Let’s Talk Family Enterprise Podcast Episode #43

Let’s talk family enterprise explores global ideas, concepts and models that help family enterprise advisors better serve their family clients brought to you by family enterprise Canada. All views Information and opinions expressed during this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved. And do not necessarily represent those of family enterprise Canada.

0:42
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The let’s talk family enterprise podcast. My name is Steve Legler. And it’s great to be your host once again, but I’m not alone this month. In fact, I’m the guest and not the host, because Ruth’s Timberlake is the host, but Ruth is also my guest. Sorry for the confusion. They weren’t last year though. So we decided to do it again. At the end of 2021. We decided to co host Ruth and I and have us both on the same episode for the first time and I think the results were okay and so they asked us to do it again. So here we are recording this just before Christmas 2022 for release in January and we wanted to look back at some of the episodes we recorded and released over the course of this past year. seems like only yesterday that Ruth created this podcast out of thin air eventually asked me to take turns hosting with her. And here we are with over 40 episodes completed together. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. So let’s say hi to our guests or our hostess and kick things off roots. Beverly, thanks for joining us today. Welcome to the podcast you know a lot about already let’s talk family anniversary

1:48
by but he can’t see me but I have a big smile on my face as you were talking. I cannot believe we’ve done 40 episodes. That’s how time flies. But this is one of my favorites now I so enjoyed chatting with you at the end of last year. And I personally love year end roundups and highlights. So I’m excited that we’re doing this again. It’s really fun to be here with you.

2:10
Yeah, and you know what I mean? Obviously it sort of forced me to go and listen to a few episodes that I know you want to ask me about. I listened to the some of the ones that I’m going to ask you about so it kind of refresh my memory about them and there’s a lot of good stuff out there. So hopefully if you’re listening to this and you miss some of these, this will be just enough of a tease to make you want to go back and listen to the evidence.

2:32
Yeah, and I think it’s important to say I did exactly the same Steve I went back and listened to them all. There’s some really good stuff that we were able to elicit from our guests over the past year. It was hard to pick the highlights to be honest. But for the sake of time, we had to just pick a few. So

2:50
all right, so you wanted to talk to me first about I think it’s the most recent one, right?

2:55
Yeah, so I was interested in Dr. Jimmy Weiner’s research for a couple of reasons. First of all, I know Dr. Weiner to purposeful planning Institute to other organizations, and he’s been talking about this research for quite some time. So this is the podcast that you did I think you’ve released in November. It was an interview with Dr. Weiner on his book The quest for legitimacy, how children of prominent families discovered their unique place in the world. And it’s a fascinating piece of research. I really enjoyed that podcast.

3:27
There’s a lot in this book because this is a man who’s in his eighth decade, and he’s been doing this work for a long time. And I’ve known Jamie for a while. And I’ve seen how this idea started a few years ago because I would cross paths with them. And FFI and ppi and he started off with this whole idea that a lot of people rising generation family members, they’ve grown up in what he used to call them, the land of giants. You know, under this huge shadow of someone, usually a parent, sometimes a grandparent, but that and what a what does that do to people and I think that for us who work with family enterprises, we probably see people who have been living in this. And this this work that they did on this when I say they because he ended up working with some university researchers on it to really define what this quest looks like and sort of structured and legitimize it and put some vocabulary around it. So I really, I was looking forward to the book coming out because I knew he was writing it and then as soon as it came out, I said okay, I’ve got to have my podcast and talk about this because how do we as advisors recognize situations like this and what can we do to help the families that are facing this?

4:48
I want to just pick up on something you said, Steve, because I think this is what makes this book so interesting. Was it started off as more some qualitative research interviewing rising Gen members who are obviously members of these prominent families, but then in the podcast what I learned from your interview without really morphed into becoming almost like a legitimate piece of research because he teamed up with a was an economic sociologist, I think it was. Yeah, so that brought some legitimacy to this research, sort of moving it from anecdotal, to more formal research. And this researcher identified in the interviews, these patterns, four phases, and I thought that was really interesting. I think

5:34
that’s where it helps us when we when we have families we’re working with, and we recognize that there are people in the rising generation who our I don’t want to say suffering but but living through this kind of a situation at least, you know, we have a good book we can get to them for them to look at and say, Hey, I’m not alone. Hey, this is kind of normal. Hey, what have other people done facing this that has helped them to get through it? And the other thing I really liked was the person who wrote the foreword to his book was actually the James E. J. Hughes. And so he was actually admitting in the foreword that he suffered from this because he went to work in his law practice all those decades ago for his father, who had also worked for his father. So he was familiar with what the feeling is to grow up in that land of giants, and always be on this quest for legitimacy. So I really love that compensation.

6:28
And Steve, you know, one, one of the things I really like about the podcast is that you get these little nuggets from these leaders in our space. So Dr. Weiner is definitely the leader in our space. And something that I took away from the podcast that I will be using now in my practice, was that Dr. Weiner talks about the Now Generation. I’ve never heard that terminology before. So he referred to the Now Generation as being the generation that controls the purse strings and how as advisors, one of our challenges is that often we’re getting paid by the Now Generation, and we therefore probably pay more attention to them than we are to their children, who are as he described as sitting in their shadow, and really have challenges finding legitimacy because of the size of the shadows that these now generated casts. So I like that terminology. And that’s a nugget that I’ll take away from that podcast.

7:22
So let’s switch gears a bit here, Ruth and let me ask you about the episode that you did with Amy Hart Klein, and she had co authored a book with none other than Dennis Jaffe called Finding her voice and creating her legacy portraits of pioneering women, believing wealthy families.

7:44
This book is great for a couple of reasons. One, the way that Amy and Dennis presented it, it was in the form of stories. And I think storytelling is such a great way to get key messages across. It’s easy to read, you get drawn into the stories of these women. So that was the first thing I really liked about the book was the way they presented it with the lens of stories. And I also think that you know, in our space, Steve, women are often the unsung heroes in family enterprises. There. They may not always be the leader of the business, but they’re the leader very often not the family, and they don’t always get the attention they think that they deserve and what Amy did was really cast a really big light on the role of women in family enterprise through the stories that she shared on the interviews that she did.

8:33
She talked about women being the secret sauce, and that the stories that need to be told because they are unsung, women finding their voice. The women are more often the ones who are concerned about how the wealth influences the fam, right? Typically the patriarch is out there trying to make the pie bigger, and the matriarch is more worrying about what is this going to do to my family and all the different stories with names of people. So there’s a story about Wynonna a widow who was starting from the basics of learning about financial advice. There was a story about Merrill, the force multiplier in a blended family who reached out to the mother of her of this fascinating stuff.

9:15
Yeah. And the way that they presented the book of stories, I think it’s easy for us as advisors to just, you know, copy a chapter and send the story to a client who may be maybe has just married into a family blended family, or has perhaps experienced, you know, the loss of a husband and is struggling with that. You know, I think we know the topics that we talked about in the podcast, are topics that are so normative in our work with our clients, widowhood, and blended families, but don’t maybe get the attention that the merit and so it’s so wonderful to have a book like this that has all these stories that are really conversation starters for us, in our work with family enterprises. Yeah.

9:57
And I think your point about you know, using a book to take an excerpt from it, and give it to someone to read because you’ve recognized that this family member and a client family is going through something that you’ve read about, and now all of a sudden you’re normalizing it. And you’re also bringing in some expert view on things from some book that was written it’s not just me that say this. There’s other people that saints that’s why I love going to these authors in

10:25
front of yeah, sometimes you don’t even know what to say. Right? So sometimes it’s a topic is hard to find the right words. And so being able to send a chapter from a book or even send a copy of the book, I think can be a really good way to bridge that gap.

10:40
Well, there was one story about a woman named Ginny, who, you know, challenges of marrying into Well, I think this is something that we’re starting to see more and more of and talk about more and more other maybe I’ll, I’ll tease a podcast coming up early next year, right that I have coming up with someone talking about exactly that subject. But you know, the other thing about that Amy mentioned in her one piece of advice was have the courage to honor the family and its dynamic. And I think that’s something that we all who work with families need to sort of always remember that we we can’t just come in there and say I think you should do this. You really got to take the time to get to know them and how they operate and be with them along the way.

11:25
She had another nugget Steve for advisors, particularly financial advisors that I really want to emphasize because I thought it was very helpful. You know, there’s this lot of research that advisors lose clients when a tragic event happens. So when there’s a deadline, sometimes they don’t stay with the financial advisors that worked originally with the wealth creator. And one of the things that Amy shared that she had learned from these women is that they don’t want to be helped. They want to be partnered with, right and that there’s a tendency amongst financial advisors that when the wealth holder that often the man passes away, that they want to wrap their arms around and help the you know, the widow. And what Amy said she heard from this woman was no we don’t want to be helped. We wouldn’t be partnered with want to be equals, you know, and I think that’s a really important takeaway from that. And also that any highlighted in the podcast

12:22
so I happen to have a great segue from to another one that you want to talk to me about the one that Joshua knocked and I did together. But so last recently, I saw a podcast where Amy was a guest on a webinar. And she was talking about the book. And there was they were doing a q&a. And I got an A question just at the end. And I said, How many of these women that you interviewed for this book saw themselves as family champions? And our answer was not me, because I don’t think the family champion concept is as well known as it should be. So I don’t know if that was the one you were gonna ask me about next. But I guess yeah,

12:59
this is something I was very interested in. I did not know until you did this podcast, Steve that there was a book called Family champions and champion families that was written by Dr. Joshua nafed Another doctor, you interviewed a lot of doctors this years. And he talks about in this book, and he brought this to light in your interview with him about the important role of family champions in family enterprises and how they’re important rules, but they’re not necessarily official rules. So the importance for families to be intentional about identifying who the family champions are, because it’s easy to identify who the business leader is or who the chair of the board is, but identifying who the founding champion is. I think that’s again, something that we just don’t talk a lot about. And yet, according to the research that Dr. Nath did in his in his book, you know, a lot of the risk to the continuity of family enterprises doesn’t sit with the business leadership or with the chair of the board or other more identifiable rules, but actually the risks that sometimes in the family, and so having found the champions takes on even more importance. And so I was really interested in that.

14:14
We all recognize this. Anyone who’s worked with family businesses, like like most of our listeners have, is that yeah, there is a certain amount of business risk, but often what really trips up families is the Family Circle stuff. And so you know, we talk about in the three circle model that each circle is its own system, it has its own population, and its it has its own group, and it has its own people. It has its own culture, and it has its own leadership. I think this is the unofficial role is the leader of the Family Circle isn’t necessarily you know, it’s not a job you apply for an interview for and yet it’s somebody steps up and does it and that was the thing that came out again, this was from a research project. So so the backstory on this was Joshua knock was a graduate student working for none other than a staffing. There’s Dennis again. And Dennis is project to find 100 families that had been around for 100 years or more. And so he hasn’t had his students interviewing people all around the world from these families. And his rule was you needed to talk to people from at least two different generations in each family. And so as Josh was interviewing people in the family, he’d asked like, who else should I talk to? And not just from the business but from the family? And he kept on hearing Oh, I know who he is. You should talk to, I know you should talk to and it seemed that in all these families that had lasted this long, there was invariably somebody who had played this role, and it didn’t have a name and they call it family champions. And so he wrote his PhD dissertation on this, and then later decided to turn it into a book so that would be more accessible to people and I always appreciate that because PhD stuff that and, and Scholarly articles are very interesting, but when people take the time to, to write it for regular people to read, I find that something that’s good for the whole field,

16:06
right and for I creative or it’s much more digestible and again, a great way to continue a conversation with our clients around the importance of having a family champion, the importance of leadership in the family circle, and then sort of qualify that by saying, hey, there’s been some research done on this and here’s a book that you might enjoy. Now I have to full disclosure, I have actually read the book yet. I just listened to the podcast. But as with all the podcasts, Steve, every time I listen to them, I think I’ve got to go and buy that book, and I ordered it. So I’ve got to kind of get along with Dr. Winders. So it’s just really interesting to discover that there’s been research done around this role. of the family champion. I’ve heard it talked about anecdotally. It comes up in conversations, but I did not know until this podcast that there was not only research but also a book that had been released on this topic. So I’m super excited

16:59
about that. But you know, this speaks to the whole reason that we do these podcasts right we we you and I happen to know a lot about some of the stuff that’s going on in this industry, and we’re able to reach out to people and bring some ideas and stuff that we wouldn’t otherwise have. And so you brought one, the one that you did with Robin Kaplan this one wasn’t about a book, but it was about a white paper called his Arrington styles, our roadmap for the rising generation. And I had actually seen Robin and some of her colleagues from Merrill Lynch including Matt Wesley present on this in Denver at ppi about this the same white paper both the inheritance styles, and it was fascinating. Because, you know, we always think of, oh, well, there’s the the entitled heirs, and then there’s the stewards, but but she actually pointed out that there’s three inheritance styles,

17:52
right? The Sojourner is that I had never heard of just before we talk about I just want in case people don’t know what PPI is, it’s the purposeful planning Institute. I think we also mentioned FFI, so in case you don’t know what FFI is, we’re talking about the family firm Institute, so they’re worth checking out. You can just Google them. Yeah, so I really enjoyed I’ve enjoyed interviewing everybody but Robins paper was, I find very, very interesting. She introduces this idea that there are three ways that wealth can be wealth that is not earned is received as through inheritance through the lens of stewardship. And then the third was this idea of a sojourner which I had never heard of before. And she, yeah, she talks about this quite a lot of depth and what I really took away from my conversation with Robin, that I honestly, I think shifted the way that I approach this work in the realm of inheritance. I’ve always talked Steve, honestly before I interviewed Robin, I will talk about preparing the next generation preparing ers. And what Robin said, and again, you know, this is just something that I took away and really, it’s really shifted my thinking on this is that you know, this idea of preparing and protecting actually fuels the greatest fear of wealth creatures of entitlement and dependence. The antidote to that is actually empowerment. And so she talks about empowering the next generation, not not preparing them, which feels more sort of top down and more sort of like a childlike you know, parent. As she says, no, no, no, she’s we need to empower the next generation. And this idea that there are different styles of receiving wealth that you haven’t earned, and that none of them are good. Or bad. They’re just different. So you can be an inheritor. You can be a steward, you can be a sojourner, and she goes obviously in their paper goes into a lot of detail.

19:55
And she mentioned also the part about how we often are dealing with the wealth creator or the Now Generation right, and then she highlighted that the inheritors don’t just inherit wealth. They inherit structures. That was so like, and it is so true, like, most people who don’t understand the nitty gritty, they just say, oh, this person was born into this family, they’re gonna get all this wealth, but it’s not like their bank account all of a sudden gets filled. It’s they get all this stuff with so many strings attached. And that causes a lot of anxiety and, and a lack of control and understanding over what you’re inheriting. And so I love the way the paper just talks about how there are they found in their research three general different styles, but the each one has like a continuum with them that the worst version of it to the best version of it. And so I really enjoyed thinking about this in a new way. And so now when I meet with a family and I meet the next generation people, I already start to try and put them in like weird categories, this person and one of them is stored and the thing is that we used to think that like steward stewardship was like the be all and end all and often it is but that’s also not necessarily always the most satisfying for that rising Gen person. And I guess that’s where the sojourners come in, where they want to sort of take it and make it their own and forge their own path as well.

21:24
Yeah. Fascinating, because, as I say, I’ve never heard of this idea of a sojourner and then but I have heard of ABI Disney, and she’s she’s been quite prominent in her writing and got quite wide exposure, a student like the Atlantic and other publications like that. And she is a sojourner, but she is a liberated Sojourner not conflicted and

21:46
resentful. Going back to it to continue they continue on for each one of them. Yeah, yeah. I

21:52
just like you, Steve really liked this idea that, you know, neither of them are better or worse, but within each type, there is a really good sort of end of the spectrum and then a less sort of positive end of the spectrum. So, you know, I think that’s talked about I think wealth creators are very worried about creating entitlement that would be the sort of more negative end of inheritance, but empowerment would be the positive end of that. So how can we as advisors where we know we’re working with an inheritor, create the conditions for that inheritor to be empowered, and not fall into the more negative end of the spectrum be entitled and likewise, with stewardship, your students can feel very burdened with this legacy that they’re having to steward for future generations, or they can be visionary. So how can we as advisors support that being visionary stewards and not burden stewards? So, again, you know, a great conversation starter with our clients despite the paper, it’s not a long read. It really stimulates thinking and gives frameworks for dialogue. We haven’t even talked about the latter part of the podcast, which was which was focusing on how do we integrate wealth? Again, she gave us a tool, five stages of integration. I think this is a really helpful tool for advisors to expand our conversations with our clients. And, you know, help them shift from sort of binary thinking like this is good and this is bad to pay. You know, it’s actually on a spectrum and there’s ranges. And by the way, there’s actually there’s more than just stewardship and inherited, there’s this other one Sojourner, and it’s also got very positive aspects to it. So let’s talk about that. Again, just really appreciated this contribution to our space and the opportunity to send it to clients and freed conversations around it.

23:39
Great, so I think the next one we’re going to do was the one about the 35 questions,

23:44
disaster. So this is another I had never heard of this. I’ve heard a Peter Jackson pitch, but I did not know that he had written a book called enabling next generation legacies and I really like this format. It’s not dissimilar to the wealth of wisdom series from Wiley, where there was 50 questions that families want to ask and then the latest one around tools for advisors. So the format that I learned from the podcast D that I did not know about was that they looked at the 35 questions that next generation members are asking. And then they had experts so an academic and a practitioner, respond to the questions. I got that right. Yeah. Yeah. So overall, I think I heard him say he contributors in this book. So I immediately have ordered this book. Because not only did it have, does it have sort of essays, essay formats and things. But he’s also put a lot of emphasis on resources. Were available to support the questions that the next gen members have.

24:53
So this book came out earlier this year at the beginning of 2021. And I saw stuff about it, I guess, on LinkedIn from from Peter jask, which and I knew he was going to be part of the program at symposium in Vancouver. And so because I was emceeing that I knew I would get to meet him. So I bought the book and I read most of it on the plane flying out to Vancouver so that I can talk to him about it. And so I met him there. I introduced them at during the symposium. And then I said, Hey, you gotta get on the podcast. And so we delayed it finally till September, October, whatever. And it was awesome to talk to him about you know, the, the network that he and the academics have around the world to be able to contact all these people from these family businesses, right, and meet these rising generation people. And the thing that the academics have that I’m a bit jealous of is that they can go and talk to any family business and be non threatening because it’s like, I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m just the guy from the university. Right? So they have access to all these people and can find out all this stuff. And I just love the way they put this together and they crowdsource the material, the crowdsource questions, but put a lot of thought into it and really listened to what the people said. I remember I just read listened to it and Peter’s talking about how well they told us we don’t want big long chapters we want like 1000 words, Max to be an appetizer. We don’t want a whole meal. We want an appetizer, and this comes back to what we’re talking about something that you can send to a client so that they can read it in 10 to 15 minutes and have a conversation starter because so much of the work we do is getting families to start having conversations so the more of these little things that we can send to them to get the family talking about things so the family can start asking us about things so we can start to lead them and help them make progress together. But better for all of us.

26:46
Yeah, and what I really liked about what Peter’s done in this work, is I think for many rising generation members, some of the questions that they want answers to are really uncomfortable, like you know, when are my mom and dad going to retire? How can I help them, you know, make her transition from working to retirement or when are they going to you know, when are my parents going to start even talking about leaving the business? That’s an uncomfortable topic, I think for a son or daughter to raise with their parents, and yet it’s an important one. And so what Peter has successfully done with this piece of work is he’s by putting it in this book. He’s normalized that he said, Well, these are the top 35 questions that all next generation are, by the way, and yes, some of them are uncomfortable, but they’re important to talk about. And so again, it’s just a great way for us to bring to the table. Those are comfortable but important conversations that need to happen in order for clients to realize what matters to them. So I really appreciated that. And that’s a huge

27:51
role that we as advisors play right we part of our role is to sort of bridge these generational questions. And so if we can have things that we can, when we meet clients that we have the Now Generation and we start to try to probe and get to know the rising generation, once we have access to that rising generation, it’s great when we have tools to engage with them, so that they can start to learn to trust us and get to know us so that sometimes we can then bring these questions to their parents that are so hard for them to do. So we we play this liaison role between the generations when we do our work well, and so the more tools we can have to help us do that. Well. Well, I’m all for it. Absolutely.

28:33
Now, I also think Peter wins the prize. So for those of you that listen to our podcast regularly, you know that Steve and I ask all our guests two questions. One is a book that they recommend and another is a piece of advice that they have as a seasoned family enterprise advisor. For other advisors, and they post visors. And so if you recall, Steve, Peter, his book that he recommended was one I’ve never heard of Hector and the search for happiness, to to learn, and I went and I ordered that too. I was like fascinated by the fact that he recommended that book. So it’s apparently a movie as well.

29:07
We get all kinds of stuff from our guests, and sometimes they’re great surprises, too. I know what this is. So the last one I guess we got on our list to talk about was the one that you did, with Dina auctioned off home work, balancing leadership at home and at work. One of the things I love that that she said was, I listened for a living. I love that too. And so important.

29:35
I really listened to this Steve and I have to say I cringed a little bit because I was such a fan. I was so like. Amazing and everything. So we have felt a little bit but it is a great but I I really, really appreciate what Dena did. So she was if you listen to the podcast, she talks about her respect for her audience, her reader, recognizing that leaders whether it’s a leader at home or a leader in the business leader at the ownership table, they’re busy people, advisors are busy people. So the way that she presents this book is really tool based. She’s right. I am just making an assumption that the people that read my book, they know that they know the theory. This is about practical application. And like we’ve talked about throughout our time together today, Steve, I think is so valuable when we’re given tools and I was just so struck by her generosity. It really felt like she was opening up her practice and saying here are the tools that I use with my clients and I’m giving them to use the accused. And I just saw I was a bit giddy on the podcast, but it was because I just really well first of all, she’s a member of our community. So that was super exciting to have one of our own FTAs being released a book. I know we’ve had a few on our podcast. It’s just lovely to have another one and I do just I just think her book is really practical. And I appreciated that I appreciated the tools that she gave us as a reader.

31:00
I love the fact that our community is made up of people that come from so many different places and different origins and the fact that she started as a family therapist and then became an organizational development consultant and then landed in the MBA program and realizes that this is like the culmination of everything she’s been working towards. It’s so cool to know that people come to this from so many different areas and that we are becoming more of an interdisciplinary ecosystem. All the time.

31:30
Yeah. And just the fact that the when I asked her at the beginning why she wrote the book, and she talked and shared with us as listeners, she shared that she reached a stage in her career where she was asking herself the question, So what So what now? What do I want to do? To share with others? And really, this is this is about her sharing her expertise after many, many years decades of work, wearing different hats and saying these are the tools that I have found to be the most helpful for those that are leaders in different roles in the family enterprise and also outside the family enterprises.

32:05
I took some notes for us to have this discussion. And there’s one that I actually put in bold and it just says prepare for transitions effectively and manage them gracefully. And I found that such a beautiful way to phrase the kind of work that I know I do and a lot of us do, is we’re trying to help our families prepare for their transitions effectively, and then to manage them because you do all the preparation you want. It doesn’t always work. You have to manage that. And if you can help families manage it gracefully. I think that’s where we add a lot of value to to the families that we work for.

32:42
Yeah. And I really appreciated her emphasis on the importance of us doing us as advisors, also doing the hard work. She actually calls it the interrogation, the internal interrogation, where we look internally at our own biases or what we’re bringing to the table because she described it. Whenever we work with a family, we’re invited into the system and we’re bringing an energy into that system. And if we’re not doing the personal work, then there’s a risk that we bringing in an energy that is going to be helpful in the system. Yeah. And then the other thing I loved was that she, you know, she really talks about leading with relationship and connection, not with expertise, that, you know, in a way expertise or table stakes, when we’re working with family enterprise. We can leave with relationship and really, she said it, people don’t get hurt enough. They want to be heard and if we can leave with relationship and really let people feel that they are important that what they’re feeling and experiencing. We hear it, we understand it. We’re going to really be able to do get invited into so much more than if we lead with our expertise.

33:50
Yeah, the note I have on that is relationship connection is more important than all the transactional aspects. And the part you just said earlier before that was to manage our own emotions to so that we can help them manage their emotions and their relationships with each other. When we’re into these high emotional things with family members sitting around the table, we need to be able to manage our emotions so that we can help them we need to bring the calm to the situation to help them make the progress that they need in their own relationships.

34:21
Exactly. Yeah, that’s a good thing. You know all I think all the books are really good. This is one I also just highly recommend. Just because of the format and the tools that Dena shares are ones that we can as advisors just use almost instantaneously. It’s worth worth investing in.

34:41
And this is about the time where I usually say Wow, the time has flown by. On all six that we put on our list, and I

34:51
wish we could have done them all because it really wasn’t really great year and we had a lot

34:55
of other good ones. But I did the intro so you get the outro so you get the town. Thanks for well

35:02
just been such a pleasure to chat with you today. Steve. I do want to give a shout out because it is the end of the year to the unsung hero in our podcast, Chris Rogers, who’s behind the scenes and who makes this all happen for us and I don’t think we thank him enough. So Chris did a shout out to you and thank you for all your support and for making these podcasts. So seamless and easy for us every month. We really, really appreciate all that you do crystal Thank you.

35:29
Chris knows all that stuff behind the scenes and never gets a shout out. And so yeah, for a few years of this, we finally decided to talk about it. And he could still edit this out but hopefully he will

35:39
do pretty well. I know exactly Steve. I also just want to give a shout out. Why not? We’ve got the platform to do this that. You know you mentioned the symposium last year. There’s going to be another one FTC symposium in Ottawa, and I unfortunately due to family circumstances, was unable to make it last year. I’m super excited about getting to Ottawa and seeing everybody and really looking forward seeing you as well Steve. So I think all the information on the symposium is on our website, the FTC website. The dates are the 29th to the 31st of May 2023 and it will be hosted in Ottawa which will be so lovely setting

36:14
over the last year we sold out so when are you better sign up? Steve, we

36:19
I talked about this earlier, we finished every podcast asking our guests to recommend a book that you know they enjoy that the bar is that that has impacted them where they’re hoping will impact the way they work. And I thought you know we could close today, Steve, why you and I sharing maybe a book that we’ve read or a book that we purchase that we’re excited to read so that others can benefit. So what would your book be Steve? Yeah,

36:44
okay, so this is a I have to admit I have not read this book yet, but I’ve already ordered it like the day I heard about it. So Patrick Lencioni and I’ve read a bunch of his books already. Yes, I really love getting naked. But apparently he has one called the six types of working genius. Well, not apparently I ordered it and I have it sitting at home. But it’s the six types of working genius. And I can’t wait to get into it because he really talks about there’s the six ways that we all show up and we all have there’s a continuum on each of them. And you could do this little 10 minute assessment and you figure out where you are and for working with teams. It helps team members understand why well this person on the team is good. This part that I’m good at this part that I hate that part, and she’s really good at this part to help teams work together. And I think with the families we work with teams are always we’re working with family groups, and when we collaborate with other advisors or people we work with, we’re always working in teams. So a new way to think about how we all have our strengths and weaknesses. I think that’s it’s long overdue. And I love the way Lencioni you know, tells his stories in parables. So they’re very relatable. What about you, Ruth, did you have a book you want to share? But mine’s actually

37:59
an old book. It’s one so I’ve become very curious and interested in the art of questions. I have found in this work, that if we ask the right question, it can significantly influence the conversations that flow and but asking questions is an art and it’s not something that comes very naturally to me. I was trained as a lawyer so we asked a lot of close questions. You’re

38:25
a different goal there. Right, exactly. So

38:27
I came very interested in finding out about this art of asking really good questions. So I came across this book called Making questions work. It’s actually released by Wiley. And it’s by a woman called Dorothy strong and it’s a guide to what and how to ask for your facility just consultants, managers, coaches, educators, I have found it to be extremely helpful. So that would be my recommendation making questions work by Dorothy spa, and we can post links to these.

38:56
I love it when the guests come up with books we’ve never heard of, and I’ve never heard of that one. And it sounds like it’s,

39:03
it’s 2007 but it’s really, really good. It’s really worth again, it’s one that you can sort of dip in and out of but it’s got things like icebreakers and then questions that shift sort of perspective that I collect questions so I was able to add a lot of questions to my collection. So Well, Steve, been a total pleasure spending this last 40 minutes with you. I think on behalf of everybody listening, I just want to thank you for your hosting this year. You’re wonderful hosts. I always really enjoy listening to your episodes. And the guests that you invite. So thank you for that. And for all our listeners. I just want to wish you a great year ahead. 20s will be in 2023 when you’re listening to this I hope that this is a year of great enlightenment and health and lots of connection and good relationships. Thank you all so much. Thank you

39:56
enjoyed today’s episode, you can subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple podcasts or any other podcast app. And don’t forget to share this episode with family friends and colleagues.