The Family-Advisory Relationships domain encompasses the many generalist, cross-domain activities and needs of the family pervading interactions with its various advisors and advisory teams. These include the quality of the communication, relationship, collaboration, and integration activities that benefit the family.

Examples of essential advisory skills include excellent interviewing and discovery techniques, empathic communication (e.g., use of active listening), ability to explain complex topics in understandable ways to clients with modest technical knowledge, interaction with multiple family members at one time on stressful topics, and ability to interact comfortably with a wide range of family members. The quality of family members’ interactions naturally impact family-advisory relationships, with more knowledgeable and socially-adept clients contributing to the success of the client relationship.

The domain is also where optimal higher-level service delivery occurs in advisory firms focusing on integrated family wealth management. Advisors in integrated advisory hubs must possess extra skills for coordinating and integrating services within and across the Ten Domains of Family Wealth, including services by specialist service providers in collaboration with the integrated hub. The skills of expert generalist or integrated family wealth advisors or teams are necessary for this level of service.

Although family wealth professionals enter the field through one or more content domains, all UHNW-capable advisors need to be expert in the Family-Advisory Relationships domain at either the essential or optimal level.