O'ahu Chapter Meeting

Speaker: Donnel Nunes, PhD
Topic: Effective Communication: Building the Capacity for Giving and Receiving Feedback

In the family enterprise, growth and development of family owners and employees is a critical success factor that can impact the succession of ownership, health of the business, and the relationships between family members. Essential to continuous growth is a level of skilled communication that is beyond what is typically necessary for other families. Without these skills, direct communication doesn’t feel safe, and “undiscussables” lead to chronic misunderstanding and conflict. Assumptions rule the roost and dysfunctional patterns keep people from bridging differences.

For families in business to stay positively connected they need to share values, power, a willingness to learn and, most importantly, healthy patterns of communication that convey genuine caring, mutual respect, and trust. Giving effective feedback is one way to supercharge the capacity of a family to learn from one another while also demonstrating caring. The challenge is that most people don’t know the difference between effective and ineffective feedback.

In this month’s Oahu Chapter Meeting, we will talk about the value of feedback for your business and family and the differences between effective and ineffective feedback. There will also be an opportunity to practice using a simple model for giving feedback that can be instantly implemented in all your relationships.

About the Speaker – Donnel Nunes, PhD,
Aspen Family Business Group

Donnel Nunes, PhD joined the Aspen Family Business Group, LLC as an associate in 2017 and is an educational psychologist and consultant who has been working with families in Hawaii since 2003.

Donnel helps families in businesses to build the capacity to manage interpersonal conflict and navigate intergenerational learning to successfully execute a shared vision.  He focuses on helping families to integrate and formalize best practices and supports families to build stronger relationships through safe and skillful communication.

Donnel is recognized as an international thought leader on mentoring between family members and has conducting research on mentoring specific to family business since 2016. He has authored numerous articles and two chapters for international handbooks on the topic of mentoring between family members.

In addition to his work with the Aspen Family Business Group, Donnel is the founder of PVA Knowledge Group, a Hawaii-based consulting and coaching practice, the regional associate of Coaching and Mentoring International, and facilitates leadership development retreats for the Classic Leadership Institute based in Portland, Oregon.

Donnel has lived in Hawaii since 1997, and currently resides on the island of Oahu with his wife Tammy and young son Kaedon. He is an active member of the watersport community and enjoys finding ways to integrate performance and sport psychology into his work with clients.