| What makes for a good family business consultant? This question has been hotly debated since the field began. Currently, there is not a significant literature base directed at improving consultant effectiveness. This exploratory study articulates and ranks the interventions and personal characteristics that expert family business consultants consider most important to their ability to successfully work with family businesses. Using the Delphi method, 18 expert family business consultants completed surveys in which they listed these interventions and characteristics. They also discussed these responses during a phone interview. Two primary themes emerged from the results: relatively few interventions passed with agreement whereas many characteristics passed with agreement; the results appear to be impacted by the relative youth of the field of family business consultation. Additionally, the subgroup of older panelists was found to have the highest level of agreement among the items in the final profile and overall the attorneys agreed on the highest number items of all subgroups. Further research is necessary in order to measure the effectiveness of the interventions and characteristics identified by this study. |
