Legacy and Harmony in Business Transition

In this solo episode, Elizabeth Ledoux tackles one of the most challenging aspects of business transition: the false choice between legacy and harmony. 

Elizabeth defines legacy as what you leave behind – your business, impact, wealth, and the imprint of your effort and values. Harmony, on the other hand, is how you leave it behind – focusing on relationships, emotional well-being, and unity among all stakeholders. 

Many business owners believe they must choose between building a solid legacy and maintaining harmonious relationships. Elizabeth explains why this limiting belief can damage transitions and shares practical strategies for achieving both. 

Key topics covered include: 

• Why harmony requires transparency and vulnerability from all parties 

• The importance of listening without an agenda during transition conversations 

• How to lead with a new goal focused on relational strength 

• Creating communication bridges between generations with different visions 

• The benefits of starting your transition planning early 

Elizabeth also introduces the Evolve program, designed to support business owners and successors through their transition journeys while maintaining both legacy and harmony. 

Chapters in this episode: 

00:00 Introduction to Legacy and Harmony 
02:41 Defining Legacy and Harmony 
05:54 The Importance of Harmony in Business Transitions 
09:51 The Role of Communication in Achieving Harmony 
13:33 Listening and Understanding Perspectives 
17:47 Leading with a New Goal 
21:47 Creating a Roadmap for Legacy and Harmony 
24:43 Invitation to Evolve Program 

Connect with Elizabeth Ledoux and the Transition Strategists: 

Website: https://transitionstrategists.com/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetransitionstrategists 
Elizabeth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethledoux/ 
Transition Strategists on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/transitionstrategists/ 
Transition Strategists on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@transitionstrategists 

Subscribe to “The Business Transition Roadmap with Elizabeth Ledoux” on your favorite podcast player: 

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3MxSYA2 
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3IhMMux 

Get Elizabeth Ledoux and Laura Chiesman’s latest book, “It’s A Journey: The MUST-HAVE Roadmap to Successful Succession Planning”: https://amzn.to/3oq2LQv 

Legacy and Harmony in Business Transition

Elizabeth Ledoux: Hi everybody and welcome back to the Business Transition Roadmap podcast. I’m Elizabeth Ledoux and I am going to be doing a solo broadcast today just to talk to you directly about legacy and harmony. Legacy and harmony in a business transition and just why you don’t have to choose.
This whole podcast is about two really powerful words. It’s about legacy and harmony. And the belief, and it’s a limiting belief, is that as an owner, you have to choose between them. That it’s really hard to get both, so you’ll have to choose. And I thought we’d start by defining each one of those. So when you think about legacy, legacy is actually what you’re going to leave behind.
So it’s what you’re gonna leave. So think about it’s gonna be the business that you built, it’s gonna be some of the impact that you’ve had, it’s gonna be your wealth. A lot of businesses, family businesses are actually family investment businesses and that counts as a business. So maybe you’re leaving behind your wealth, you’re gonna leave behind a structure. It might have, gosh, it could have LLCs and it could have family partnerships and it could have trusts and it could have all kinds of things that you’re going to leave behind. So it’s basically the imprint of your effort and your values and your vision. So that would be your legacy.
Harmony is how you leave it behind. So instead of what, it’s how, and it’s all about the relationships. It’s about the emotional well-being of the people that are involved. And that is up to and including you, right? Because harmony in your life is a good thing. So it’s about the unity, or you could think of it about the division. It’s how you leave it behind and what you leave in your wake. So what we like to see, and I think what most people would love to have, is a positive, uniting kind of a harmony where there’s peace and there’s strength in the family and the team that then gets to carry what you left behind, carry your legacy forward for you and without you.
So we hear all the time from business owners that they really want both. And truly, the reason why they come to work at the Transition Strategist is because they’re trying to find the harmony. The how and the how much, the legacy part, or part of the legacy part. The harmony part is the who, and it’s really the people and the relationships and the culture and all the things that are very, very important, sometimes even more valuable to you than the actual business, than the actual legacy piece.
The issue with trying to find harmony, this is my opinion, but the issue in trying to find harmony is that it’s very, very tricky to do it. It’s unpredictable. It can be very emotional. It can be messy. And the reason why is because it requires others. It requires others to really actually become transparent and become vulnerable. And you have to do the same because in order to create harmony, you have to really understand their thoughts, their needs, their timing, their resistance could be very important. And if you don’t really understand that, then technically you’re solving a problem that is the wrong problem.
One of my favorite people said the other day that a problem really isn’t that big of a problem if you know and you define it. Where you end up with a big problem is when you don’t really understand it and you’re trying to come up with a solution without pinpointing what’s really happening. So the messy part of inviting others in or talking to others and trying to create this harmony is that there’s a fear that their vision probably won’t line up with yours. And that’s very real because whose vision at the age of 20 or 30 or 40, lines up with a vision of a person who’s 50, 60 or 70. You’re in two different complete parts of your lives.
And a young person would see the business with a runway of 10 or 20 or 30 years to go and some really cool things to take advantage of like AI and other things where a 50, 60, 70 year old, it’s like, wow, I just don’t have the energy and the business is pretty cool the way it is, so let’s just keep it. I’m just talking about business strategy, not to mention transition strategy, which is layered on top.
If you’re thinking about choosing legacy without harmony, if you prioritize the legacy over the harmony, most of the time what you get is structure. The problem is the structure sits on top of what would be kind of a shaky foundation or a shaky ground. So you can have a nice transition plan again with the structure of the companies set up, investments made. You have legal docs lined up, you’ve got clear financials, you’ve got all the legacy pieces in place.
Years ago, the reason why I went into this kind of work and started with a people first kind of an approach is because I learned, because I am, I love strategy and I love creating them for others. I learned though that we had some incredible strategies that we’d put together and they never happened. And the reason why they never happened is because the people didn’t want to do them. It wasn’t aligned. It was a vision that everybody said, yeah, definitely okay. Then when they actually had to execute it, they didn’t show up. They didn’t show up to actually get it done.
So if you choose legacy without harmony, typically you’re doing it by yourself or with some advisors, you’re not very inclusive. You might be somewhat inclusive but not completely inclusive because you’re worried about the messiness. Your family may not be aligned. They might feel left out. You might have people that feel like their voice hasn’t been heard and that you’re kind of pushing on them, like, you all are gonna work together. This is how it’s gonna be. This is the way it’s gonna work. I’ve got everything lined up, all the legal docs, financials are good, everything’s set to go, and all you have to do is work together and figure it out. But they don’t want to.
So the legacy, you build that only, if you build your transition strategy only on the legacy side without the harmony, it tends to or can basically become the source of division, not the source of unity. And the source of division, that’s usually what you’re trying to avoid by getting everything all lined up. You’re trying to create unity. And you figure, well, if I get it all figured out and I do all the work, then guess what? It’s all going to be okay. We’re going to create unity when normally it’ll backfire because you haven’t considered other people and what they want and what they need in their lives.
So if you do that, have you had a successful business transition if in the end you leave relationships disjointed and emotional wreckage behind? And in my world, no, especially if you’re going to transition before you are no longer on the planet, because you get to live with all of that. You get to live with the kids not talking. You get to live with Christmases being stressful. You get to live with people being unhappy in your business. And typically, that is not fun for a business owner to see that. It sort of changes the perspective of the legacy, because it is so shifted in a negative way.
So my invitation to you is that you can have both in many cases and sometimes you have to face some pretty challenging situations, but I love the idea of tackling those situations and really digging into them and finding out what’s going on so that you can eliminate the issue of lack of communication, which is what normally happens when two people don’t get along or they’re having challenges.
Normally what happens is they spin things up in their heads and they become even further apart. Why? Because they don’t want to talk to each other because they’re avoiding the conflict. So it gets worse actually, the wedge between the two gets bigger and bigger and bigger. By tackling some of these challenges, you can really tackle them when they’re small and before they happen, which goes into the idea of why you should start early before you’re ready, like five years, 10 years, at least two years at a minimum, start getting your strategy in place so that you can tackle some of these before they ever happen.
So in choosing legacy and harmony in the invitation for you to explore having both, you do have to lead differently. And it starts with your clarity because with your clarity, then you’re going to have better communication. First, you’re getting clear on what you want. I just in a separate podcast talked a little bit about what clarity does for you. Clarity takes so much weight off of your shoulders because it’s really nice to know not only what you want, but maybe what your spouse wants and maybe what your partner wants so that you can get clear on as the owner, decision maker, magician, benevolent dictator, but usually, yeah, you’re kind of a benevolent dictator, I guess, in some ways. You are definitely taking care of others and also leading the way.
So first, you’re getting clear on what you want. And you’re not getting clear on just the outcome. What you really want to dive deeply into is the why behind what you want. Why is the business so important to you? Why is it so important to you to transition in the way that you see? Why are you wanting to put it into stages? And what’s the why behind the timing? How come you’re not ready to hand it over right now? And it could be that you want to work with your son or daughter. It could be that you don’t think they’re ready or that your successor is not ready. There are lots of reasons why, but the why behind your timing.
So you get very clear on what you want, the outcome, and also deeply understand and dive deeper into that why behind it. That makes it so that then you can communicate and you can talk to people. So you can one, create space for them to do the same. What outcome do they see? And what’s the why behind their outcome?
If they come in, are they gonna live your dream or their dream? If they come in, are they worried about you micromanaging them and telling them and having them continuing to feel like a son or daughter instead of a partner or a peer? What are they worried about? Are they worried about, gosh, here’s another one, carrying the weight for the family? If they’re gonna be the ones working in the business and their siblings are gonna own some of it? Gosh, that’s a lot of responsibility. So what is the outcome that they see and why, what’s their why behind it?
And you want to know for your partners, your children, your leadership team, your future successors. Now, that sounds like a lot of people and you may not include all of them, but you may have some casual conversations like with your leadership team, what would be the best outcome? If I wasn’t here, how could you see running the company forward and what do you think you would need? Doesn’t say I’m leaving. It says, I’m doing a little bit of work to make sure that you guys are okay and this business goes forward. So what would you need and how could we build this business? So if I wanted to go away for six months, I could. I have complete choice in working or not working. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
So you’re including these people, not necessarily as true successors, equity successors, but maybe successors in roles and maybe growth in the company. So you’re going to let them share their hopes, their fears, their ideas, but also the reasons behind them. This is the key is when you get this far. I just love this, the listening.
As owners, typically when we get our plan in place, we just want to talk people into going with the plan. That’s how it’s going to work, right? And that’s built on the legacy side. When you’re creating the harmony side, listening is a really interesting place for you to be. And I have a favorite person of mine, her name is Deborah Girardi, and she is an expert in building communities. She once shared a listening exercise with one of my groups and it was really simple, but it was profound. And bottom line, you know, it took 10 or so minutes to go through this listening exercise. But bottom line, if you’re forming a response in your head, such as, you know, well, I know the answer and this is what you should do, or I need to respond this way so that I can show them why they should go with my plan, my strategy, my transition strategy, then you’re not listening.
So what you’re doing is you’re strategizing, you’re figuring out how you’re going to influence them, you’re filtering through whatever your agenda is. So to create true harmony, to truly lead them in the direction that is going to be best for the community, because it isn’t all about you. And technically, a lot of it isn’t about you. Yours is about leaving and being happy and being fulfilled and being proud of leaving this legacy in a harmonious set of hands. That’s you, but really what you’re doing is you’re doing this for others. So you need to listen and without an agenda, which is really hard to do. Very, very hard to do because we’re used to listening with an agenda, to influencing and to doing those kinds of things.
So you hear somebody else from their heart and you hear it even if it contradicts what your vision is or what might be in your heart. And that act of listening changes the way that you’re gonna perceive them and it also will build trust and reduce their fear and also yours. So it helps people have a safe space where they can tell you how they really feel. And then, you want that to happen because you don’t want them to vote in silence or distance or resentment later on. You want to know about what is everybody thinking. So that’s what I mean about tackling. If you can tackle it early, then you don’t have to fix anything.
In another short podcast that I did, I talked about a father-son who were going along, they were going along so well. Everything blew up for them in one day, one hour, one talk, one walk. Took them a year and a half with some of our help to come back to where they could speak again openly with each other and they were working on the business together. A year and a half. That’s a long time. We want to tackle this stuff before it gets to be a problem, and that means that you have to be proactive in getting your stuff together, being clear about what you want, and inviting others in for these conversations. That’s helpful.
If you look at the new role you’re going to play now, it’s just leading with a new goal. When you’re an owner founder or building the business, your goal is to build business, to do a good job, to deliver great products and services, to gain customers, and to keep working, and to keep the whole operation going, keep that wheel spinning. When you start leading with this new goal, your new goal is going to be not just you leading the operational success, but having somebody else do that. Not you leading the financial security, but having somebody else do that. And one of your big goals is going to be relational strength. So really seeing yourself leaving this business and seeing yourself leave behind not only a legacy, but also leave behind harmony so that people are happy.
So you’re guiding your successors into one of the most emotionally and financially valuable assets in their lives. And they’re looking to you not just for answers, but they’re looking to you to model how that’s done. So leaving well is very important because if you don’t get out of their way, you’re not modeling well, but you need to show them the ropes, which means you need time and that’s why roadmaps are so valuable in a great transition. So they want to know how to do this. They want to know what the boundaries are. They want to know where they can be flexible. They want to know what kind of vision they can have and what kind of mistakes they can make and how to have clarity and how to have compassion. So that’s the next evolution of your leadership is to start thinking of what do I need to do and how does this business need to be built and what kind of people do I need in order to create the legacy that I truly want to create? And this is part of your next adventure, which to me is exciting.
So communication, this is the bridge. If you’re going to have a transition where you get both legacy and harmony, one, you have to have communication and a lot of it. So that’s just the foundation. That’s the key. And you can’t do it alone. So you cannot make your decisions for this transition in a vacuum by yourself. You have to include other people if you’re going to have harmony. Otherwise, you push your vision on top of them. And many, many times, it’s just a small tweak in your vision and a small tweak bringing them together where you can understand and you can create that harmony.
So it’s not announcements, it’s not directives, it’s not last-minute, here’s how it’s going to be, because I just wanted to keep it a secret and I figured you’d think I was leaving and then you’d want to leave too if you knew that. So we don’t want any secrets. We want confidentiality and we want real communication that includes dialogue, exploration, some disagreements, some challenges, because we want to see the other perspective and see the other lens. Again, those younger people are going to have a different vision, and hopefully, they’re going to be super excited to come in. They’re going to want to go fast, and you’re going to want to slow them down. So disagreements at times, challenges. We’re going to want to have a lot of listening and some shared clarity.
I would like to encourage you to think about not only how do you get your legacy, but also how do you get your harmony? How can you have both? And by starting early, you have more choices to do that. By starting early, again, gosh, well, just to share my timeline, when I started, I’m probably about four years into it. I probably have about four to six years left in my timeline and just because that’s my vision right now that doesn’t mean I’m leaving the business in four to six years but it means I’m going to have it at a point where I can seriously look and decide what’s best for me and what’s best for my successor and we can work on it together which is pretty exciting. So you’re not going to do it alone hopefully and you don’t want to carry the entire emotional and operational load of transition in silence. You’re not supposed to do that.
So figure out how are you going to get legacy and harmony if you want both because it is possible. Then just I’d like to invite you, we have this cool program that’s called Evolve. Evolve, it’s named that because you are evolving as a person, your successors are evolving as people. You’re all evolving with new skills and the business is evolving too, including every person that you serve there because they’re working with new people and you might even have some new programs that are coming in just because you have some younger vision that’s coming in and helping along the way. So this Evolve program is really neat and I’d love for you to, I just want to invite you to go and take a look at it.
The most important thing that you can do, whether you do it with somebody like our firm or you do it with a different firm or you do it by yourself if you want to just sit in your office and ponder and draw and figure out what you’re going to do. The most important thing is that you reflect and you do something. So I’ll invite you to that. And yeah, best of luck with creating legacy and harmony in your transition. And we’ll see you next time.

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The Business Transition Roadmap with Elizabeth Ledoux

How do communities thrive? When businesses experience healthy growth and transition. Join CEO of The Transition Strategists, Elizabeth Ledoux as she and her guests identify what makes a successful business transition roadmap. If you know you want to transition or exit your business “one day”, today is the right day to start planning. This show will give you the roadmap.

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, you can check out other episodes here: Podcasts – The Transition Strategists