What happens when you bring a group of family learning and client experience officers together to trade experiences and share lessons learned? Magic – in the form of answers to big questions, tried-and-true resources to take back to the office, and support from peers who understand what you do every day.

There is something special about the FOX Council experience that allows family office executives to step out of the day-to-day to invest in their personal and professional development by learning from experts and sharing their challenges and successes in a safe space with their true peers. While what happens at a council meeting truly stays in the council meeting, we are able to share some high-level takeaways to give you a sense of what’s top of mind for these learning and experience executives.

The FOX Family Learning and Experience Council met in Dallas on January 29-30, 2019 (during the height of Chicago’s polar vortex). This is a group of talented learning and client experience officers from single and multi-family offices who bring a terrific range of experience to conversations about how to better engage and prepare rising gen family members and how to surprise and delight clients of all ages. Following are several takeaways from this meeting.

Mindy Earley, FOX’s Chief Learning Officer, facilitated a family learning workshop where members of the group shared examples of learning experiences that have worked well in their families. Mindy encouraged the group to meet learners where they are in terms of interest and aptitude and develop learning programs that are agile, adjusting with participants as they grow. The group heard from two of our council members who shared case studies about the secret to consistent service delivery and lessons learned from a family retreat, respectively.

We had a book discussion featuring Raised Healthy, Wealthy & Wise: Lessons from Successful and Grounded Inheritors on How They Got That Way by Coventry Edwards-Pitt.

While there is plenty of advice out there for affluent parents, this book allows us to hear directly from children who were raised with wealth and emerged happy, healthy, and productive. We asked the group to provide key takeaways from the book and how they might use these in their offices:

• Young family members need to have the space to foster independence and learn what it feels like to work hard
• When parents encourage children to experience the joys and inevitable aggravations of working, they are helping them learn fundamental lessons that are difficult for them to learn in any other way
• Seven critical traits that positively contribute to life satisfaction and success are zest, optimism, curiosity, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, and grit

This is a just a small taste of the council experience and the content that was shared. If you are engaged in planning learning events for family members or serve in a relationship manager role and have interest in networking with your true peers at FOX, please contact us at info@familyoffice.com to learn more about this council. It is a truly unique opportunity to learn and build relationships with peers who understand what you do every day. Our next meeting is July 24-25 in Chicago.