ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a family business looking at succession planning is explored. Although the main work initially centred on exploring the governance options for the business, it expanded to include a gestalt led piece which focused on clarifying the extent to which the family members wanted to be involved in the running and support of the business. The chapter discusses how the use of a gestalt emergent, dialogic and phenomenological approach supported the heightening of awareness of implicit and out of awareness dynamics within a family and business. Family businesses are generators of significant employment and wealth and form more than ninety per cent of the world's companies. Boston Consulting Group defines family businesses as those where a family owns a significant share and influences important decisions and has experienced a transition between one generation and another, or is planning an intergenerational transfer.
