Embracing Polarities to Harmonize Opposites in Enterprising Families

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 this podcast are some of those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of

0:30

family. Hello and welcome to another episode of The let’s talk family enterprise podcast. My name is Steve Legler, and it’s great being your host. Once again, this month, we’ll be looking at some of the challenges that enterprising families face, which is pretty standard here, but we’ll be doing so from an interesting new lens, and that’s the lens of polarity thinking. Our guest is Kathy Carroll, whose recent book, hug of war contains lots of great examples that we can all learn from the book’s secondary title, how to lead a family business with both love and logic gives us all an indication of Kathy’s focus. I’ve known Kathy for about a decade for the purple where we both play a variety of roles for both the organization and its annual rendezvous. I’ve long wanted to invite her to be my guest on this podcast, and her new book is a great reason to finally do so we’ve got a lot to get to, as usual. So let’s start by saying hello to our guest, Kathy Carroll. Welcome to the let’s talk family enterprise podcast.

1:31

Thank you, Steve. It’s a delight to be here.

1:33

So before talking about hug of war, which I think is a really cool title for a book, why don’t we start with just a little bit of who is Kathy Carroll, and how does she end up working with enterprising families as a coach?

1:48

Well, I actually grew up in a family business. I’m a third generation member of the family business my grandfather started. But when I was a kid, I, frankly, saw a lot of drama in my father’s generation. So when I graduated from school, I pursued a corporate career for 20 years, started as an actuary, got an MBA, and ended up in the travel industry, and then in 2009 was a mid level executive at United Airlines, and my father sucked me back into the family business. My father seen and yes, I ended up leaving the corporate world to run my father’s manufacturing business, which I did for three years, and I found it sort of a Dickensian. It was the best of times and the worst of times. And there’s a long story that maybe we’ll share on another podcast, that never one will have to have a bottle of wine, but I ended up choosing to leave after three years. And I thought, well, it was tough. It was a really tough experience for me, leaving the family business. I had a real strong attachment to my role. We were doing really well. So it was a tough transition for me, but I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do when I grew up. I was in my gosh, it was in my mid 40s then, and so I that was 11, little over 11 years ago, or 12 now, actually. And I said, I think I want to be an executive coach. But I didn’t really know what that meant. So I thought, why don’t I go get trained? So I went to Georgetown University to get trained as an executive coach. And I realized, oh my gosh, with coaching something like I thought it was. I thought I’d get to tell people how to lead, and that’s not coaching. Coaches have all the right questions, not the right answers. The second realization is that I really needed a coach when I was working for my father. And the third aha was I looked at my whole life and I realized this is what I meant to do. I meant to bring these services, leadership coaching to family business leaders, and I’ve never looked back beautiful.

3:44

I’m so glad I asked that question, because I knew some of the bare bones or the skeleton of what you just said, but the part about living the drama and what it was like working in your family business for your dad after sort of avoiding it because you saw that drama, but then coming in and then getting through it and going for the for the coach, training, and having your aha moment of what you’re meant to do. And I’ve seen you in action, and attest to the fact that I think you have found the place where you where you belong. And now you wrote a book talking about polarity. So for those who don’t really, for whom that doesn’t necessarily resonate, how do you explain, in the simplest terms, what you mean by polarity, thinking

4:34

it’s most basic, polarities are opposites that are interdependent. And by that, I mean, consider an inhale and an exhale. They don’t exist without each other, right? So they’re opposing forces. They’re equally important, and they are both necessary to thrive over time. An example in leadership might be bold and humble, like bold leadership exists without humble leadership and vice versa, right? And so what’s interesting about polarities is that we all tend to have preferences. I prefer humble. My father preferred bold, for example, right? And so where, where polarities can get a little complex is that there are strengths of each pole and overuses of each pole, and we tend to only see the strengths of our preferred pole and the overuses of the opposite pole.

5:34

So when, when we’re working with two members of a business family who see things in different ways, and each one thinks that they’re right and the other one is wrong. I imagine this. This is the ideal type of tool to think about using to find to get them out of that either or thinking, and more to the both end,

5:57

that’s exactly right. Yeah. Polarity thinking takes you out of, should I be a bold leader, or should I be a humble leader? Into how and when should I be bold and how and when should I be humble in service to my greater goal? Polarities aren’t problems to solve. You can’t solve a polarity because there is no right answer. It’s a constant tension that needs to get managed, which makes it a little bit complex. And it’s, to me, an absolute leadership superpower that is far under known needs to be understood. It needs to be known. And so this is my best effort to get this knowledge out into the leadership world.

6:34

Well, it’s interesting, because so so the main audience for this podcast are people who’ve taken the FBA program, and, you know, we were all people who typically work with family businesses, and we get called in as that outside expert and our families ask us, they come to us with situations, and they say, tell me the answer, like, what should I do? And a lot of the professionals who deal with families come from professions where that’s the expectation, that’s how they make their money, that’s how they’ve always done it. But the program tries to teach them that there are many situations where giving the answer isn’t really what is necessary. It’s helping the family work through their own answer. So I imagine part of the appeal of your book is for people who want to have a another tool in their toolbox, for for when they’re trying to do that.

7:33

Very well, said, Steve, what I love about polarity thinking is that it sets the FEA advisor up to be the hero, because you’re right. Clients come with, well, we’re trying to decide. We’re in an argument with the family. Should we invest our profits, or should we harvest the profits? And that everyone looks to the advisor and says, tell us what to do. And the really sophisticated advisors say, well, this isn’t a problem. You guys have a polarity. Let’s map the polarity. Let’s talk about the upsides of investing back in the business, and then let’s talk about the overuse What if we only invest back in the business and we don’t harvest any money for the family? And then let’s talk about the upsides of harvest, and then the overuses of harvest. You’ve got four different quadrants in a polarity map, and once you have it all on a piece of paper, you’re able to step back and look at it from a bigger, more holistic point of view, and you reveal the blind spots that you might not have seen before, because the people who argue for invest back in the business, all they argue is the upsides of investing and the overuses of harvesting, and then the ones Who want to harvest from the business, all they can see is the upsides of harvesting and the overuses of investing. So the advisor comes in and says, Well, let’s map this out. Let’s get it on a piece of paper, and then everyone can see the full picture. And then you can start to change the question. That’s when you start thinking about, what are the upsides of investing, what are the upsides of harvesting, and how can we get both? How can we get the best of investing and the best of harvesting, or at least as much of the best as we can?

9:07

So this sounds like it’s it’s a real, you know, Jedi mind trick here, of getting the people who are on opposing sides of something to stop looking at the other one as the problem, but to put something on the table between them, or hopefully get them sitting on the same side of the table looking at it, and you map out both of the of their points of view, but you show them this in a way where they can start to appreciate and better understand The both and part and in a more readily available way, talk about the pluses and minuses of maybe even each other’s

9:50

points of view.

9:52

Yes, it’s a total jiu jitsu move, because it moves people out of positions into the domain of their shared interests, like one of the first questions you can ask is, well, for the sake of what are we managing the tension between invest and harvest? And then everyone can agree, well, we really want to have a thriving family. We want a thriving business. That’s our North Star. That’s what we’re trying to manage here. Okay, great, if that’s where we’re trying to go, then let’s talk about some of the upsides of investing, some of the upsides of harvesting and then finding a way to get both. And it’s not compromising. It’s different from compromising. It’s actually creative. It’s actually generative. It’s creating a bigger opportunity for everyone to win. And I love how it moves people out of positions and into shared interests.

10:39

So I always talk about the fact that that one of the roles of someone, an outside, independent person, coming into a family is that we we help the families have discussions that they know they need to have, but that they don’t really succeed in having it a productive way, and we are there to be A resource to them to help them to actually have structured conversations, productive conversations, safe conversations. And it sounds like this is a real interesting tool to deploy, to put on the table, to get everyone looking at the situation. I know you said it’s not a problem, it’s something that needs to be worked through, right? So you’re mapping it out for them in a way that they can see it better. Yeah,

11:28

and also it helps to frame it in the context of, we’re going to make a decision for this year, we’re going to make an investment in our harvest decision for this year. Next year, we’re going to revisit this question, and we may have a different answer, because the family has changed, the business has changed, the needs have changed, and our answer may change. So that’s what I mean by it’s a problem that needs that’s not a problem to solve, but attention that needs to get managed. Another really common one that I see in estate planning is reveal, conceal. Yeah, this is one that’s so emotional, because it’s really common for couples to come in, and one member of the couple is adamant about revealing the estate plan to the children, and the other one is adamant about concealing it. And when the professionals are trying to support the family, to make a decision, instead of saying there’s one right answer, we’re going to reveal or we’re going to conceal. We think about it over a period of time, when the kids are in their single digit ages, we’re going to reveal a little bit. We’re going to talk about values, and we’re going to talk about the things that really matter to our to our family business. We’re not going to reveal dollar amounts. We’re not going to reveal language that they can’t understand. And maybe in their teens, we might introduce some of the language while reinforcing the values. And then in their 20s and 30s, we start to get more specific. And I don’t know if that’s the right formula for every family, right? Every family has to decide for themselves what’s the right balance of reveal and conceal over time, right?

13:01

But we’re not giving them the answer, but we’re providing them with some structure. And the added thing that I had not realized, even when reading the book, was was the temporal nature of this, the fact that, yes, we will make a decision now based on this, we’ll have a discussion, and in the future, whether it be a month or three months or a year or five years, we will revisit this again, because the situation will have changed, the people will have changed. All kinds of things will change. And now we also know that we have an ability to sit here and have a productive discussion about something. And so let’s revisit things. And I think too often families come and they see a problem as a let’s just answer this question, and then we can close the book on it forever and not have worry about it again. And that’s not how life works. Clearly, not.

13:51

I wish it were that simple. Okay,

13:54

so there’s a part of the book where you talk about the different kinds of conflict, and the past conflict versus the relationship conflict. Can you just talk us through just a little bit of that and the differences, and how, typically, how advisors might think of how we walk with our clients through situations like that?

14:19

Sure, and first, I’m just going to tip the hat to Adam Grant, who helped me understand the distinctions between task conflict and relationship conflict in think again, which came out a few years ago. But yes, the task conflict is a people versus problem issue. You’ve got two people, they’ve got a problem to solve, and they’re going to collaborate to solve their problem. A relationship conflict is a person versus person issue,

14:50

so probably a much harder to deal with. The second one, yes,

14:54

without a doubt. So what I talk about in hug of war is, once you recognize the distinction between task conflict and relationship conflict, if you bring a different tool to address the issue. So if you if you find that you have task conflict, which is actually incredibly important, it’s really valuable to have task conflict, because if without the task conflict, you’re not actually generating the best ideas. When you engage in robust task conflict, you can see a bigger picture. You shake up entrenched beliefs that aren’t serving you well. You craft better solutions to tricky problems. The challenge in family business is so many of us, myself included, really hate conflict period, and we don’t draw the distinction between task conflict and relationship conflict. So we think of all conflict as bad conflict and something we want to avoid. But avoiding conflict does not make it go away. We all know this. It just simmers underneath the surface until there’s some sort of Cliff event, and then it explodes, and is very destructive. So it can be really helpful to to have sort of the meta conversation from the get go. Hey, are we having I see that we don’t agree. Is this task conflict or relationship conflict? And once you identify it as task conflict, then you bring I have a simple little mnemonic here to use to help address task conflict, and it’s a, l, I, g, n, align and you start with agree on the shared goal. Learn each other’s needs and interests, as for L, I invest in their outcome. G, generate ideas and N, nothing. Personal. Don’t take this personal. Task conflict isn’t about you. Task conflict is about the the issue. It’s about the problem. Wilbur and Orville Wright are notoriously famous. That’s what Adam Grant wrote about in this book. Think again about having incredibly explosive task conflict, but it was never personal. They just loved to hash out ideas. Not every family needs to have that level of of conflict, but it can be a really helpful way to realize that you’re bringing or at least a helpful way to bring the right tool to address the conflict if you bring the wrong tool to address. If we bring relationship conflict tools to a task, conflict doesn’t work. If you bring task conflict tools to a relationship conflict, it doesn’t work either. Okay,

17:29

so that’s one of the things where we can really add value as an outsider, is to help them appreciate that there are two different kinds and to highlight when we see it. I think many of us who work with business families are often fascinated when we you know, we will go to a room with a bunch of family members, and then we start screaming at each other, and we’re kind of uncomfortable, and we realize that it’s this is just the way they are. And so if it really is just as conflict, and they feel safe hashing it out, and then we can come to them with a tool to help them structure that to do it better. They actually are less afraid of conflict because they know the energy that it contain, contains that can help them solve the problem. Yeah, beautifully said. So the relationship conflict the tools are very different, and I guess that’s where the polarity thinking comes in as as, really the the Jedi mind trick, or the jiu jitsu move, as we’ve called it, of how to help families to work through their situation by showing them the both and

18:38

well, actually, I Think of polarity conflicts can either be task conflict or relationship conflict. I have a whole different way of addressing relationship conflict. Should I share quickly now or should I stop? Yeah, so there’s a when you when you realize you have a person versus person problem. This is very destructive, and so the first thing you want to do is try to mitigate relationship conflict to these that you can but once you recognize that you have it, it’s really important to address it, because there’s only one way past relationship conflict, and that’s through it. And I was terrified to do this at first, but it took me a long time to learn the skills, and I finally narrowed it down to a five step process that I call Playfair, and it’s P, F, A, I, R, but it’s easier to remember is play fair. So it starts with P, ask permission. Do you have time to talk? And it’s really important to make sure everyone is prepared for a conversation. Have the right time allocated if you need to reveal the topic, go ahead. But the right conversation at the wrong time is just the wrong conversation,

19:42

right? So if we’re tempted to go in and like, have it out now, that’s not the that’s not the way to do it. It’s, it’s, let’s make sure we’re setting this up for an appropriate time and place, which may not be now, correct.

19:54

Okay, the next step is facts. State the facts. I like the phrase I’ve noticed because it’s a very neutral term, and make sure it is strictly the facts. Here’s the thing, if I said you got angry, that’s not a fact, that’s an assumption. If I said You banged your fist and raised your voice, that’s a fact. Okay, so make sure you are naming the facts, no interpretation of the facts, because it’s important that everyone get clear on the facts, and that’s usually an emotionally neutral part of the conversation. The next part is where the emotion can get involved. And it’s really important in this step that you speak on behalf of yourself. So the next step is a for assumption, and this is where you tell your story about the fact so I like to use I’m telling myself that. And what’s important about owning your story is that it minimizes defensiveness in the other person, and it makes room for other interpretations to

20:55

coexist. We have to go out there and actually see this is what I am seeing, or this is what I am feeling. So you were kind of opening ourselves up or interpretation, but we’re presenting how we are seeing something,

21:10

yes, exactly, and you leave room for other perspectives to exist. The next step is impact, or importance. The impact of this is and then it’s helpful to state it in terms of something bigger than just you. So maybe this is important to the business, or this is important to our family, or this is important to you and me, and state what it is that makes it important and what the impact is. And then the final step is to make a request. And it could be a request to resolve the issue. It could be a very specific, pointed request, and at that point, the best move is to listen as actively as you possibly can. That means stop talking and then open up your ears, open up your heart, let the other person respond and paraphrase what you hear until the other person says, Yes, you got it, and until they’re confident that you have fully understood what they have to say, don’t move on from the conversation. It slows the conversation down, and it is critically important that there’ll be mutual understanding before the conversation continue. Now,

22:14

as a coach, it sounds to me that this is the kind of tool or technique that we would work with our clients on so that they can eventually learn to do it themselves. Because if you just told them do this, it’s not necessarily intuitive, so walking them through the steps on that might be something we could try

22:39

Absolutely I actually invite my clients to practice with me. I say, give it a try. Here’s the mnemonic, give it a try. Just don’t practice. Just throw something out there, and then let’s look at it and see what we want to change. When I’m a facilitator with a family, I will actually highly facilitate this exact conversation, and I will be, yeah, I’ll be leading the conversation, and I will be slowing down and speeding up and managing it when I’m with a group of people that are engaging in a brave conversation, but when I’m in a skill building, yeah, I just share the the mnemonic, just like I did with you, and then invite them to practice, and then tell them to practice with people in their lives, practice with their Family members until they’re ready to have the real conversation.

23:23

You know, you’re going to an area that I really didn’t expect that my mind would take me, but you’re highlighting the differences between the different kind of roles that we can play, right and whether you call yourself a coach or facilitator, but sometimes you’re one on one with people, and sometimes you’re one with a group of people, and what we do and how we learn to be good and resourceful in all those situations is part of where we, you know, really learn to add value in different ways to our clients. So the skill building that you were talking about of coaching someone and inviting them to do a sort of role play with you before they get into that conversation with their family member, and then you can talk to the other family member and role play it for them. And then maybe, maybe they can do that productively on their own. But if you’re in a room with people, and you can now help slow it down, speed it up, pause it to explain how it could be done better. Now you have a whole new toolbox that you could be accessing, and it sounds like this, polarity stuff can actually work in both those situations.

24:32

Yeah, the polarity tension can be emotional and personal and it can be purely task conflict. It really depends on the circumstances

24:41

their last two chapters of the book, chapters nine and 10, that you’re always teasing through the great examples that are in the first eight chapters, the title of chapter nine embracing polarities to harmonize opposites. I just, I just thought that was such a nice way to say what it is like really, the words are all well chosen, like embracing them and trying to harmonize. And so often, when our clients come to us, they feel like they are on opposing ends and they don’t know what to do about it, and having a tool that allows them to to embrace the fact that that there’s a way to harmonize those How hard was it to save all the juicy bits for the last two chapters of the book?

Reply

Forward

0:00

And then we can come to them with a tool to help them structure that to do it better. They actually are less afraid of conflict because they know the energy that it contained, contains that can help them solve the problem. Yeah, beautifully said. So the relationship conflict the tools are very different, and I guess that’s where the polarity thinking comes in as as Bailey, the Jedi mind trick, or the jiu jitsu group, as we call it, of how to help families to work through their situation by showing them the both air.

0:37

Well, I actually think of polarity conflicts can either be task conflict or relationship conflict. I have a whole different way of addressing relationship conflict. Should I share quickly now or should I stop? So, yeah, so there’s a when you when you realize you have a person versus person problem. This is very destructive, and so the first thing you want to do is try to mitigate relationship conflict to these and can, but once you recognize that you have it, it’s really important to address it, because there’s only one way past relationship conflict, and that’s through it. And I was terrified to do this at first, but it took me a long time to to learn the skills, and I finally narrowed it down to a five step process that I call Playfair, and it’s P, F, A, I, R, but it’s easier to remember is play fair. So it starts with P as permission. Do you have time to talk? And it’s really important to make sure everyone is prepared for a conversation. Have the right time allocated if you need to reveal the topic, go ahead. But the right conversation at the wrong time is just the wrong conversation,

1:42

right? So if we’re tempted to go in and like, have it out now, that’s not the that’s not the way to do it. It’s, it’s, let’s make sure we’re setting this up for an appropriate time and place, which may not be now,

1:54

correct. Okay, the next step is facts. State the facts. I like the phrase I’ve noticed because it’s a very neutral term, and make sure it is strictly the facts. Here’s the thing, if I said you got angry, that’s not a fact, that’s an assumption. If I said You banged your fist and raised your voice, that’s a fact. Okay, well, make sure you are naming the facts, no interpretation of the facts, because it’s important that everyone get clear on the facts, and that’s usually an emotionally neutral part of the conversation. The next part is where the emotion can get involved. And it’s really important in this step that you speak on behalf of yourself. So the next step is a for assumption, and this is where you tell your story about the fact so I like to use I’m telling myself that, and what’s important about owning your story is that it minimizes defensiveness in the other person, and it makes room for other interpretations to

2:55

coexist. We have to go out there and actually see this is what I am seeing, or this is what I am feeling. So you were kind of opening ourselves up for interpretation, but we’re presenting how we are seeing something

3:10

Yes, exactly, and you will leave room for other perspectives to exist. The next step is impact, or importance. The impact of this is and it’s helpful to state it in terms of something bigger than just you. So maybe this is important to the business, or this is important to our family, or this is important to you and me, and state what it is that makes it important and what the impact is. And then the final step is to make a request. And it could be a request to resolve the issue. It could be a very specific, pointed request, and at that point, the best move is to listen as actively as you possibly can. That means stop talking and then open up your ears, open up your heart, let the other person respond and paraphrase what you hear until the other person says, Yes, you got it, and until they’re confident that you have fully understood what they have to say, don’t move on from the conversation. It slows the conversation down, and it is critically important that there’ll be mutual understanding before the conversation continue. Now, as a coach,

4:15

it sounds to me that this is the kind of tool or technique that we would work with our clients on so that they can eventually learn to do it themselves. Because if you just told them do this, it’s not necessarily intuitive, so walking them through the steps on that might be something we could try

4:39

Absolutely I actually invite my clients to practice with me. I say, give it a try. Here’s the pneumonic. Give it a try. Just don’t practice. Just throw something out there, and then let’s look at it and see what we want to change. When I’m a facilitator with a family, I will actually highly facilitate this exact conversation, and I will be, yeah, I’ll be leading the conversation, and I will be slowing down and speeding up and managing it when I’m with a group of people that are engaging in a brave conversation, but when I’m in a skill building, yeah, I just share the the mnemonic, just like I did with you, and then invite them to practice, and then tell them to practice with people in their lives, practice with their Family members until they’re ready to have the real conversation.

7:35

You know, I really wanted hug of war to be story driven. I felt it was incredibly important that people understand how these polarities manifest in day to day leadership in a family business. And so I led with story after story after story very intentionally to keep people reading because frankly, the actual process of managing the polarity is kind of boring. And more often than not, the books about polarities start with, here’s a polarity map, and you put the thing and the thing and the thing, and then people fall asleep. It is boring as heck. So I needed, I thought I needed, and I think I still think I needed. I needed the ability to create enough tension and enough curiosity and enough willingness to gut out the boring parts. So I spent eight chapters building up detention that finally led to chapters nine and 10, where you find all, right, here’s

8:32

all but address the issues.

8:33

And I think the first eight chapters with all the examples, and there are literally dozens of different examples that I think what happens is a lot of people who work with families will work with a certain number of families on an intense basis over a while, and maybe after five or 10 years, they’ll have a handful or couple of dozen examples of families they’ve worked with. But you kind of go through, like, a lot of different examples of stories that I think readers can instantly sort of say, Oh, I never heard that one. Or oh, I could imagine if that was me. Or oh, I have a client who had something similar. So the fact that you go through, because I think a lot of people have trouble figuring out what this work with families in more of the Family Circle versus the business circle? What it really is. So I love the fact that you had so many examples there that that really highlighted the tricky spots that advisors like us sometimes get ourselves into.

9:35

No thank you. I’m glad you found it worthwhile. Yeah. So

9:39

just to summarize, before we get to our wrap up questions, really the polarities lens is a different way of looking at or a way to help us guide our clients through discussions about how to deal with the situations they’re in that are not about solving a problem, but that are managing the tensions in a situation over time. Yeah, I

10:09

think that’s nicely said. Another way to say it would be to support families to transcend the conflict that they’re experiencing and see the bigger picture, so that they can collaborate with each other to support each other and get a better answer for everyone.

10:25

Okay, the collaboration, I love that, and one of my favorite words is CO create. And so anything that we can do to help our family clients as we work with them, for them to come up with their own answers, and not just one person in the family, but sort of one person says one thing, and another person says another, and they have a little aha moment and come together. And that’s what I think this tool, which I’m going to start using now, but I need to, I need to start practicing with it. I think it’s one of those things that until you’ve used it a couple of times. It might feel a little cart to grasp.

11:05

Yeah, it’s something that does take a little while to wrap your head and your heart around, to be honest. I mean, I’ve been studying polarities for over a decade now, so I they come very intuitively to me. But I think you’re right. I think it is helpful to to practice with colleagues and with examples. And people started asking me about maybe doing some some workshops, and I might start doing that. So if that interests you, let me know maybe I can partner with you in bringing that to your community. But yeah, I think it you bring up a really good point there.

11:41

Well, it’s, it’s, it’s fun to have a tool, and if you don’t learn to use it, I always tell the story about when in the FDA program, we learned about Genograms, and I was allergic. I didn’t want to start to have to draw Genograms. And now I can’t work with a client without drawing the genogram, but if I hadn’t gone over that, huh? And so I’m hoping that we can help find people that that can push through the learning to use the tool, because the tool has so much potential. Yeah, great. Kathy, this has been fascinating. Unfortunately, we need to start to wrap up soon. So as usual, we end with a couple of final requests before we go. So I need to ask you for a book recommendation, something that you’ve read, that you’d like others to know about. And then the last thing is one piece of advice from one experienced advisor who works with families to others who are also working families. So can we start with a book recommendation? Absolutely

12:38

beyond hug of war. I think there are two books that are helpful. One is also about polarities in family business, and it’s family business as paradox. It’s written by Amy Schuman, Stacey Stutz, and John Ward, and it’s been out for a while. And then a newer book called polarity intelligence that came out this year, and it’s by Tracy Christofferson and Michelle troseth, and it’s really in the pocket of polarities, not necessarily polarities and family business, but it’s a good resource for how to actually manage polarities if you’re working with clients Rita.

13:17

So the family business as paradox was actually a book that I got when I was doing the FBA program 13 years ago. I don’t know if we still get it to the people taking the program, but, but we’ll put that note in the show notes and a link to that. And then polarity intelligence, which is a more recent book. And so now the one piece of advice, please note, okay,

13:42

the one piece of advice is related to what I said in the opening, which is that we all have poll preferences. We prefer one over the other, and our preferences come from an aversion to the overuses of the opposite pole. So what’s true with our clients is true with ourselves. We ourselves as advisors, have our own blind spots, and we have to be really careful that we don’t unconsciously impose our blind spots on our clients. So even though polarity thinking positions advisors to be the hero, be really careful that you don’t get caught up in your own blind spots and biases with a polarity.

14:24

So you just said the word bias there, but you had been saying blind spot, and as you were saying blind spot, I was thinking biases, but it’s just another we need to be aware of our own stuff that we bring to clients and make sure that we’re not imposing some of our thinking onto them. Great. I agree. So that was fantastic. Our time flew by, as it always does. Kathy Carol, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expertise with our audience. Thank you for having me. Steve, okay, listeners, if you haven’t already subscribed to this podcast, please do so make sure you never miss any of these monthly episodes. That’s it for now. Thanks again for joining us. I’m Steve Legler, until next time.

15:11

If you 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.