Two of your fellow-shareholders in the family business are fighting over strategy. They’re your cousins, and their dispute threatens the firm’s commercial prospects. It’s a common enough situation and if left to fester it can turn to disaster. What can you do? Call in the CEO.

No, not the chief executive. The CEO you want is the Chief Emotional Officer. It’s not yet a title that you’ll find on corporate rosters, but it’s a concept that is gaining currency among family-owned companies and those that advise them. In a family-owned firm, says Randel S. Carlock, the Berghmans Lhoist Chaired Professor in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Founding Director of the Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise at INSEAD, emotions can run high and family managers need to know how to handle them.

It’s not just a question of emotional literacy. What’s at stake here is what Carlock calls emotional professionalism. “The family has to plan for the business, like all businesses, but they have to plan equally well for the family: things like participation, developing the ownership, a good board of directors, a good family counsel.” Successfully meeting this challenge is important, not just for family businesses, but for the economy at large.

Family-controlled businesses are everywhere, from retailing and banking to fashion and fast cars. Research shows that they often outperform public companies on key dimensions such as stock price and return on equity. More important still, in today’s dicey economic climate, family businesses can be valuable poles of stability for employment and productive investment. That’s because, in many cases, their owners see themselves - and their heirs - as in business for the long-term.