Living Your Values

(upbeat music) - Hi and welcome to the Family Business Podcast where we explore the reality of being in business with those you love. I'm Russ Heyworth, Family Business Advisor and Founder of the Family Business Partnership where we support families navigating the complexity of working together. Each episode shares practical insights to help you build clarity, connection and confidence. Whether you're facing a transition, tough decisions or simply looking for better ways to do things, you're in the right place. Let's get on with the show. (upbeat music) Well, hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Family Business Podcast. I am your host Russ Heyworth and I am very excited today to be joined by Dr. Dennis Jeffy and Dr. Cynthia Scott. Now, Dennis and Cynthia know each other relatively well. Then explain how they know each other but they have come together and written a book called Living Your Values, which is the topic of today's episode. We're going to dive into all things individual and family values and I'm really, really looking forward to the conversation. But before we get into that, perhaps I can ask each of you to introduce yourselves and Cynthia, if you can introduce yourself and then Dennis introduce yourself and maybe give us a better background on the book as well. So Cynthia, over to you. Sure. Well, I am a leadership development and change consultant. And I've been working in that area for my whole professional career. I got into it by being an anthropologist and being very curious about how does a culture change? How do you get people to do things in a different way? Health behavior and then that led to work with families and with organizations because those are the places that that happens. And I would say that I have continued to be very interested by my research has always been on resilience and who does well and how can we translate thick research into practical things. So this book is really a culmination of it's actually the second book in the series. We did this book in 1993 and values have not gone out of style. And actually I think they've come back into a real central position. So good to have this chance to talk about this today. Well, I've been in FFI and family business field since the FFI was formed. And I got into family business because I was invited to a gathering that was being held at USC talk about family business. And I was a management professor and I also had a specialty in family systems. So they kind of included me in the invitation. And I showed up and going to that meeting, basically changed my life because I heard, wow, family business. I had never thought about that. And here is this whole field that nobody has ever studied. And that was just what I loved. So I've been in doing as a researcher, as a professor, as a consultant. And right now I'm in my kind of what I call post career, elder career. And I work for as a senior research fellow for Banyan Global Family Business Advisors. And I also work as a board member and head of the governance domain for the Ultra High Net Worth Institute. So I do a lot of what I call giving to the field. And my commitment is to, you know, to make, you know, to bring people in and to create a new generation. And this book is kind of sharing something that we've been doing. So let me say something about the values book, which is something that we've, as Cynthia said, we started, we first started work on values in the 80s and we did a workshop and the origin of the values work came when we asked people to kind of write down their values. And somebody said, what are values? And so here's a kind of a nice founding story. So we, who are, as Russ hinted, we are married to each other. We have not worked together. This is the first time we've worked together in a long time. But we went back to our motel room and they had a wall. And there was this new invention called Post-its. And we took out a pack of Post-its. And we said, let's write values. And we put them up on the wall. And they were all up all over the wall, all these values we came up with. And then we said, well, let's cluster them together into themes. And so we started bringing them together. So we started making piles of Post-its. And we said, well, what are we gonna do with these? Let's create a deck of cards. So we created a deck of values cards that we've been out there for 20 or 30 years. And we've updated it and revised it. And this book is kind of the current state of what our work is in values. So let me say the book is called Living Your Values. And it's about the fact that values are not words and not statements. They're actions and things that we do. And this transition from things that you believe and things that you care about to things that you do is not automatic. So there was originally two books. One was gonna be a book about personal values. And we'll talk about that. We have personal values. We call personal values pyramid. And people sort out and define their personal values. And we believe that it's kind of like your fingerprint, your identifier, who you are is partly based on your values and the values that you actually act on. And this is a way for people and a family and an organization and a team to get to know each other and say, how are you different? How are you special? What makes you a person? So the first half of the book, and this is not a conceptual book. This is a how-to book. It has learning activities. It's got all kinds of things that you do and ways in which you can actually work on your values. So the first half is about personal values. And then that's your personality. That's your who you are. But then its shifts to the second half values are also things that make up a culture, a culture of a family, a culture of an organization, a culture of a team, they're kind of shared values and they're different. It's not the same as your values. You are much more than your family or your organization. So the question is how do you fit your values into the shared values of other people and create values for your family or your organization. And so we have a lot of cases and stories about how families, particularly it also organizations are defining their values. There's a lot of learning, we call learning journeys, a lot of write in, a lot of activities for people to do. And the book is we also have online tools. So it's a whole, there's a whole values kind of apparatus that we've done and this is our way of kind of sharing it with people in the field and the people in fields that are adjacent and coaching and organizations that teams that want to look at values in an active, engaged way, and we'll talk about what that is. - Yeah, fantastic. And I think just before we dive into some of the questions that we've mapped out, I think. So I'm a proud owner of the book. I have been using it refer back to on many occasions. I think just to pick up again on what you were saying about the depth of learning and discovery and exercises that are within the book. I think does justice to the fact that this isn't a topic that should just be skimmed over. That it's a kind of a nice to have it. It kind of highlights to me the essential nature of understanding individual collective values, how and why they might be different and we'll get into the factors to the fact that that's probably okay in that sense. So I highly recommend the book to 21 who is either within a family or advising families and we'll put a link in the show notes. - And let me just give a fact about the importance. So I did a lot of, you know, I've done study of 100 year families and bio incredibly wide margin, I asked for each of these 100 families. What was the most important thing about that accounts for you 100 year three generation plus family and the ads? Sir, that kind of people gave way, way above any other answer was values. And back in, I mean, in our early research in the '90s, we came up with several shared values. And there's a lot of discussion about, you know, why sharing values are important. And we'll talk about that, that values are important to creating a culture and a way for people to not just be together, but want to be together and feel nurtured by being together. Values are a connector. I think, Russ, I think there's something else that's important and why values are kind of coming back in a wave now is because values are the foundation of people being able to think of a future or a future that could be. And that's the aspirational values because this is a time of a lot of cynicism and people are feeling kind of like, you know, what do I come back to? What do I stand for? And I think that, you know, everybody's kind of possessed by getting their purpose and, you know, finding the thing that they're calling. And basically, values offer the foundation for that. And so they're almost looking for purpose, but what we found is that values are the place that that purpose comes from and regenerates from. And so, and your values don't change a lot, but they will shift because what you valued in your 20s may be very different than what you values in your 60s or 70s. So that kind of looking for hope, a place to find a grounding and a return to something that's always been important to you, it may manifest itself very differently. So I think that it's a fresh topic. And I think it's also something that people are looking for, and that's why we put so much on the, here's how to do it. It's like, you know, I shared Dona's experience with the, you know, I was working with a group of physicians and their five day leadership course to make them chiefs and had the same experience that kind of shared experience of going and asking people what their values were. And they look or they say something like the Boy Scout pledge or, you know, they don't know what you're asking about. And so because they are in some ways unconscious and unformed, they can't be the drivers and the sustainers of your resilience and your foundation. So it's time to look at your values and it will give you hope in, in how to make sense of this kind of complex world. Absolutely. And with that in mind, and given what we've already covered around the importance and relevance of values, why do you think families or advisors, well, do you think it is that they get most wrong when it comes to starting that conversation about values? Well, so, so people have values lists and they say these are our values as if that means something. And then we, we joke that we didn't call this book listing your values. We called it living your values and listing your values is a very nice first step. You have a list of values, but then what do they mean? What do I mean when I say stewardship? What do they mean when I say, you know, partnership or teamwork or, you know, respect for individuals. So it a word doesn't do anything and it certainly doesn't communicate much. So so we have to the idea of living your values is a process, first of all, of defining clearly what your values are. What do you mean by your values? And then the other question is how do they connect with each other? If you have 10 values and you say, well, I'm going to work on this value, what if the things that you're doing for that value conflict or don't support another value? And this is a, this is a challenge. So there's a lot of things that come up when you say living your values and the easiest thing to do is to just rest on the names and not do anything. But the hardest thing to do is to get to say, let's dig in and let's see how we're doing. Are we, are these values that we're just talking about or are they values that are really a living parts of who we are? And I think another thing that they get wrong is they'll call up and especially in startups or corporations, they say, we want values, come and come and give us values. And I say, you already have values, you just, you have to do, it's like an archaeology, you have to brush them carefully and and have forums where people can tell you what's important to them. And this is where, this is the foundation of engagement, you know, people don't want to just see hats, cups and t-shirts and, you know, lists of values. They want to be able to talk about them. And the most important thing with leaders, they want to hear the leaders talk about values. They want to hear what you as a person value. And then they can build their kind of connection and engagement on that. So this isn't something you could copy. You could, you can't, you can't. People also say, what are, what are the most successful values? I said, that's, it's very contextual as like, what is your strategy? What are you working on right now? What's important? So, with families, as well as other kinds of organizations, I think that there's, there's a, a resurgence of, but it's a discipline, it's, this is not an icebreaker exercise. This is not a, this is not a, oh, let's have a meeting and, you know, do our values in one hour and we're done. So this is the kind of an ongoing stewardship as Dennis says. And, and let, let's, one of the things that we began to do in the book is to differentiate some of the things that people, um, conflate in values. For example, um, yeah, city would just say, well, leaders, um, tell you your values. Leaders, values are the legacy values there. They're often the founding of the family business, the, uh, elders, the grandparents, the founders, uh, values, and these are the legacy values. And that's one kind of values, but the world has changed. And, um, and so the next kind of values is, what are the, the current values? And then we divide up values that we, uh, espoused and how do we act on them? So there, there's kind of espoused values and, uh, act on values and sometimes, uh, they're actually the opposite each other, like people talk about, um, uh, respect. And then, um, uh, you know, the, the, the, the, the espoused, uh, value is respect. And the actual value is, is, is cover your butt, um, you know, make your boss look good. Um, don't, don't rock the boat. Um, and these are all the values and, and they're the fat, the, a team or an organization has to look at that difference. Or that, that's the values, current values, then there are values that are emerging. The world is changing, new things are happening. The world of the young people, uh, across generations, as we're in families, we're always dealing with cross generations. The next generation is coming up and is looking at things differently. So the fourth, um, thing that values have is our aspirational values, what are the values we have to be working on now that are kind of new and, um, um, uh, because of the new realities in the world. So past values, current values espoused and actual and future values and these are all different as, as well as their, it's different individual values are different than shared values. I can be, I, I can love music, but it may not be relevant, um, to my work in the organization and it may not be something that's shared by my family, but I can still be passionate about it. Um, all these different values sets are different and, um, one of the things about values work is you have to do some differentiating about what you're talking about when you say values because it's not, it's not one thing, it's one word, but it's not one thing. Uh-huh. Absolutely. Now, I think one of the things that, um, I've seen in, in my career, so, um, I've worked for various different sizes of, of organizations who used values in different ways and some would have, sort of big organizations would have people come in and go, these are the types of things you want your staff to be doing that. These are the values you should, they should be demonstrating and I mean, I remember one of the organizations now, I'm not, I'm not going to name them, but, but also in, in terms of the value, the value is honesty. And it was like, well, is that not, I know values, uh, you can have an individual value of honesty. I'm not trying to diminish the value of that, but in an organization sometimes where you're kind of forced down this generic, let's pick five out of a hat type route. It doesn't deliver the depth of conversation that you're talking about in terms of understanding what do we mean by those values? And I think that's something the book does so well. Is it guides people through how to understand their values and what that means to them? But can you speak again to, in some of your experiences around values, perhaps families I've done it well. haven't gone through the process of going right, we need five because five seems to be a good number. Let's pick five names out of a hat and they become our values. That's kind of the simplest and probably least effective way, but what are some ways you've seen it done well? Well, let me give some examples. So the first thing is the selecting of values is not just picking you. There's legacy values, they're important, but sometimes for example, we were part of a big major company that had a one week values festival and 20 or 30,000 people registered values and talked about things that they considered important. And the value selection process was to take these and kind of organize them. And now with AI and we can do that quite easily and come up with one of the values that most people feel are important. And particularly what the next question is, what do they mean? And the values companies, we have four company examples in family values, examples in the book where we talk about how a company, for example, had values and then they started to meet as teams and say, how do we live these values? Why one of these values difficult? For example, you know, we want to sell things. Do we over promise that that's a good thing for sales people, but is that honesty? What what happens when you have a problem and do you tell the customer or not? So these are the kinds of things that the people had to talk about. And in the groups that really worked on values, they also had workshops where they said, let's talk about the value, let's talk about when this is difficult. And that's when they talked about pressures and they talked about pleasing your boss and they talked about, you know, being told, don't, don't, don't rock the boat. And how do we, how do we do that? And the families that really, and organizations that believed in values really did things to support people. For example, one family had a, had an award for a person who had done something that really exemplified the values and challenged the company. So it, they, they, they, they, they look for Godflies for people that were initially unpopular, but who had stood up for values. There, there are ways that people can be rewarded for following values. There are, there are honors and ways that people can be respected and, and, and called out. And all these things happen in value-based organizations where people are told, you act on the values, you, you don't, there are not rules. There, there are guidelines and, and the values that are guiding you. There's, there's another, there's another thing because what's interesting as, as you were saying, is like, it, it, often, the mistake is that they come down through sort of levels and the organization. And then by the time they get to the, the, the, the, the restaurant, they are just pieces of paper. So one of the, one of the, uh, works that we did was to take, have a restaurant that was very global fast food enterprise that wanted to give the chance to the people who are in the direct customer service. They, these people have no fancy train. There's no break room, you know, they're, so the values were kind of on a poster. And what people did was they said, how have we been managed, how have we been living out this fight? What does it look like here? You know, when somebody comes in, what, what, what's our on the line kind of experience? So I think that there's the mistake is that somehow if the top team does them, they trickle down or they, the, the actual engagement. And as Dennis keeps saying that the putting the behavior, what does that look like? What does honesty look like here? You know, what, what, or, or let's, let's share stories. See, that's the other thing. It's portable. You don't have to write stuff down. You just say, what did we do last, last month where we demonstrated this value? Or how did this, you know, challenge us? Or where did we get stuck or caught? So it's the feedback loop and the ability of, in some ways, as listening to the people make their own sense of the value, not, not, you know, writing the booklet and sending the handbook down and, you know, kind of telling everybody what to do. So I think that's a real miss often that they stop and they, you know, kind of just pass it on or roll it out. So. And Dennis, you mentioned AI as an effective tool for helping to organize data. I guess in some ways, there's also a danger now in the kind of AI age that organizations or individuals will go to AI and go, what value should I say I have so that it makes me look good? And again, I think what's so great in the book is you're encouraging people to actually self-reflect on what's important, not just saying what people think should be said. And I think that's a key distinction. That, that, that's why we started even writing the book when we saw these values list and we would laugh at some of them and they had no meaning. And yet, and yet, the families and the organizations that we talk about of the book are really living their values. So I was going to read something. So, so you say there's a value. So here's a value. This is a family that has six values and the values are not just words. The word doesn't tell you anything. So what they've done here is a value of inclusiveness and they have a definition covering comprehensive stated limits and extremes, inclusiveness, family value. Each individual is part of the glue that binds the family together and we value each person's uniqueness. We appreciate, respect, and foster diversity of thought in order to build a culture of trust and encourage the potential for creative solutions. So that's what inclusiveness means to this family and the whole family created together. Then they say, what's the at-time value? What's the opposite of that? The opposite is only a few make decisions, only one event throughout that year, you're either in or you're out, all those kinds of things are against the value. Then they have a story of inclusiveness where the family did something that really made that true and then they talked about it in terms of the family. What do we, what do we, you know, what do we do? So there's a lot of things that we're done and now they have a book about the values with stories and things like that, not just a bunch of words. A word seems to be meaningful. I believe in stewardship. You believe in it. Everybody believes in it, but who knows what it is and what happens if you say, okay, give me an example and now in things that you did for stewardship. Then you have to say something concrete. This is where values become real because if you can't name something you did, then how is that your value? You say, I liked it. And the other thing that you're talking about, the value, the families that keep them vibrant, they return to them. There's feedback loops. You see a value, no one's going to be perfect all the time. You're going to step your toe, you're going to, you know, stumble, you're going to, stuff is going to vex you. And so these feedback loops in the, in the meetings or where do you get the data in that said, we really blew it on this one. We said, we, you know, wanted to do this. So it's that feedback loop and the constant refreshment. And especially when you have a next gen coming in, it's like, that, what do they, what do they bring to it? Don't let them get stale and, and, you know, fixed. It's like, how, how does a 20 year old see respect? How does a 20 year old see these things? So that's, that's a way, there's, there's a, there's a feedback that that is installed and a, and time to have those discussions, not just sort of not and say, oh, we're fine. So I think that there's, there's this kind of, um, specificity. It also creates accountability. You see, if you don't, if you don't have any of this kind of, what does it look like and what is it not, the anti value, then it's like, you know, free game, anybody, you know, remember whatever you want to. But the, the, the, that's where the, the, the strength of a family enterprise really across generations really is seen. We did an activity that really helped with that. First, we would just ask families for their values in general. And we ended up with pretty boring lists, you know, you know, respect, intimacy, confidence, you know, blah, blah, blah. It was not very interesting. Then we asked a different question. We had everybody, and we'll talk about this in a little bit. Everybody create their own values. And then we said, let's go around the room and each person in the family or in the team, um, talk about a value that, that you've considered really important that, um, this family needs to do better. Uh, you want to, you're going to to be a value And what value do you want to bring to the family as an aspiration to improve and then you got some really interesting ones. You know, we have to work better on inclusiveness, for example. A lot of people in the family don't feel included or feel like they're not special because they're not engaged in governance. So we have to work on that. So when we say if you were a values champion, what does this family need to do better? That produced a much more interesting discussion and everybody ended up being a values champion for a value that they felt the family needed. And then you got a bunch of everybody in the family saying here's a value I want to bring to the family. And then they say a hot now one of these values we want to we want to build in the family. And that was a lot more a lot richer and fuller discussion than just what are our values. Similarly when you ask people let's talk about now how how we've done let's grade ourselves on each of these values. Let's talk about what we do and what we might do that we that we don't do. Yeah, and I think part of again picking up on on both of your points around that. It ensures that families by going through this process it ensures that families are taking ownership of that as opposed to it being imposed upon them. So it becomes theirs as opposed to something the kind of analogy I like to think of is it's like having a personal trainer and then the personal trainer does the press ups for you. It's like you get no benefit, you get no value from that. So you go oh I've got a personal trainer but nothing's changed. But if you take ownership of living the values as you rightly point out you're the ones that get the results from that. You get the positive as you talked about saying through in terms of the feedback loops in terms of what we've done well, what haven't we done well, how does that align with our values, how we've been living those. I think it's again it's an important distinction in terms of the depth that's needed when exploring values. It's not this one hour as you say let's pick five and off we go. I want to pull the thread maybe rush into resilience a bit because resilience is this big thing and we you know lots of research and all this stuff about we know who does well. Well people who do well have that kind of coherence and people get a sense of coherence from as you say engaging in themselves making making their own definitions. They don't they don't copy them from the dictionary. So coherence is one of the key factors of people being able to navigate and thrive in very disruptive hard environments. So that's what back to why values matter now is it's a refreshment. It's an affirmation of I really do believe these things and this matters to me. So tying it to something that everybody wants resilience, everybody wants to survive and thrive. It's like this values work helps people do that. Yeah and again just touching on it because I think resilience is such an important topic. And within you may be aware within the field of positive psychology they talk about resilience variables and one of those being optimism which when you're talking about values as kind of an aspiration of what might be in the future it's providing that level of optimism for people to focus on. And also that the variable of self awareness which is what we're talking about again in terms of understanding your values, understanding the behaviors that you want to see as a in relation to that value. Which kind of brings me on to a red I think it's an article. It's one of J Hughes's hidden gems on the J Hughes Foundation website that Mac Wesley put together. And he talks about values as kind of expectation. This is what I'm expecting in terms of if I say honesty is something that is a value again just to go back to honesty is not the default one to discuss. It's not just how I want to behave but it's also how I expect others to behave. And what you're talking about in terms of the storytelling and the ability to understand what behaviors link to that it kind of brings it all together for me in that sense. Do you share that view? Do you have any views on that kind of values as an expectation? Well values is people values are not a thing. And people what we call this reifying making it into a thing and then say values cause behavior. Well values if it's not a thing it doesn't cause anything. Values is a word and a word has meaning and a meaning is something that you have to define. And so it's really what I see is what we're we're talking about is values need to be defined and expressed together rather than then just name naming seems to be. It's like I always say well in an interview oh I believe in this. And so yet you know the other person says yes I do too. And they just nodded each other and smile and they feel a sense of connection. But they haven't really communicated they haven't really said what that means. And this is where you know people I mean families come into what we believe in fairness. And families are always fighting about what's fair. You know what should it be equal should it be this shouldn't be that. If you look at all the family lawsuits they're all about different definitions of fairness. So I think you know this this inside is values are not things and they don't do things and they're not. They're not you know behavior drivers their concepts that have to do with who we are and what we do. And what we do is important not what we say we believe and that's I think the inside. But I like to share shift and say we've been talking about shared values and that's the second half of the book. And we've got a whole first half of the book and we have a principle that we believe very very strongly, which is before you do shared values. And this is what you were talking about about self awareness. You have to know your personal values and we as a rule say personal values and sharing personal values comes before you do shared values. You have to introduce yourself and understand the diversity of people in whatever team group family. There is before you can do shared values because you have to respect the differences. And the whole first half of the book is about that and you know maybe Cynthia why don't you just kind of describe our model and our way of approaching personal values. And I think actually you brought up you know this is uncomfortable work. You know this is not this is not you are going to be uncomfortable because it's ask this is work that asks you to articulate your own self in the world. And and there's so many kind of quick ways of assessments and I'm of this and you're of that it's like little little quick the co creation of the shared understanding of something like what does respect look like. This is this always comes up you know everybody wants respect but respect is very is the behaviors that are attached to respect are different. And there's there's an opportunity for co creation because it isn't like that I said you know this is what respect is and either you're doing it or you're not doing it. Let's let's find the the accordion let's stretch this especially when you're looking at multiple generations or cross cultures you know what does respect look like. In a married in coming in from a very different culture so that that's the to be able to tolerate the discomfort of not having a simple answer and being curious. And and asking how how has that come up what one of the questions in the personal values kind of part of this is how how does that played out in the last two months in your life. Because if you ask people to talk about it for the you know your whole life it nobody can remember that so but the last week we do the last two months you know how has how which of these values has has been important. You know what I mean is a very challenging or you know given you you know given you some guidance so by by putting a container on it and holding that that line of inquiry I think it's people kind of you know you know values is something people could do forever so now how give me a story of how respect was something that you struggled with in the last two months. So that that piece is kind of that's that's bringing it down into actual behavior and and and then you get the closeness then say oh when I was with my kids you know then the story gets thicker it's not this I was respectful I'm always respectful it thickens the story and then. narrative becomes stronger. Especially in these multi-generational families, that's what is passed is not the list of the values, but the narrative about what grandma Rose would have said. You know, that's the piece that thickens and increases the capacity to have coherence and resilience throughout a family across generations. There are a lot of values where people end up listing a bunch of values. We have a model and I think that's where we've gone further. You have about, you have 7, 10 values that you say, these are my values and the question is how do they relate to each other and which ones are important? And so we have started in creating it, we create a pyramid of values that we call a personal values pyramid, where you sort them and prioritize them. So you have a values at the top of the triangle, at the bottom of the triangle and you look at the more important ones as being more of your closer to your center. Well, and you have to make a choice. It's what people resent. We have 64 values and you sort them and people say, this is very hard. I don't like to do this. No, I agree. It's not pleasant. And because it's giving you a chance to articulate inside yourself and the part of sorting and then ranking, you can't do 64 values. You can't even do 25 values. You know, you have to get it down to something that you can use as a way to steer yourself. So back to you, Dennis. You were kind of going through that. So then the next question is you have 64 values, what we found, and this is something we found in our original post. It's on the wall is there are clusters. There are different themes. And so we came up with in the, with the values, we came up with eight different clusters. And four of the clusters have to do with your own style, empowerment, relationship, and the others for have to do with your way of being in the world, what's important to you connectedness, relationship, lifestyle. And so we look at these different clusters and we take the values. And you can see that there are cluster, certain clusters that you have more values in than others. You know, we have, we call those the values drivers. And usually people end up with not just 15 values, but they have two, one or two drivers that are, these are the core themes interconnectedness, relationship, empowerment that are that drive you. So we have drivers. And then in addition to your current values, as Sidney was saying, we also ask people to now look ahead and say, look at the values that that aren't on your list of main values, which ones are important to you that you want to develop in the future. And so you develop to look at aspirational values. You look at a bunch of values that you want to create. So people have a personal values thing and they have a connection. They have priorities. They have drivers and teams and they have values that they're moving towards and values that they currently practice. And this is your values. Everybody has values, personal values, pyramid that is their definition of who they are that they can share with others. And so we have these pyramids and they're, we have stickers and cards. If you have them in person or we do it online and you have, you get your personal pyramid, then you can share them with others. So if you're a team, you could talk about these are my values. And this is what I want to bring to this team. If you're it's same with the family, you can, you can talk about you as a person, how you want to be part of this group. And it's a wonderful, meaningful conversation. Then when people understand how different they are and what everybody stands for, then you begin to move into the shared values, shared values as a family, shared values as a team. And only then when people understand the differences can people really talk about, what do we, what do we share together? And with the family, it's not just what we share together now. It's, you know, what are our grandparents teach us. And then where do we want to go in the future? And so there's past, present and future values. And you need to distinguish them. So there's a lot of work to do. But it begins with differences with each person knowing who they are, self-awareness by knowing your values. And it reminds me that the, so in the spirit of sharing, I came to a PPI conference, a few years back where the two of you hosted a workshop where we ran through the values card. And we did the sorting exercise and understanding which ones were sort of a problem for us. And I remember my, the top of my pyramid was kindness, was the value that I sort of valued most, particularly at the time. I may go through the exercise again and see whether I still think kindness is as important. But again, it reminded me that I think it's important to be kind. But I also find it difficult when I see others not being kind. And again, that kind of understandings through storytelling that you're talking about means that people shouldn't necessarily feel a pressure. And I've had this question with families that I've worked with where they go, well, what happens if we don't have the same individual values? And you go, well, that, it shouldn't be an aspiration for it. I don't think it's possible really, even though you've grown up in the same family to have identical values, because they're so personal and so down to our lived experience as well. But having those conversations and talking through, what does that mean for you? Why is it, why is it important? Utilising stories. I love the idea of the, the, the recency of it as well, so that we're not trying to look back to, well, when I was seven, this happened. And it made me, because our memories of when we were seven, I mean, it's probably completely wrong anyway. Yeah. So, so I think again, it kind of the process that you've designed, the methodology that you use to take people through this is something that is progressive in terms of understanding yourself better so that you can contribute to the conversation around shared values from a more informed position as well. And I think that's really quite an important step of it. And the significance of understanding self before going into the group side. And just a little whilst I'm on my soapbox, a little rant around the fact that very often families just get created as one thing, that they are a family. And that's how they, they must all be homogenous. And again, I think you're working this area highlights a fact that we should celebrate the diversity and the difference within values as a way of communicating what's important to each of us. Is that something you would like to see in your own work? I think it's often discovered in the married ends. You see, this is our family and these are our values. And how does this new person, you know, how can we make them like us? And what's interesting is the married ends often bring something different. They bring, they bring, they bring a different perspective. And, and you don't want them to, I use my hands kind of, you know, on top of each other or is there a difference? Is there something they need to be sort of going in the same direction? But, but you don't have to force them. This is not those organizations of the past where everybody had to dress the same way and be the same way. The organizations, the enterprises that are going to survive have that diversity in them. And they're, they're much more flexible and resilient in some, in many ways, because they can, they can see, oh, we're directional. We, we, we all, you know, we, we're a family of red and blue, you know, we really like these things matter to us. But your red is different than our red or, you know, the, the clusters give people a way to have shared directionality without being exactly the same. So I think, I think that that's especially as, as we become more global and, and are especially long term families have to deal with so many more challenges than they, than they had before. So your, your point, Russ is, is, um, it's the conversation, it's the co-creation. And, and it's the appreciation. And you're not strong family has diversity. And, and, and you, and you grow from that. You, you create your own skunkworks for the next gen to do their, their initiatives. Most of our work actually isn't denizens that they don't come and do the values for you. We, we really want to empower people. A lot of, most of the people who do this are advisors and they are coaches and there are other kinds of people. And what we've really tried to do, you mentioned Russ is make a methodology so that other people can do this work. We can, we can, we can't, we can't be enough places. And so the, the kind of you know training or that's why writing this book with all these kind of how-to steps in it gives I think a lot of advisors courage because they're scared to talk about this stuff. And and very you know like oh my gosh what if they you know whatever. So I think the the first step in is the personal values. And and you stop there you can stop there you can hold there you can kind of give the family a chance to you know expand and understand. And then you can go to the the family values and the group values. But I think I think it's a stepwise progression. It isn't something you do in one one off side or one family meeting and you're done. So but but I think it's supporting the relationships that people have with their advisors, coaches, other family members. I just had a second Jen kind of do an interesting piece because he wanted to do the values, the cards with the the elder generation because he had them all in one room. But he also wanted to include the next Jen who you know were out busy and weren't going to come to the meeting. He did the online and then brought their data in and kind of used that as a place to have. So a hybrid way of having the conversation and it changes as people you know as as their lives change. So and this was this was a next Jen person not an advisor and he just said I want to do this with my family. I said okay you know take the toolkit go. So I think I think it's a dissemination of the innovation. And and and that's the other thing is we don't certify people to do this. We you know we don't hold on to it. Our intention here is to really disseminate the innovation and let lots of people. We have a global a global group of people to 300 people who are actively using it. We bring them in and say what do you learn? You know what are you finding? You know they it's like teach each other. It's not a thing as Dennis said. It's not a methodology that you must do. What are you finding? What's the latest thing that you're experimenting with? So I think it's the it's the aliveness that we want in in the actual. We learn a lot and and one of the things that we just we just did a offside with about 30 CEOs a couple weeks ago. And one of the things that I often do is I will do my own values as they do theirs. Because it helps me pace myself about how long and I go oh you know what's changed for me. So it's it's something that you can refresh and and you don't need to kind of have somebody tell you it's time to refresh your values. But it's like your life changes and that that kind of re-self awareness is very helpful for people. Absolutely, and I'm curious in terms of obviously what would I suggest that the audience go ahead and buy the book but in terms of. You've gone through that exercise as an individual and you've understood your values. And then you're coming together as a family or as an organization to decide what what are our shared values. And so what I'm curious to understand is how do you go about understanding what is a shared value as opposed to what is an individual value. And then a second sort of secondary element to that question is how you ensure that there's equal voice in terms of let's take respect for example. The senior generation might go well respect means everyone in the coming generations has to respect me in my opinion and I'm probably right and that means that's what respect is. If the writing generation are coming through going well I want to be respected in the same way that my value my opinion is valued they might agree that respect is the shared value but how they go about achieving each of those is different so how do families navigate agreeing on shared values in your experience. Have them do task forces how it isn't like agreed in the meeting it's done they often are like in a court they go out and they come back and they sort of you know here's the differences we found or look you know this generation sees respect this way this generation looks at the behaviors it's not the words it's the behaviors what would we do in our meeting. How how how do we design our our governance how do we how do we get new people into the decision making process what do you do with 17 year old people who who want to you know have an experience. Well and the family has to has to discuss it the question the question of you know kind of respect you talk about it well the older generation says people should do what what I say is that obedience or is that respect. And how are you respecting the younger people and and then if you're a 17 year old and you come in in the organization the family has been going for 100 years in the family business has been going for 100 years you don't come in and say here's what I want to do you respect is kind of listening and and finding your place so there's a lot of conversation. And it isn't a cut and dried thing and it's certainly the thing about values is there not things that you can say this is the rule and and the rule is this and you don't do this it's the opposite of rules it it's a guideline and you say how can I respect my elders and also respect myself. What is what is respectful how does it fit with the you know the realities the the fact that I'm new and things have been going on for 100 years and people in the family have been doing things and learning things what do I have to learn before I can say things there's a lot of values work is a lot of work. And a lot of families can't do it in a in a quickie and can't get it it's not something it's ever finished it's a it's an evolving process and that that's what I think this whole values you know activities you know kind of show us. I think the other part is it's easy to do the personal values that's what we it's kind of there is sort of like we've you know we've created a way that an advisor can step into that conversation. The next part as Dennis says is like it depends on what are they trying to solve for what's the strategy what's the challenge it it really fits into a larger piece of work with the family. That that maybe not just an advisor but somebody who kind of says what do you know there may be a big challenge and they have to really respond to that challenge so it the step in is easy and I think it's easy to put that in the book the second part is like it depends. And so and and that's where the that's where the advisors or the people who helped the family midwife this next time in there in their family and it doesn't stop which is good it's it that's where the aliveness comes from. Yeah and with that in mind and again conscious we're coming towards the end of our time together today but once families have identified and are comfortable with where they're at with their shared values how do you encourage them to maintain the enthusiasm towards it living and. Cultivating those values as something that if we look at the polar opposite of spending an hour doing something it's not particularly inspiring picking fire at least out of the hat and off we go that there's no real emotional connection to that but the opposite it means that the cultivation is is motivational bring it bring it into the family meeting every every year say what what how did we do you know tell us stories about how we enacted these five values. You know let let us share what what what challenged us so the narrative or the bring a case you know bring a case where it was challenged bring a case what did the family do with this of selling a ranch of doing this it's like how bring it in and allow people to build their own narrative of that because that's what's going to give them the the ability to continue that process so. When you have a family meeting where's the hour on how do we do. You know or or give us a skit of a next gen about you know how aligned are we with the next you know this so bring it in as a as a way of give it space rather than just checklist. And there's a reality a you are have your values but your family your organization the place you work for the things you join those are choices and sometimes you don't have enough common ground with your family that you want to say well this family is not meaningful for me right now your relatives but you're not you're not my partners and you're not my you know my my reference group and that's okay so. Exit is a thing and sometimes you know if you're not connected and you don't share the values. You have to say, "Hey, I need to go somewhere else. This is not right for me." And people are always exiting, particularly in families, when they grow up in the family and go in different directions. So exit, it's not, you do not have to include everybody. Some people will not want to be part of it. People leave organizations all the time. And they're asked to leave all the time. Uh-huh. Yeah. Fantastic. So, Dennis, Cynthia, thank you so much for your time. Thank you also for the work and contribution that both of you made to the field. Dennis, I was, uh, jumped to my mind where you said the meeting with the FFI had a profound impact on your life. And I think it's fair to say that the work that each of you do has a profound impact on the lives of many others. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. And I very much look forward to speaking to you when we next got the opportunity. Good. Wonderful, Russ. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the show. If you're finally in these conversations useful, we've created a free assessment to help you see how well your family business is cultivating the 10 principles that we speak about during these podcasts. You can take it today by heading to familybusinesspartnership.com. Until next time, take care.