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| Jacoline Loewen |
In one case, she helped a family patriarch who wanted to open up, by bringing the whole family together for a series of family communications workshops. “This was a dad, he wanted his children to know everything,” she says, but the family members weren’t on the same page. The business founder, his wife, their five kids, and his ex-wife, all came together. Two of the three kids work for the family business. The ex gets alimony funded from the business. Some of them talked “business”--while others felt like they were in the dark. “They were at odds; everybody was trying to find their place,” says Schnaubelt.
First, they identified communications styles and learned how to talk so the others would hear them. Those in the family manufacturing business practiced giving the other family members permission to talk, and the others practiced not letting themselves be pushed over. One outcome: they decided to set up a donor-advised fund at Fidelity Charitable, from which they could make large charitable donations in the family’s name, while each family member could suggest smaller grants from subaccounts. In another workshop, families sort through “Picture Your Legacy” cards to select values and aspirations, and then design a family crest. “It’s a great exercise to bring families together and talk about what’s important,” Markwalter says. Taking a page out of his firm’s playbook, he and his wife Juanita, gathered their five sons—two at home and the others scattered across the country—to give it a try. “I thought they’d think it was corny,” Markwalter says. “What I found was that they were incredibly opinionated in a good way.”
The Markwalters made up a family motto: “Faith, Family, Friends.” and added an actionable tagline: “Do the right thing.” They talked about ambition, and finding work that’s engaging—a work ethic they traced back to ancestors who worked as stone cutters on the Cologne cathedral (hence the stone cutter symbol on the crest). The biggest epiphany, Markwalter found, that he shares with other families hesitant about engaging in these kinds of talks, is that “every single family member has something to offer.”
