrive together across generations. The ten domains include everything from Financial & Investment Management and Estate Planning to Family Dynamics, Health & Well-being, Governance & Decision-Making, Social Impact & Philanthropy, and Leadership & Transition Planning.

What do strong family dynamics actually require? A recent article from Lansberg Gersick Advisors gave me language for what I’ve been observing in my work for years. Strong family dynamics require three distinct types of social capital:

Structural capital: the forums and rhythms that create regular connection beyond just business meetings. One family I work with holds an annual weekend gathering with no agenda other than “be together.” This unstructured time builds the relational trust that makes everything else work more smoothly.

Cognitive capital: shared understanding of your family’s “why” and values, even when you express them differently. The family I worked with discovered they all valued education but had never explored why or what that meant in practice. Taking time to listen to how each generation connected education to broader values gave them both shared language and permission for diversity within that shared commitment.

Relational capital: the reservoir of trust that allows you to disagree without fracturing, to make mistakes without losing trust, to challenge each other while still assuming positive intent. Trusting relationships are the hardest to build and the easiest to damage.

The crucial insight is that you can’t use philanthropy to fix what isn’t working in your family. However, when you invest in building your social capital first, philanthropy becomes a powerful expression of what you’ve built together.

In my years working in this field, I’ve witnessed philanthropic families take two distinct paths and the difference in outcomes is striking. But these patterns aren’t unique to families with significant wealth. Any family navigating complexity together faces this same choice.

Structure Before Foundation

Some families jump straight to action. They set up donor-advised funds or family foundations, create mission statements, and start making grants. The intention is always good. They want to do something meaningful together.

But without the relational foundation, structures often amplify existing tensions rather than resolve them. Disagreements about which organizations to support become proxy battles for deeper conflicts about values or power. The founding generation’s assumptions about “how we’ve always done things” clash with the next generation’s desire for authentic voice. Decision-making processes feel arbitrary because there’s no shared understanding of what principles should guide choices.

I’ve watched families create giving vehicles that then sit largely unused because no one can agree on how to deploy resources. Or worse, the giving happens but leaves people feeling disconnected rather than united.

Foundation Before Structure

When families are willing to do the slower work first, something shifts. They invest time in:

• Clarifying individual values before trying to articulate collective ones
• Building listening capacity so that disagreement doesn’t feel threatening
• Sharing stories about their own relationship with resources, privilege, community, and responsibility
• Practicing decision-making on small, low-stakes choices before tackling complex philanthropic questions
• Creating rituals and rhythms for being together beyond business

When these families eventually formalize their giving, the structures flow naturally from the relationships they’ve built. Their mission statements are living documents that actually reflect shared understanding. Their governance processes work because there’s trust undergirding them. Their giving creates joy rather than obligation because it’s rooted in authentic connection to each other and shared purpose.

As I reflect on what I’ve learned from the families I work with, I keep coming back to several questions. Perhaps they’ll resonate with you:

In what ways is your family strongest right now? Where does the struggle reside?

What would it take to build the kind of trust that allows your family to disagree without fracturing?

Beyond financial resources, what do you most want to pass on to the next generation?

Is your family flourishing—not just getting along, but actually thriving together?

Whether your family is exploring philanthropy, navigating a business transition, or simply wanting to strengthen your connections across generations, I’d like to invite you to consider investing in the wealth you can’t see on a balance sheet.

This endeavor might look like:

• Values clarification work in which each person explores and articulates what matters most to them
• Facilitated listening circles where family members practice truly hearing each other without trying to convince or fix
• Family narrative work exploring your history and how it shapes your current values and assumptions
• Governance design that creates structures honoring both continuity and evolution
• Next-generation engagement that helps younger family members find their own voice and vision
• Mission and vision development that reflects genuine shared purpose, not just the loudest or most influential voice in the room

The families who do this work discover that the process itself helps to fuel the impact. You build your capacity to work together with respect, to hold disagreement alongside love, to find shared purpose while honoring individual gifts. This unity creates value that compounds across generations. And when you’re ready to extend those branches into the world through giving or service, you’ll find that your impact flows naturally from what you’ve built together.

That’s the complete wealth worth building: families that flourish together, generation after generation.