How can learning the skills required by an actor make you a more effective adviser with your clients? Listen to this week’s interview with Mark Bagnall, a skilled stage performer and “artist-in-residence” for the 2018 FFI Global Conference to learn more about how you can utilize these skills to become a better adviser. Thank you to Russ Haworth, host of the Family Business Podcast, for interviewing Mark and giving us a sneak peek of what to expect from Mark’s sessions in October.

How can advisers utilize the creative process and even mask-making to help family businesses address and resolve conflict? For this week’s edition, we are thrilled to share an interview between Russ Haworth, host of the Family Business Podcast, and Charlotte Dillon and Oliver Hallam about their presentation at the upcoming FFI Global Conference. Their presentation is titled “Unmasking Imagination and Creativity” and will be a mask-making workshop to explore how creativity can mediate family business solutions.

This week’s FFI Practitioner concludes our two-part series commemorating the 40th anniversary of the influential Three-Circle Model. Thank you to FFI Fellows Pramodita Sharma and John Davis for sharing their insightful conversation about future the future of the model, research, and the field.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the legendary Three-Circle Model, FFI Practitioner is excited to share two editions about the model during the month of June. For the first edition, we’d like to thank Pramodita Sharma for her interview about the inception and impact of the model on the field with one of its two creators, John Davis.

When an unexpected disaster strikes, and family members are unaware of a patriarch or matriarch’s end-of-life care wishes, then decisions about how to proceed can create deep-seated and long-lasting conflict that can destroy a family business. This week’s contributors, Mitzi Perdue and Jane Beddall share insights from their experiences and advice about how to address this sensitive subject with your clients.

This week, FFI Practitioner examines the complicated situation occurring when the family enterprise is owned in trust and the trustees simultaneously serve on the Board of Directors. Thank you to Patricia Annino for exploring the numerous issues and conflicts that can arise through the following case study.

Thanks to this week’s contributor, Harvey Taraday of TCH Partners LLP for his comprehensive examination of an often utilized but seldom examined step of the consulting process, the engagement letter.

Among the unique characteristics differentiating family enterprises from their non-family counterparts is that family-owned businesses are much more driven by nonfinancial social and emotional motivators. In this week’s edition, Kim Schneider Malek explores the research that has been conducted on socioemotional wealth through her précis of “More Than Meets the Eye: A Review and Future Directions for the Social Psychology of Socioemotional Wealth,” an article appearing the March 2018 issue of FBR.

Thanks to this week’s contributors, Annie Koh and Esther Kong of Singapore Management University for providing a new perspective on how family business advisers can create trust and forge sustainable partnerships with the next generation. Their suggestion? The adviser should play the role of a Connector, Collaborator, and even a Co-Investor.

This week, FFI Practitioner addresses estate planning, a topic of perennial importance in the field of family enterprise. Thank you to Ashvini Chopra of Bennett Coleman, for sharing a valuable lesson learned through a case study.

This week’s article examines two sides of one issue – competency. Thanks to Patricia Annino for sharing her analysis of the challenges presented by either sustained or diminished competence in an older family founder and for providing practical steps to help family plan for these challenges.

Thanks to Mitzi Perdue for this week’s article addressing an international phenomenon impacting life insurance dividends and returns. Rather than putting life insurance policies in the proverbial “bottom left hand drawer,” her research recommends that, especially in a reduced interest rate environment, all of your client’s life insurance portfolios be evaluated to check and monitor their performance to avoid an “economic time bomb.”

As we conclude the special issue series, we would like to thank the FFI Practitioner editorial committee for their hard work and this week’s authors, Judi Cunningham and Wendy Sage-Hayward for sharing their insights on the impact that an advisor’s unconscious biases can have in their work.

This article explores the potential risks and rewards and provides suggestions for family business and their advisors who decide to engage in the practice.

2017 Keynote Speaker and biological anthropologist, Dr. Helen Fisher shares her research on the evolution of team-building, identifying four distinct styles of thinking and their implications on the composition of the family enterprise.

Parents who are owners of family companies are generally intensely interested in their children’s development both as healthy, aspiring individuals and as future owners.

Points of significant change and transition in the life of a family business lead to predictable psychological reactions.

When a family-owned business needs to recruit a non-family CEO or COO, a well-structured Long Term Incentive Program (LTIP) is essential in attracting an outstanding candidate. However, LTIPs can make some family business owners uncomfortable.

Usually the most prized thing that we as established practitioners lose is our creativity. Once a niche is carved and sustained over decades of hard work, inevitably, at some point in time, complacency sets in.

Two brothers, Andrew and Dave, started a health-related service business in Dave’s basement.