Episode Description:
For the fiftieth episode of this podcast (50 episodes!), Elizabeth Ledoux thought that there was no better way to both celebrate the past and look forward to the future than to invite back to the show her successor, Andrea Carpenter, and discuss their core values. Tap or click the play button below to listen to Celebrating 50 Episodes: Our Core Values with Elizabeth Ledoux & Andrea Carpenter.
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In this episode, Elizabeth and Andrew explore the following seven core values:
(1) People first.
(2) Independently accomplished and resourceful.
(3) Gracefully nimble.
(4) Positively playful.
(5) Curiously engaged.
(6) Quality achievers.
(7) Genuinely transparent.
If you want to skip ahead to a specific core value, here are the chapters in this episode:
05:19 People first (core value #1)
07:58 Independently accomplished and resourceful (core value #2)
13:15 Gracefully nimble (core value #3)
15:19 Positively playful (core value #4)
16:19 Curiously engaged (core value #5)
18:23 Quality achievers (core value #6)
21:21 Genuinely transparent (core value #7)
Connect with Elizabeth Ledoux, Andrea Carpenter, and the Transition Strategists:
Website: https://transitionstrategists.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetransitionstrategists
Elizabeth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethledoux/
Andrea on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreashaver
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
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Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/BTR-Google-Podcasts
Get Elizabeth Ledoux and Laura Chiesman latest book, “It’s A Journey: The MUST-HAVE Roadmap to Successful Succession Planning”: https://amzn.to/3oq2LQv
This episode was produced by Story On Media & Marketing: https://www.successwithstories.com.
Celebrating 50 Episodes: Our Core Values with Elizabeth Ledoux & Andrea Carpenter Transcript
Elizabeth Ledoux: When things get tough and we come together, we can use smiles and laughter to open up possibilities that we wouldn’t see are just the way our brains work. We’re much more effective when we’re a little bit lighter and we we are able to use our thinking brain instead of our reactive brain when we’re not positively playful and we’re so anxious about things, we get tough on ourselves, and we also get tough on other people around us. So positively playful is our fourth item, and we just love the positive solutions that come when we start laughing and smiling together. Welcome to the Business Transition Roadmap. My name is Elizabeth Ledoux, and through my years, I have seen how communities thrive when business succession and transition are done well. Me and my team at The Transition Strategists have been helping business owners develop and implement transition strategies for over 30 years, and on this show, we want to help you by giving you the roadmap to a healthy business transition. Let’s get started. Welcome back to our Business Transition Roadmap Podcast. Amazingly enough, we are celebrating our 50th anniversary, and this is such a special podcast for us, I can’t even imagine or believe that we’ve got 50 under our belt so far. So we thought we would do something extra special and just talk about our core values. What are our core values that we actually live. And you know, whether it’s our team or whether it’s our clients or whether it’s the community, however we look at that, we actually live these values, and I found them to be super foundational in even how we bring on clients, who we bring on and who we don’t, because we’re very successful when we live our core values. And it’s almost it’s inevitable at times, it’s, you know, when you look back at some things that didn’t go well, you can identify that the core values just were not aligned. So when we talk about transition and succession. Because, you know, transitioners leaving and the successor is coming in. We sometimes you want to make sure that your values are aligned. It’s a big, big, big foundation. So we’re going to share ours with you. And I would love to welcome back to Andrea carpenter again, my successor in Yeah, she’s on the way to doing that. And we, we are living these together in our work, so we’ll share some of that as well. So Andrea, thanks for being here.
Andrea Carpenter: Glad to be here, and it’s always it’s fun to step into an organization, and it can be intimidating when you’re like, Oh, these are, these are the values. What does that mean? But it also means you can get up to speed and really understand who you’re working with, what you’re doing, all that earlier on the way. So always a fan. I know most of our the businesses that we work with tend to be really focused on their people. They’re focused on having great products, the people they serve doing good in the world. So we know that you guys, most likely also have very strong core values. So we’re excited to share ours with you today. Yes,
Elizabeth Ledoux: okay, so we have seven core values, and we’ll just walk through each one of them. Our number one core value, it always stays at the top is people first. It’s our foundation. And one of the things that we use in our work. Have used it for, I’ve used it for over 20 years, is in caps, always use the best of intent. Always assume the best of intent. So the reason why that is so important is, with Best of intent, you literally don’t judge anybody. There is an anger, there’s no accusation. There’s simply this open minded kind of curiosity about understanding what just happened, understanding what you found out or how you felt and how you got there, so you end up with having empathy for the other person, and all you want to do is gain this understanding so that you can make progress or create a solution from it. So we really, we really want for individuals to be fulfilled in their growth and their well being, and we want to add value to the lives of others, and we want to make sure that that we enrich the life of every single person that we come into contact with, and we make a difference for them. So best of intent allows us to. A that’s a foundation underneath people first, because, don’t know about you, but it’s pretty challenging some days to get up in the morning and go, I just don’t understand why this person did this, and I’m pretty maybe even mad or pissed off about that. How do we find best of intent in that?
Andrea Carpenter: Yeah, and to relate it to our own transition. I think we’ve shared before, like a few months after we met, I found out I was pregnant after a long journey of trying to get there, and it was this question of, How soon is that something I’m I’m going to share with Elizabeth, and what does that look like. And I think you assume the best of intent in me and sharing that even though there we’ve talked about this on our on our intro episodes where we talked about what it looked like, first navigating and then you sharing, wow, that kind of caught me off guard, and okay, now we have to maybe rethink about exactly what this timeline looks like and all of those things. But you assume the best of intent in me and sharing that, and I assumed the best of intent in the way that you would respond, because the type of place, the type of company, the type of people I wanted to work with were people that were going to celebrate that milestone with me, and so the fact that I felt safe to share that really for me, was one example of this core value coming to life.
Elizabeth Ledoux: Coming to life. Well, it’s cool, thanks for saying that, because that makes me feel great. Because, you know, so many times people are afraid to share because they’re so they’re so worried about what the consequences are going to be. And truly, if you’re living this value people first and the best of intent, I don’t think there’s a lot of fear. I think it opens up the opportunity for a lot of conversation and vulnerability. So all right, well, obviously this is my favorite one, the people first love it and always try to practice it every day. Second one is independently accomplished and resourceful. We we want and we know our stuff. We want people who know their stuff. We want people who are pro active, thinking and acting ahead. And one of the cool things about being independently accomplished and resourceful in that kind of a person, they tend to find the path forward. They find it, and then they lead the way, and they don’t go so quickly that they get lost, they, in a way, slow down to speed up so that they can focus on what’s most important and keep their eye on it and really make sure that they’re using the resources to accomplish the most that they possibly can.
Andrea Carpenter: When you talk about this one, I think of one of the things on the IMAP, which is a an assessment tool that we’ll use, and one of those sort of paradigms that a person might have is someone is more of a planner, and someone is a little bit more of an adapter. And I’m wondering, maybe you could just share a story. Elizabeth and I do, for full disclosure, we’re kind of on the different side. I’m more of a planner, she’s more of an adapter. And so the way that we can each bring those unique skills into a situation to prototype new things, but also make sure we’re executing in a way that’s delivering high value. I don’t know if you have any stories to share about how people with different skills and all of those things can can really show up in a value of bringing their own strengths to the table.
Elizabeth Ledoux: Yeah. So, so this IMAP, is a tool that I’ve used for probably at least 25 years. Was introduced to it a long, long time ago, and was I actually had the opportunity to buy it about probably nine years ago or so, and it is. It’s really wonderful. It was built in the 70s, and it’s statistically normed a part of our bigger program that’s called the Pathfinder. So this is like a little subset of that. And we always have what are called natural points of conflict. Sometimes they act there. They ride within ourselves. So one day I want something and another day I like something else, and it has to do with how I operate, and I want to make sure that I am able to fulfill myself, and so I have to fulfill both sides. So that’s an example of our the idea of a natural point of conflict internally, then we have natural points of conflict externally. So let’s say so I’m like a 90 adapter, and Andrea is a high high planner. Knowing that about each other is the first key, because if I know that about Andrea, then. I can put people first, and then I can say, Andrea needs a plan. Do I need a plan? 90 adapter? No, I don’t need a plan. But does she need a plan? Yes, and will her planning help me? Can I appreciate that? Because if I appreciate it, we work really well together, even though she could drive me crazy with all of her planning. But on the flip side, if I can appreciate that, then it’s an asset to us as a group. It’s an asset to us as partners or as teammates. So there are a lot of tools out there that you can use ours. We love because it’s a multi construct tool and and you know it? You can see it in somebody who’s creative, or somebody who’s more of a process and system person. You can see a natural point of conflict, and somebody who is a realist living in today, or a futurist who’s living in tomorrow. And entrepreneurs tend to live in tomorrow. Amazingly enough, same. There are all different kinds of aspects in this, in this tool, but that’s hopefully the example you wanted. And yeah, we want to value our differences and use them as a team, instead of not valuing them, expecting other people to be like us, and then judging and actually creating our own issues because of our judgments.
Andrea Carpenter: Yeah, and I think just to close the loop on that, you said you’ve you can value my planner, because I can take your high eye adapter and put some structure around it. And we can, in the long term, maybe move a little bit faster, because structure is there, Groundworks there. On the flip side, a couple weeks ago, Elizabeth and I was freaking out a little bit. I’m like, we’re not hitting the numbers. We’re not where we’re supposed to be. It’s not going exactly to plan. And her adapter, like, really calm me down. And was like, hey, like, we’re just gonna go for it. Like, these are the things we’re gonna explore. And so that those two things together just to close the loop on that core value, independently accomplished and resourceful made us a great team on that project.
Elizabeth Ledoux: Yeah, thanks, thanks, thanks. Okay, so moving along. The third one is gracefully nimble. This one when, when we developed these four or five years ago. We need to be nimble. We need to be able to move. I mean, especially with the kind of work that we do so we thought of and, you know, having the tenacity to stay the course and shift along the way. Now that one is for our clients too, because we need to help them to be able to stay the course on this transition work, because it’s important, but also shift along the way, when they run into a road block, and we like the thought in the graceful l nimble of being creatively and with creatively and with good energy, being able to find the way forward. So we explore different ways and better ways to do things and to be who we are as people, and just to be the best that we can be so gracefully nimble is an important one for us clients and other people that we deal with. Yeah,
Andrea Carpenter: I was so inspired recently by one of our clients sharing the story of the transition up to this point current day, and how the potential successor had a medical emergency and like weren’t even sure that that person was ever going to be able to continue in the business, and what that journey looked like, and all the things that had to be adjusted because of that. But they’re in an amazing place now to like see them at this next stage of their journey, definitely that value of of gracefully nimble, to respond to things that we can’t predict or we can’t put on on timelines, and that’s why we always say it’s such a gift to give yourself more time planning up front, because then you’re able to respond more gracefully with with less time pressure when things maybe don’t always go according to plan. Which do they ever go exactly according to plan? That’s a no.
Elizabeth Ledoux: That’s a no, no, wait, they don’t go to go according to plan, and we don’t always get everything we want, either, which goes into positively playful, which is our fourth one. You know, lightness, it helps with work and life. When things get tough and we come together, we can use smiles and laughter to open up possibilities that we wouldn’t see are just the way our brains work. We’re much more effective when we’re a little bit lighter and we we are able to use our thinking brain instead of our reactive brain when we’re not positively playful and we’re so anxious about things we get. Tough on ourselves, and we also get tough on other people around us. So positively playful is our fourth item, and we just love the positive solutions that come when we start laughing and smiling together. So I don’t know, Andrea, if you have something else to add to that, but that one’s pretty straightforward. Yeah,
Andrea Carpenter: no, I think it ties nicely into curiously engaged, which is the next one. So let’s run through that one, and then I’ll reflect on those two together.
Elizabeth Ledoux: Okay, good. So curiously engaged. If you’re curiously engaged, you’re natural learner, you’re also a natural teacher and mentor and creator. I think a curiously engaged person just naturally challenges the status quo of what is going on, and it helps you to have a greater future for yourself and also for those that you serve. So we like the idea of curiously engaged and exploring possibility, and that does go into our client work as well. We want to help the people that we’re working with explore their possibilities and see what’s what’s available to them. Sometimes we don’t see it when we don’t have outside help,
Andrea Carpenter: and I think this can always happen within your own business, within your own company, working one on one, with a guide, in the context of working with with someone like us. But I also think, as we look long term and what we think we want to do, this component of peer learning and like helping everyone learn from one another. That is what is really that’s what I’m so excited about, because we can engage and we can learn from each other, other people’s journeys, seeing how other people are navigating the situation. And also we can have fun doing it, doing things in different places. So it’s important for clients and the learning experiences that we hope to continue offering inside our company, but also as you think about your own culture, as we think about our culture, the type of team that we’re bringing together, we just need to make sure we have the right people in the room to do that. So these two, for me, are fun and an extension of people first, right? Because we’re looking for people that want to engage and have fun working in this way,
Elizabeth Ledoux: absolutely, absolutely. Okay. So we have two left, the next one, our sixth one is quality achievers. And basically, that, you know, quality achievers says we commit to making it happen, even though sometimes we don’t know the future, and we’re trying to get over some hurdles, and we’re trying to be gracefully nimble, and all of those different things, we commit to making it happen, and we take pride in our work and our interactions and our deliverables that for the people that we serve. And bottom line is people can count on us, which I think is amazing, right? If it’s so hard when you can’t count on somebody or some, you know, a company to come through. So I like that one a
Andrea Carpenter: lot, and also to tie it back into people first, though, like navigating as things come up, things happen as I think about our team and the type of culture that we’re building, maybe you’re a transition guide and your onboarding didn’t go as fast as you wanted, because there were life circumstances that threw things off, or we lost power, and this thing didn’t quite get done, and we hold ourselves accountable, and we got things done, but also we have, we have grace for one another, and we know that we’re all people First, I think is, is super important, but to know that things are going to get done and they’re going to be done well to a certain standard is, I love that as an achiever, yeah, yes. And
Elizabeth Ledoux: that, yeah. The other thing that you know I say it’s probably, I don’t even know how many times a day with clients and other people, but people don’t live up to your expectations. They live up to their commitments. And when we were building the quality achievers, that’s why we use the word commit, because if you commit to doing something, you’re highly likely making it happen, whether you’re the transitioner or the successor, and if you do not commit to it, then the likelihood of it coming to fruition is lower. And I personally, if you don’t have a strategy, have something to commit to that you that you believe you can achieve that. You really say, I can do this. I. Um, then I think you’re putting your risk. So then somebody’s expectations are not going to be met. And I think that that’s how relationships fall apart. That’s how things start going downhill, instead of up. So anyway, the quality achievers is really important, and the commitment from each individual to making it happen. Okay, then last here is genuinely transparent. Gosh, I feel like we’re doing this in this podcast, and so hopefully, again, we’re living this value out genuinely transparent. We honor being human, and we give up the idea of being perfect, to just be authentic that allows us to be vulnerable, transparent and real. When you go through one of these transitions, or when we do our work, it’s everything is a it’s a partnership. You’re trying to work with other people sometimes that you don’t know. They live in different homes and different they have different values, and you’re trying to figure it out, and it’s hard. We think we’d love to be perfect, but we’re not. So I like the idea of being authentic and transparent and real. That is awesome. So just honor being human. Yeah,
Andrea Carpenter: people first,
Elizabeth Ledoux: that’s right. So in celebration of our 50th anniversary, those are our seven values, our seven core values. And hoping that you have your core values and you, if you have them, take a look at them and go look at them and see if you’re living them and how they’re playing out in your life and in your world. The other thing is, if you don’t have them, feel free to look at ours and create some of your own, because it is a foundation for you to make great decisions and and to live by it really is a special thing to be able to do that.
Andrea Carpenter: Yeah, definitely. So we are just so pleased, and I can’t even take credit for most of the first 50 episodes, because I’m newer to the team. But to hit this milestone of 50, it doesn’t happen without a ton of people behind the scenes, all of our guides, our clients, obviously, our entire team, the transition strategist, the people that help us with the podcast. So we just have so much gratitude and appreciation for the team that helps us do this and helps us put this, this workout on the world and share stories with you if you haven’t already subscribed on your favorite platform, that is definitely one way that you can show us support and love for the podcast, and we are just really excited for the next 50 episodes and to see how this podcast evolves and and what it looks like. So as always, please let us know if there’s something you would love to hear us talk about, a guest that you would love to have us interview. We are all ears to make this the most valuable business transition resource podcast out there.
Elizabeth Ledoux: All right, so thanks for joining us, and thanks for supporting us in our first 50, and here’s to the next 50. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Business Transition Roadmap. If you are listening to this and you find yourself wanting to go deeper into these topics and start the process of putting together your transition strategy, I’d love to offer you a free initial strategy session with my team where we’ll help you to explore the future transition of your business. Head over to www.transitionstrategists.com to schedule a call. Thank you again for listening, and I’ll see you on the next episode of the Business Transition Roadmap.
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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
