Q: How do you develop the agenda? And do you show the agenda to the person that's going to pay your fee?
A: The agenda is unique to every retreat family. The family might own three businesses. They might be trying to decide whether to sell one of them, or to invest in another business. They might be trying to decide to buy a business or whether to lay off people or do something with their real estate. They might bring in a real estate advisor, or a CPA. So each retreat agenda really needs to be different. The agenda needs to be driven by collaboration between the advisor or the meeting facilitator and the family.
Q: You give homework to the attendees, to the family, before the session?
A: Yes. I give them materials in advance that I want them to read. I tell them that they'll look silly if they don't read the materials. I also say that I want them to be on time. I'm firm with them about these things. Usually, we start at 8:00 or 8:30 and have some coffee and doughnuts.
Q: Before the retreat, do you interview all of the participants?
A: Yes, almost always. My goal is to interview everybody that's going to be in the room, and I especially want to talk to the financial advisors.
Q: Who's in the room?
A: If the purpose for the retreat is social and familial, then you invite everybody-the grandchildren, the spouses and everybody in the family. If you're operating a family business and having a retreat to discuss the future strategies of ownership, then you might have a smaller number of people. For business discussions, sometimes we don't have anybody under 16 or 18 in the room. On the other hand, if we're trying to get the next generation ready, I've had 12-year-olds in the room.
And I almost always really want the spouses there. I want the spouses there for three reasons. One, because like me, they come from a different family of origin, so they hear things differently. Secondly, spouses are able to translate messages by family members differently so they can say to their husband, "I don't think that was an antagonistic comment that your brother Jake said. I think he was just trying to clarify this." So they have a wonderful way of lowering the tension level. Third, spouses are going to hear all about it anyhow, filtered by their husband or wife when they get home. So they might as well sit there in the first place and be there the first time and hear it firsthand.
Q: What kind of things can go wrong?