Date: Tuesday, November 17th | Time: 11:00 AM EDT
Who Gets To Decide?
Navigating Trust, Control, and Decision-Making Across Generations
STARTS IN
When one generation struggles to let go and the next is expected to lead, who really holds the future?
In many family businesses, one of the greatest obstacles to succession isn’t the absence of a plan. It’s the challenge of transferring decision-making authority.
Founders and senior-generation leaders have spent decades building something valuable. Trusting others with consequential decisions can feel risky. Rising-generation leaders, meanwhile, may be asked to demonstrate good judgment before they’ve been given the opportunity to exercise meaningful authority.
The result can be a cycle of hesitation, frustration, and mistrust that quietly stalls leadership development and puts family relationships and business continuity under strain.
What would it take to move forward with greater trust—without compromising the business or the people behind it?
Join us for a candid, executive-level conversation about one of the most consequential and often overlooked challenges facing multigenerational family enterprises.
What We'll Explore
• The struggle to relinquish control: Why founders can find it so difficult to share decisions, even when they want the next generation to succeed.
• The rising-generation dilemma: How future leaders can build judgment when opportunities to decide remain limited.
• The hidden costs of mistrust: How uncertainty and unspoken expectations influence business and family relationships.
• Different generations, different views of risk: Why responsible leadership may look different to each generation.
• Deciding together: What changes when a family begins shifting authority before a full succession takes place.
What You'll Take Away
• A new lens for recognizing decision-making tensions before they become succession crises.
• Greater clarity about the connection between trust, autonomy, and leadership readiness.
• Questions to consider about decision authority in your own family enterprise—or with the families you advise.
• Fresh perspective on the conversations worth having before the next generation assumes greater responsibility.
MEET YOUR SPEAKERS
Chris Yonker
Founder, The Center for Conscious Living & Fulfillment
Chris is a Certified Family Business Advisor who works with business-owning families on succession, leadership transitions, governance, rising-generation readiness, and long-term continuity. His work addresses both strategic business needs and the human dynamics that shape trust, relationships, and decisions.
Heidi Engel
Family Dynamics & Emotional Systems Advisor
Heidi works with family-enterprise relationships and the emotional dynamics that surface during consequential transitions. She brings a systems-oriented perspective to communication, trust, and how individuals and families navigate change.
Chelsea Hill
Systems Coach
Chelsea brings a relationship-systems perspective to leadership, collaboration, and family-enterprise dynamics, with particular attention to how people communicate and navigate complexity together.
Who Should Attend
This private Executive Forum is designed for:
• Family Business Owners & Senior Generation Leaders who want to prepare the next generation thoughtfully without forcing them into a particular role.
• Rising-Generation Family Members who are exploring their relationship with the family enterprise, ownership, leadership, wealth, purpose, or responsibility.
• Family Business CEOs & Executives who are helping develop family members entering or progressing through the organization.
• Trusted Family Advisors including wealth advisors, attorneys, CPAs, family-office professionals, consultants, and others who help families navigate generational transitions.
You do not need to have an active succession plan underway.
In fact, this conversation is often most valuable before succession becomes urgent.
The Family Business Executive Forum
The Family Business Executive Forum is a series of exclusive virtual gatherings designed specifically for family business leaders and their advisors. These forums serve as a platform to bring together the best expert advisors from around the world to share their insights on the most important topics in family business leadership. Addressing family business challenges requires a different approach. We recognize that without addressing the human dynamics within family businesses, it's nearly impossible to touch the strategic side effectively.
Confidentiality and Anonymity
We understand that matters pertaining to family and business can be especially sensitive. Hence, we host these forums as a webinar so that no one in attendance outside of our team has access to the name of any other attendees and there is no option for attendees cameras to be seen. We will open the question box for questions at various times throughout the forum, and no one outside of our team can see or access the questions. We are committed to the privacy and confidentiality of our attendees.