Family Business United Launches Comprehensive Sector Glossary

Family Business United (FBU), the leading independent platform for the UK family business community, today announces the launch of The Family Business Glossary, a comprehensive new reference guide bringing together over 240 terms covering governance, succession, ownership, family dynamics and leadership.

Family business is a world with its own vocabulary. Terms such as charter, cousin consortium and third generation curse are used often within the sector, yet they are rarely explained in one place. FBU developed the glossary to close that gap, giving family members, next generation leaders and advisors a single, accessible resource to draw on when navigating the sensitive and often complex conversations that come with family ownership.

The glossary spans established governance frameworks, such as the family council and the three circle model, alongside legal and technical terms, and the values and behaviours, such as loyalty, trust and integrity, that shape family business life.

It also includes a number of terms specific to the lived experience of family business, including imposter syndrome, leadership loneliness and short trouser syndrome, a term describing the tendency of family members to keep seeing a successor as the child they once knew rather than the capable adult they have become.

“Families who communicate well, and who share a common language for the issues they face, tend to navigate the challenges of ownership and succession far more successfully than those who do not,” said Paul Andrews, Founder and CEO of Family Business United.

“This glossary brings that language together in one place. I hope it gives families the shared vocabulary they need to have the right conversations, at the right time, with confidence.”

The glossary opens with a foreword from Paul Andrews and an introduction setting out how the terms are organised and how the guide is best used. The introduction also addresses an observation made during the glossary's development: that some terms, particularly those relating to values and behaviours, are more contextual than others, and are best used as a starting point for family discussion rather than as fixed definitions.

Family Business United worked with a number of friends and partners in developing the glossary, including John Broons, David Twiddle Daniel Trimarchi, James Munn, Nick Di Loreto, Paul Hunt, Rob Davies, Ellie Milner, Allie Taylor PhD, Jane Cowley and Victoria Robinson.

The Family Business Glossary is available now from Family Business United.