Starting Your Family's Sustainable Investing Journey Part 4: How Do You Bring Others On The Journey?

Strengthening your family with the 3Cs framework

Overcoming the obstacles from Article 3 in your family’s sustainable investing journey will be challenging. But it is also entirely possible.

Conflicts over wealth, impact, and family are bound to arise. Often simply because different priorities and perspectives haven’t been surfaced or shared. Or because no effort has been made to unite the family around them.

From CSP’s interviews with Asian families who are successfully on their sustainable investing journeys, three common dimensions emerged: Communication, Connection, and Commitment. CSP calls this the “3Cs Framework” which identified dimensions to help these families find common ground and move forward together.

Building on your motivations from Article 1, ambitions from Article 2, and obstacle awareness from Article 3, this article introduces this “3Cs Framework”. By similarly strengthening these dimensions within the family and with outside support, you can move your family’s sustainable investing journey forward.

In this fourth article, we outline

• What are these three dimensions, and why do they matter to your family’s journey?
• How you can strengthen each one, both individually and with outside support?
• How do the 3Cs help overcome the obstacles we discussed in Article 3?

The 3Cs Framework isn’t a step-by-step guide to instant change. Instead, it identifies areas where your family can grow stronger and more aligned over time.

Crucially, it can also be used by individual family members. Rather than confronting resistance head-on, the 3Cs can help you influence from within – especially around social norms and family dynamics.

You don’t need to be in charge to use it. You just need to be ready to start somewhere.

1. Communication: Creating clarity and safety

Families who made progress in sustainable investing developed the ability to have thoughtful, respectful dialogue. They spoke with care, listened to understand rather than respond, and met each family member where they were.

For many families, however, conversations about sustainable investing stall. Sometimes due to knowledge. But more often, we observe or hear they’ve never spoken openly about sensitive topics like wealth, values, purpose, and legacy. This reflects the social influence and family dynamics we explored in Article 3.

When families create the space for honest dialogue, they better understand each other collectively. Then, starting or accelerating becomes possible.

Importantly, you don’t need all the answers before setting out. Everyone doesn’t have to be perfectly aligned. Clarity often emerges over time.

Communication makes other actions possible. Whether conducted within the family or supported by outside voices, true dialogue creates the safety and opportunity to speak, listen, and be heard.

As an individual, you can:

• Keep language simple and avoid jargon (e.g. “We want to invest in profitable, growing companies with commercial solutions to environmental problems” rather than “We want to do impact investing”)
• Be careful with others’ emotions, as one interviewee said, “Before you say something, think about how people will feel after you say it”
• Seek to understand others’ starting points, motivations, and concerns before pressing your own view
• Ask questions instead of giving lectures – for example, “Beyond economic growth, what other impacts could we create as a family?”

Outside support can help by:

• Introducing fresh perspectives and data to reframe entrenched views or address power dynamics
• Structuring and facilitating sensitive family conversations
• Using family coaches, dialogue coaches, or specialists to help surface deeper issues and heal wounds

2. Connection: Building bonds that enable trust

Connections encompass the emotional and relationship ties that hold your family together. These bonds sustain a sense of “our family” across generations, world views, and experiences. Simultaneously, they create space for new ideas, like sustainable investing, without losing cohesion.

Successful families deliberately invest in building stronger relationships. They often learned together about sustainable investing, allowing understanding and connection to grow in parallel. They also looked outside their family for fresh perspectives, finding reassurance and solidarity from peers on similar journeys.

Ultimately, connection creates trust. Without it, even sound ideas meet resistance. With it, you can influence how your family invests and overcomes obstacles together.

As an individual, you can:

• Share stories that are personal, not just statistics. For example, “I met another family investing to protect the oceans. Remembering our holiday to [xxx], I found it inspiring because…”
• See the whole person, not just their position; people who feel respected are more open to influence
• Focus on shared family values rather than fixed positions—for example, “Even if we express it differently, I know we both care about our legacy”
• Suggest holidays, retreats, or traditions that build shared experiences and allow the family to (re-)connect outside of wealth and business
• Separate the “dining room from the boardroom” by creating intentional time and space for wealth discussions

Outside support can help by:

• Learning from networks and communities of like-minded families about their experiences
• Offering reassurance that others share similar challenges
• Introducing peers of comparable age or experience to family members who may feel isolated

3. Commitment: Taking action, staying the course

Commitment is about both pledging and demonstrating action that you will invest for both financial and impact outcomes. It builds momentum and accountability. When you start taking steps, others see what’s possible.

Most families don’t begin their journey with unanimous agreement. Instead, a dedicated individual or minority starts small. They may join an impact network or carve out a pool of assets. Later, they take bolder steps, such as rewriting investment policies or making public commitments. As one family captured it, “[If ] we don’t hang together, we’re going to hang together… and there’s enough love there in the family [to make it work].”

Commitment is less about being “ready” today than about being willing to develop over time.

As an individual, you can:

• Lead by example; even small actions can educate and inspire others
• Connect sustainable investing to other family interests, like philanthropy, business, or your own career, before returning to the investment portfolio
• If agreement feels far off, ask for a mandate to educate your family on sustainable investing
• Remember: commitment doesn’t mean consensus, it means creating visible catalysts for change

Outside support can help by:

• Making commitments visible or public to strengthen accountability
• Establishing boards or committees with impact expertise to challenge and guide you on the journey
• Using advisors to (re-)align and embed your sustainability and impact ambitions into structures and governance, such as trusts or policy statements

Revisit and realign: Turning awareness into influence

The 3Cs gives you a practical way framework to start, sustain, and accelerate your family’s sustainable investing journey.

The 3Cs are especially powerful for addressing the social norms and family dynamics from Article 3, since these obstacles are socially constructed and can be reshaped through intentional action. For example,

• Communication helps overcome fear of conflict or perceived gaps in trust or readiness by creating safe spaces for honest dialogue
• Connection addresses cultural differences, power imbalances, and emotional safety by building stronger relationships across family members
• Commitment enables concrete plans to address power dynamics and overcome knowledge gaps through education and visible action

While powerful, the 3Cs can’t address every obstacle alone. For example, internal mindset work may require personal coaching or a sustainable investing programme. Systemic barriers may need advocacy or policy change. Broader family issues, like business competitiveness or jurisdictional constraints, require other solutions.

Prioritising and sequencing the dimension(s) you address will depend on your family’s situation. Each dimension can be focused on independently, though they are interconnected and reinforcing. If you’re unsure, how we’ve presented them here provides a simple progression. Starting with communication should help build connection. Improved connection should make commitment possible. Commitment then encourages further communication.

Overall, the 3Cs Framework offers a simple but powerful approach to move your family forward on its sustainable investing journey. You don’t need to be the family head or hold formal authority to use it. You don’t need to “convince” anyone about sustainable investing.

By focusing on dialogue, relationships, and visible action, you can create new ways for your family to engage with its wealth, purpose, and unity. In doing so, others may not only join the sustainable investing journey you’re advocating, they may also help you lead it.

As you use this framework on your journey, remember that sustainable investing is about aligning your wealth with your motivations (Article 1) and ambitions (Article 2) to overcome obstacles (Article 3); and ultimately building family unity and legacy for generations to come by investing to protect and grow family wealth while creating positive impact on our world.

Voices of experience

Over ten years, CSP has trained over 240 participants in the Impact Investing for Next Generation program.

We have seen how when investors to express their ambitions and aims while linking them to the SDGs

proves especially valuable, especially for cross-generational understanding. (This also can also enable

families to communicate, connect, and commit as we’ll explore in Article 4.)

To bring these to life, we interviewed CSP alumni Fernando Scodro about her experiences.

Fernando’s perspective:

Fernando is executing the impact investment strategy of Grupo Baobá, a family office based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is based in Singapore, is a CSP alumnus, and graduated from the New York University with a Bachelor in Political Science. He is an avid reader on a mission to read one fiction book from every country in the world.

"I am a third-generation member of the Brazilian business family behind Grupo Baobá. My commitment to impact investing began in 2016, when I took CSP’s Impact Investing for the Next Generation course at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Recognizing that my family's wealth could be a force for long-term good, I proposed adopting an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategy for our family office. Initially, my pitch wasn’t enthusiastically received—my parents struggled with the complex financial and impact terminology I presented.

To bridge the gap, I undertook a three-month project translating the entire course material into Portuguese. I intentionally reframed the conversation from technical jargon to the simpler, more relatable concept of values alignment: “What do we believe in?” This approach immediately resonated with my family.

After securing their approval, I spent nine months developing a comprehensive ESG strategy, integrating our core sustainability values across all of Grupo Baobá's assets. This fundamentally shifted our investment philosophy to prioritize both financial returns and social impact.

Beyond our family office, we sought to extend this opportunity to other next-generation leaders. Grupo Baobá provided seed financing and ongoing support to the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth (CSP), enabling other Next Gens—who may lack the language to communicate sustainable strategies to their families—to access the same tools and frameworks that helped me."

Reflection questions: Strengthening your family’s 3Cs

Your family’s strength in communication, connection, and commitment will shape how easily you can overcome the obstacles from Article 3 and achieve your ambitions from Article 2. Reflect on these questions:

Assess your family today

• In each dimension, how strong is your family? How would you describe its current state?
• What could improve each one notably? What would that look like?
• How could developing these dimensions benefit your family more broadly?

Consider next steps

• Without waiting for others, how can you take action individually?
• Where could you see yourself influencing first?
• Where might external support be valuable? Or even necessary?
• How could you use the experiences of other families to strengthen your own journey?

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