Family business coaching for the next leader The business was built in one lifetime. It will be judged in the next.
Second Chair™ prepares the successor of a family business to lead the rooms that matter: the board, the senior team, the family table. Privately, one family at a time.
Your lawyers prepare the structure. Your bank prepares the wealth.
Nobody prepares the person who has to stand up and lead.
The successor who knows every number but loses the room. The senior team who built the company with you, quietly waiting to see if they will follow. The family who agrees on paper and disagrees at dinner.
That is the only work we do.
Every principal once sat beside one.
In an orchestra, the second chair sits beside the principal and learns every passage until the day the seat is theirs. In a courtroom, the second chair prepares every argument before leading a case of their own.
Your successor is in that seat now. Our work is to make sure that when they move, the room moves with them.
The assessment
Confidential conversations with the people they will lead, and a candid picture of how your successor is seen today.
The preparation
Private weekly work built around their real calendar. Every board meeting, announcement and difficult conversation is prepared before it happens.
The handover
A session with both generations at the table, agreeing on roles, expectations and how decisions are made from here.
Within a year of the handover, the room will have decided.
Left to chance
- The real decisions still find their way to you.
- Your successor's decisions are quietly reopened.
- The people you most want to keep stop waiting.
- The handover comes anyway, later and under pressure.
What we work towards
- Your successor leads the board, and the board follows.
- Senior people bring the hard problems to them first.
- You step into a role you chose, not one left over.
- The family agrees on paper and at dinner.
A handover is signed in an afternoon. It is earned over months.
One successor. Six months. Every room that matters.
- Format
- Weekly private sessions, remote, with the closing handover session in person where possible
- Between sessions
- Voice notes on anything that cannot wait a week, answered within one business day
- For you
- A monthly private briefing on progress, while the sessions themselves stay between coach and successor
- Families
- A small number each year, so every engagement has full attention
Nikola Jovanović
Few things are harder for a founder than watching the room look past their child. Few things are harder for a successor than feeling it.
For more than thirteen years, Nikola has worked with executives on how they come across in the moments that decide careers: the boardroom, the pitch, the announcement.
Second Chair™ brings that work to the most personal leadership test there is. He takes on every engagement himself.
About Nikola and Second Chair™
We do not publish case studies. We do not name the families we work with. Every engagement begins under a mutual NDA.
The Handover Charter
The one-page template families use to agree, in writing, what changes and when, what stays with the founder, how the two generations disagree, and how the handover is announced.
Free to print. No email required.
Questions families ask
Our bank already offers a next-generation program.
Those programs prepare heirs for wealth. We prepare one successor for the specific rooms they are about to lead. Many families do both.
What will I hear as the parent?
A monthly briefing on progress and priorities. What is said in the sessions stays there. That is what makes the work honest.
What if they are not sure they want the role?
Then it is too early for us. We begin once the decision is made, so the work goes into leading, not deciding.
How do we begin?
With a short request below. Nikola reads every one himself, and if there is a fit, writes to you to arrange a private conversation.
The handover will happen either way.
Second Chair™ works with a small number of families each year. Every request is read personally. Where there is a fit, you will hear from Nikola within three business days.
Engagements begin at $50,000.