The Power of Family Stories
- Storytelling is a powerful tool for reinforcing values, creating connection across generations, and fostering a vibrant family culture.
- Family stories — particularly those involving resilience, growth, and stewardship — can help young people develop a sense of belonging and a commitment to their family legacy.
- Bessemer offers guidance, facilitation, and tailored resources to support clients in leveraging the power of family stories.
Sharing family stories is important for families committed to raising generations of strong, values-oriented individuals. Through storytelling, families have an opportunity to capture and pass down the values and lessons they hold dear. Over time, these narratives become part of a family’s legacy and culture, offering continuity to future generations as the family grows, adapts, and evolves.
Bessemer Trust understands firsthand the power of family history. Letters, photographs, mementos, and other artifacts from our founders, Henry and Annie Phipps, feature prominently in our offices. Seven generations later, their business, governance, and philanthropic decisions continue to guide Bessemer’s mission. We draw on our history to offer insights and ideas to help you envision how you might harness the power of your family story.
“History is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view, to be useful to the modern traveler.”
— Henry Glassie, American folklorist
Family History, Artifacts, and Stories
With every milestone, families change and grow. Along the way, they make choices about which heirlooms and memories to carry forward — and how to bring them to life for future generations through the stories they share.
Stories can influence people’s behaviors and perspectives. This truth informs fields from anthropology to advertising. But why is it so powerful for families, and particularly families of wealth? This is what we have observed:
Family stories support positive youth development. Research shows, and our experience corroborates, that young people who know more about their family’s history tend to feel a greater sense of agency and emotional well-being.1 This can be especially valuable for young people from significant means, who may feel different or isolated during their formative years, when peer relationships become more central.
Family stories can help humanize larger-than-life family figures. By highlighting vulnerabilities and moments of growth for these figures, or even by focusing on less celebrated figures, families can create relatable role models and more balanced portraits of legacy. These storytelling opportunities can be particularly meaningful for young people born into wealth, who may have high-achieving relatives whose successes can feel intimidating or even difficult to relate to.
Family stories reinforce values-based decision-making and resilience, offering meaningful lessons that can help guide future generations. They provide concrete examples of the behaviors and characteristics we aspire to when faced with adversity. For families who face relatively fewer tradeoffs because of their wealth profile — these stories can serve as important examples to draw upon when challenges arise.
Types of Stories We Tell
Identity Stories
- Reinforcing a sense of belonging
- Bridging generational divides
- Celebrating the origins of names, traditions, and rituals
Resilience Stories
- Normalizing struggle and adversity
- Providing a sense of continuity through change
- Encouraging open conversations about challenges
Growth Stories
- Fostering ambition and purpose
- Showcasing diverse skills and talents within the family
- Providing role models for leadership
Heritage Stories
- Maintaining linguistic and cultural ties
- Documenting migration and adaptation
- Capturing unique perspectives of lived historical events
Stewardship Stories
- Illustrating key moments of difficult decision-making
- Sharing lessons from moral dilemmas
- Describing money values and behaviors
Rooted in Purpose: Storytelling for Generational Giving
Philanthropic families often seek ways to ensure that their giving reflects their core values and remains a unifying force across generations. Capturing the stories behind their philanthropy — why it matters and how it has evolved — can provide a lasting framework for future decision-making and deepen engagement among family members.
A family with a longstanding commitment to philanthropy in their hometown wanted future generations to steward the family foundation together — regardless of the regions rising generations called home. With Bessemer’s support, they wrote about their commitment and collected stories of community changemakers who contributed to their personal and professional lives. These insights were compiled into a digital and physical legacy book to support governance of the family foundation and inspire the next generation.
Starting a Family Storytelling Practice
All families have a history, a collection of artifacts, and stories that help define their shared identity. A family who is interested in leveraging these assets in support of stewardship, can think about their process along a continuum of past, present, and future.
Revisiting the past. Taking inventory of a family’s stories and heirlooms can be an enriching experience. Families may choose to engage experts to support genealogical research, historical archiving, or the creation of written, oral, and video histories. Bessemer can help identify vendors and guide these projects, emphasizing inclusive processes that deepen connection while documenting the past.
Storytelling in the present. The power of storytelling lies not just in the stories themselves but in how they are shared, received, and repeated. To ensure that family narratives remain alive and meaningful, families can weave them into daily life — around the dinner table, during travel, or in casual exchanges. Repetition is the key. Stories gain depth, meaning, and even humor through retelling. Our team can provide reflection prompts and facilitate storytelling at family meetings to encourage participation and create space for new memories.
Modest Beginnings: Storytelling to Anchor Values in Wealth
The transition from modest beginnings to significant wealth can raise concerns about how financial success might impact children’s values and work ethic. Families who reflect on their histories and reinforce core values through storytelling and shared experiences often succeed in instilling a strong sense of purpose across generations.
After selling their business, one couple, far from their middle-class roots, shared their concerns with Bessemer about how wealth might impact their children’s drive and sense of responsibility.
With Bessemer’s guidance, they explored the values they hoped to instill and identified personal stories that could bring those lessons to life. They also identified meaningful family traditions that reflect and reinforce those values. They made an annual practice of donating to a nonprofit whose mission resonated with their family’s history and discussing this gift during Thanksgiving. To keep their entrepreneurial legacy alive, they marked the anniversary of their business’s founding by retelling stories of perseverance and partnership to their children.
When it came time for financial disclosure, what once felt daunting became a chance to reinforce their values. With Bessemer’s support, they felt confident navigating these milestone conversations — ensuring their children understood not just their wealth, but the story behind it.
Storytelling for the future. Family leaders who use storytelling to support stewardship and legacy are intentional. The artifacts they preserve and the stories they choose to tell share common themes around the values, money messages, and wishes they have for the generations that will follow. They also allow different family members to interpret a story in their own way. Rather than resisting the evolution of their stories, many successful families embrace it as an opportunity to explore different perspectives and deeper conversations.
Bessemer advisors can help convene and facilitate conversations across family branches and generations, supporting families as they identify meaningful themes and surface narratives that can evolve over time. In our experience, storytelling is most powerful when it’s a shared effort, with family members contributing their own memories, reflections, and insights. Families who embrace this practice often find alignment around values, money messages, and hopes for the future.
Engaging the Fifth Generation: Reviving Interest Through Storytelling
As family businesses evolve across generations, sustaining engagement among rising generations can be a challenge. Families who proactively share stories of resilience and innovation can strengthen their legacy and inspire future leaders to stay connected to their entrepreneurial roots.
A family had successfully transitioned management and control of their family businesses across four generations. With support from Bessemer advisors, they maintained clear succession and communication plans, along with regular family meetings. However, they faced a growing challenge: many fifth-generation family members felt disengaged from the family business, expressing a desire to pursue careers outside of it.
To inspire pride and curiosity among the youngest generation, the family, with Bessemer’s guidance, prioritized storytelling as a tool for engagement. Bessemer identified a storytelling expert to lead a workshop at their family meeting and mined the history of their businesses for pivotal moments where success was uncertain and innovation was required. Through facilitated discussions, interactive tools, and custom games — such as a family-themed Jeopardy! — Bessemer helped the family bring their stories to life, deepening the next generation’s knowledge and connection to their shared enterprise.
Carry Your Story Forward
Storytelling deepens family bonds, preserves shared history, and ensures that the lessons from the past continue to guide future generations. At Bessemer Trust, we help families integrate storytelling into their legacy and wealth plans so that their values, history, and lessons endure across generations. Our team offers tailored guidance and resources — from identifying solutions and connecting with trusted third-party experts to providing research and tools to support ongoing dialogue. By beginning this process, families lay the groundwork for lasting impact — strengthening resilience and cultivating a unique and irreplaceable family culture.
- For more on this topic, see the work of Emory University Professor of Psychology Robyn Fivush, available at: https://www.robynfivush.com/family-storytelling.
This material is for your general information. It does not take into account the particular investment objectives, financial situation, or needs of individual clients. This material is based upon information obtained from various sources that Bessemer Trust believes to be reliable, but Bessemer makes no representation or warranty with respect to the accuracy or completeness of such information. The views expressed herein do not constitute legal or tax advice; are current only as of the date indicated; and are subject to change without notice. Forecasts may not be realized due to a variety of factors, including changes in economic growth, corporate profitability, geopolitical conditions, and inflation. Bessemer Trust or its clients may have investments in the securities discussed herein, and this material does not constitute an investment recommendation by Bessemer Trust or an offering of such securities, and our view of these holdings may change at any time based on stock price movements, new research conclusions, or changes in risk preference.
