Transcript

Michael Palumbos (00:00.146)

Welcome everybody to the Family Biz Show. I'm your host Michael Palumbos with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. And today we have the pleasure of Brent Robertson joining us from fathom.net. I got that right, correct?

Brent Robertson (00:00.158)

actually from Be generative.

 Michael Palumbos 

Be generative.

 Brent Robertson

There may be some big news to talk about today. perfect. Launch of the new company.

Michael Palumbos 

Perfect, perfect. So Brent and I met at my CEO round table group through Vistage in which he was talking about generative listening, which is going to be what we're talking about today a lot. know, Brent and I were, before the show, we're talking about the fact that, you know, we're on the cusp of this giant business transition from, you know, the controlling generations to the next generation right now. And this topic of succession planning and generative listening and understanding.

 

Michael Palumbos (00:51.566)

you know, what one person might want versus another person would be pretty key for us to be talking about. So all of you that are out there, family businesses, make sure you're listening in. And if you're the next generation that's stepping up to be thinking about, you know, taking on the leadership roles going forward, I think this is going to be just as important for you as well. So Brent, one of the things that we like to do is no one that I've ever met, you know, their journey started, you know,

ABC and now you're doing, you know, gig that you're doing today. So why don't you kind of walk us through what's the history of Brent's, you know, evolution, so to speak in the working.

Brent Robertson (01:00.608) 

Thank you, Michael. And it's great to be here with you. Yeah. You know, just sort of give some highlights of my background professionally. You know, I came into the work I do today through a pretty interesting path that included my professional career starting in the brand world. And so my professional muscles were exercised a lot as it related to, know, how do we bring to life these incredible stories, aspirational stories and brands. of organizations that are really aiming toward the future. And of course, at that time, this was about 25 years ago, it was the heyday of the internet. so digital marketing was all new. So it was a really, really exciting time in the industry. But as we continue to grow and we got, you know, we were really, really good at that work. And, and so here we are creating these really powerful aspirational stories for organizations. And then I started to wonder, well, who's teaching them how to live into them, live up to them.

 And that really opened the door toward the work I do today, which is in the field of professional leadership development, organizational development. And, you know, how is it that we actually create a developmental muscle inside of our organizations that allows the participants in that organization to be on an ongoing growth path and not just achievement professionally, but really a deeper understanding of who am I as a person, as a leader.

Brent Robertson (02:55.608)

How can I get deeper access to myself and then bring a fuller expression of my leadership into my organization with more precision, more focus and intention, which is really the core of the work that I do today. And as it relates to even the generative listening program, you know, one of the things that I pay a lot of attention to may call me obsessive about is how organizations, human systems of any kind use their energy. Where do they use it for great effect? Where do they use it with little or dangerous effect?

 And one of the things that was true about all of our clients that were outperforming the benchmark and the benchmark, whether it be their history or their industry was that they paid a great deal attention to the quality of the conversations that they were having about their organization, about their sense of identity, about what's true, real honest about it, and also willing to explore possibility for future. And the foundation in which conversations exist, of course, is listening. So as I continually pursue, where are the highest leverage activities of a leader, listening is number one, because it's the foundation of conversation. It's the foundation of relationship. It's actually a foundation in which we create new things. It's all in the space that we make available through our listening. And so that led me to develop the generative listening practice, which has now become a top program in the largest leadership organization in the world and has me flying all over North America to deliver it. So it's exciting times.

Michael Palumbos

Nice, nice. You know, it's when I talk to people, I've heard people say, you know, leaders are born, they're not developed, you can't learn leadership. And I think you and I would both disagree with that is that, you know, the difference between the leader who, you know, is born into things is they're just a natural born people person, and they listen, and they're empathetic, and they have all of those traits, and they're open to growing and understanding what they're not good at.

 And then the person that, you know, wasn't born with that ability is still has a growth mindset. You know, as Carol Dwork says, right, it's a dweck, right? Having a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. And if you have that growth mindset, there's really nothing that can stop you from learning something new and exciting. And, you know, at the end of the day, as CEOs, as leaders in businesses, we're all dealing with the number one thing that we have to remember that we're dealing with is people.

Michael Palumbos (05:14.318)

And to your point, that means conversations and that means listening. And if that's the skill that you spend your time honing, you'll become even better at what you're doing. So why don't we dive in, you know, tell us, you know, we all know what listening is. What is, or what it means to us, I guess maybe that might be a really good question. Do some people even get the term listening, you know, off base? Then, you know, we talk about active listening nowadays and then taking it to that next level of generative listening. Do you want to walk us through?

you know, what that means to you.

Brent Robertson

Yeah, sure. want to you touch on a couple things that I want to I want to address, which I believe we all come wired from the factory with the capacity to have great effect. And I think the reason why we are experiencing a really interesting time in leadership and when I describe interesting time, what I mean is we actually have a vast shortage of leaders. And that's for many, many reasons. One, we have less population coming through. We have the biggest transition of business of all time. Only 10 % of organizations actually believe their next

 

generation of leaders are prepared for the future. and a lot of that has to do with historic concepts about leadership, but something, you know, I think Michael, that your audience would appreciate is it's also important to recognize, well, have we even defined what do we mean by leadership in the organization that we're responsible for? Because it's unique. And we're in a time right now in which the archetypal characteristics that would say you're a good leader, are they even relevant to the day that we're in? What are the characteristics of leadership?

 

that are most appropriate for the time we're in, also appropriate for the business climate that we're in. You know, our businesses have become way more than just a place of making money and commerce. They're a place in which we discover our identities. They're our place in which we grow. There are often our place to express political agenda or environmental agenda. There are all these other things. How have we prepared leaders for an organization like that? And the traditional programming and even

 

Brent Robertson (07:10.252)

some of the, I call it, you skills-based and ideology-based approaches to leadership simply are inadequate to bridge the gap between where we stand and what's actually being demanded of leaders inside of organizations today. So, you know, one thing I encourage all organizations to do is to find your unique expression of leadership. What does that actually mean for you and your organization based on where you are, where you're going, and the values and beliefs that matter most to that organization?

 

If you take time to finding those things, you'll find a unique expression of leadership that then you can bring your whole team to organize around and develop their own unique practices of. so feathering that right into generative listening. listening, for example, you know, gets talked about if you go through all time in history of what are the top attributes of leadership or top attributes of being a good human being, all these kinds of things. Listening is always in the top five. And yet our vocabulary to talk about listening.

 

is pretty feeble. In fact, most of the time is like, well, I'm a good listener. I'm a bad listener that we don't have. don't exactly what is listening, right? It's often talked about as listening is nothing more than a series of skills that we can gain mastery of. It's a very, very limited view of actually what listening is. so generative listening is a unique program. And what, why it's so powerful is because

 

It is not necessarily introducing anything new. It's reawakening us to this incredibly powerful capacity for listening that we were born with and aren't using. And so it brings people back to re-experience what some of those things are. And one of the main aspects of generative listening is what if we thought of listening as our ability to create space? That the listening we provide, the quality of the listening we provide establishes a particular quality of space. A void, if you will.

 

And inside of that void or inside of that space, ideas, people, even futures can come into existence if we understand the nature of our ability to create this beautiful space anytime we want with whomever we want. So that's one of the main concepts of generative listening is to really bring us back into the really powerful dimensions of listening that we're not using. And I can unpack that a little bit more, but let me just stop.

 

Michael Palumbos (09:19.48)

there. Yeah, no, I think that's interesting that we're just talking about creating a space to have these conversations and to have these ideas and dealing with, you know, a team right now where they don't feel that they have that space to do that. And so, you know, think this is a great conversation. I'm ready to dive in further because I want to be able to help them. And maybe it's, one of those circumstances where it's like, guys, ladies, you might want to talk to Brent on this thing. Yes.

 

you know, to open this up. let's talk about what does it mean to open up that space and what are some of the things that come out of, you know, that process? What does that process look like for you?

 

Yeah, sure. think first is to note that listening is the most potent and powerful gift that we can give another human being. And it is the most potent and powerful gift we can receive from another human being. And the reasons for that are for whatever reason, our species would was wired with some very important desires and experiences that we need to have a fulfilling life. And amongst the highest of those desires is to be seen, to be known.

 

and to be appreciated. And the only mechanism in which we have that experience is through the listening of another, another willing to receive us free of judgment and objectively, and willing to reflect back what they see. And that's where we get that deeply meaningful human experience of being seen, known and appreciated in the only place. And so it's important to note

 

that that's true. And so what does it mean for our listening? Well, one is we have this huge capacity and I'll talk a little bit more about that. And we have this automatic place that we go that limits it. And so it's important to understand two things. One, what is our capacity for listening and what is it capable of? And two, what's in the way? And so we'll talk about both of those things. So as it relates to our capacity for listening, where we get trapped is we tend to favor conversations about what is and what was, and we get trapped in this space.

 

Brent Robertson (11:18.626)

where all we're talking about is, what is happening in this moment and what knowledge or experience from the past can I draw upon to navigate this moment? And as you know, try this on for size, like have two people just have a conversation with each other to get to know each other. And I guarantee you it's in which they'll talk is from what they're knowing experience right now and what they've known and have experienced in the past, whether it be family, profession, and you know this to be true, you were in the workshop, you saw it for yourself. And so that place.

 

that we go by default, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just that when we stay there, we're really listening with two hands tied behind our back. And the reason that that kind of listening, I call it reality, is so strong is because we can be satisfied knowing what we're talking about because we're speaking from our own experience in history. But there are two other dimensions of listening.

 

going to the other two. I just want to I'm hearing that when I hear hear you say that I'm thinking about just relationships between you know husband and wife and children and you know if you're if if you're going into these other realms these other ways of thinking about listening if you get stuck in the you know what was and what is thinking you're never going to open up that space the way that you want to because the children always think that they know what you're going to say.

 

The children always, you your spouse is always going to go back to how you've always done things. And so, you know, just this little first key that you're about to provide us just opens up another realm in all of the relationships that matter. Yes, we want to utilize it at work. But as you're talking, I'm sitting here thinking about my conversations with my wife. And when we get stuck, it's because we're only talking about what is or what was.

 

That's right. And when we do that, when we're, what I'll say is when we're stuck in the echo chamber of that kind of listening, we actually replicate the same dynamics that have us keep encountering the same experience over and over again. We revisit our past, we apply it to what is, you know, and that's our toolkit when we're stuck in that conversation and, over time, and even in business, right? If you look at your average agenda in your company, what's on the agenda?

 

Michael Palumbos (13:04.512)

instead of what could be.

 

Brent Robertson (13:29.108)

What's going on today? What do we got to ship out the door by the end of the day? You know, what are the issues we're dealing with? Right? How have we dealt with them in the past? How are we going to, you know, get through the day in a way that we satisfied the promises we made, et cetera. How much of your agenda is dedicated to the future? How much of your agenda is dedicated to a sense of meaningfulness and sense of purpose? So let's talk about the other two dimensions. One of them, of course, is temporal, right? So

 

know what we're experiencing now in the past, that's sort of a temporal place of where we are today into however far back into the past we want to go. But what happens when we take a leap into the future? And that's the second dimension, which is listening for possibility. And listening for possibility means, especially for leaders, important for leaders to hear this is to be willing to open up a space where you nor anyone else actually knows what they're talking about, where we can release our experience from the past or any authority on the matter.

 

And we can simply open up a space in which we are discussing what our imaginations want to see be true about the future. What I love about that dimension of conversation is it clearly exercises our imaginations and the courage to speak to them, but it also levels the playing field. If you want to, and, you know, any organizational leader would know there's time for hierarchy and there's time to free yourself from hierarchy to actually invite ideas from other people.

 

When we start entertaining future possibility without judgment or without, you know, reacting like, that doesn't fit my worldview. If we can just hold open space for it. It's amazing. The kind of human imagination and ingenuity that can show up inside of that space if we're willing to hold it open. And so what's so powerful about that concept is if we're willing to hold open space to invite a conversation about the future, the words we use actually bring the future into existence.

 

When we actually take the work of languaging our thoughts about how it is we'd like things to be, it becomes a vision and visions communicate. And if we have language that declares the future we want, we can use it as a directional beacon so that we can focus our energy and attention more in a more focused way on the future we want. But we can also practice wild wildly effective discernment, meaning be able to look at the.

 

Brent Robertson (15:46.124)

hundred million things coming at us that feel like they all need our reaction and choose wisely the one, two or three of them that actually matter to our future so that we can focus again our attention and energy in a more focused way. And so why is that important? Well, it's all the difference between an organization that for the most part feels like, well, we don't have a whole lot of agency over our future. So it's really going to be about just getting through as much as we can and recovering over the weekend and starting again the next week.

 

to an organization that is actively talking about what is and what wants to be and using its energy effectively in directing everything toward the future that they want. And those organizations are exactly the ones that outperform the others. And when they're in both dimensions of those conversations, and those are just two, there's still one more to cover, but let me just stop there.

 

That's awesome. So let's unpack those in an example for somebody. So if I'm the CEO, what would be some of the words that I might use to open that up to get out of the what was and what is dimension and more into future dimension?

 

Yeah, I'll share a couple of examples of like one pragmatic application of what I'm talking about. You know, one is to make sure that one conversation is complete, which is well, what is true for us? I find a lot of organizations don't spend a lot of time there just establishing. Well, what is true in real to make sure that the entire let's say the entire leadership team has a composite image of everybody's truth.

 

Because to the degree in which that is a thoughtful and thorough is the same degree in which you have a strong foundation to take a leap from. So that's where to start. What actually is true. And I don't mean our fantasy version of what's true. mean, sincere, honest truth of this organization. Once that conversation is complete, then you can say, great with that in mind, what does it allow for? What does it make possible and just leave it open and allow people to step into their imagination and say, huh,

 

Brent Robertson (17:43.128)

Well, based on all this and based on what we see is true about the world, here's what that makes possible that could be part of our future. And it's important when we do that. Well, what does it make possible? What does it allow for is that we don't spend any time judging or filtering any of the ideas at that point. Just simply collect them all and see where the patterns emerge. Like, whoa, this is really interesting. Some of this doesn't even make sense. But when we see it all together, we can start to see patterns and say, there's some themes here that seem to be deeply meaningful to all of us. There's something there.

 

There is a vision in there somewhere that if we could get our hands on could be that beacon that again allows us to move more intentionally into the future we want. And I look at it this way, Michael, you the future is going to turn out whether you like it or not. So which kind of future do you want? The accidental one that's going to happen regardless of your interventions on it? Or do you want a future with an intentional ideas about what it is that you actually want? If we want to have an intentional future,

 

We need to start talking about it. And then we need to start using that language as a directional device that calibrates our energy and activities as we move our organizations forward, even in the chaos of a busy reality.

 

I love it as I as I'm hearing that, but I want to. Here's what's coming up for me. I need to be looking at the team that I have. The team needs to be looking at us as a whole and look at the truth of what is our capabilities and where we're at today. And based on, you know those capabilities based on who we are based on what we stand for based on how hard we want to work based on all of these things that you would call truths and I'm trying to.

 

and you might have five or six other things that you would add to it. But realistically, there is no measurement there. It could be anything, right? And it's just whatever your team and whatever you want to talk about. then based on that truth, to talk about, where could we go? What do we wanna do? And that also opens up the other side of it of, okay, well, if this is really what we wanna do and this is really what we're capable of, there's a gap.

 

Michael Palumbos (19:47.16)

then now we know when we're going out to hire, when we're going out to add systems and processes, we're designing future, now you have a path to kind of get there.

 

Or how do we develop our team so that we can act out this future, right? Where that gap may be externalities that gap likely is, okay, great. This actually creates a space in which we could develop our team and ourselves to be able to be equipped for that future. One of my favorite, like I've got a couple of questions I asked to sort of move from, and you know, even the what's true conversation, oftentimes it's important to have an accounting of things.

 

Okay.

 

Brent Robertson (20:22.328)

How much, you know, what's the condition of our relationship with our clients? How do we score? What is our, you know, where are we financially? Where are we with turnover? You know, those things are important to recognize. What's the health of our culture right now? And a real honest sense of that, right? And those things. But as we step into the future, one of my favorite questions is, okay, what would be true in three years to say our future was a success?

 

Just what would be true and just get it all out. What would be true and those things it should feel as you're stating those things, it should feel both uncomfortable and inspiring uncomfortable from the standpoint of I'm not sure how to do that and inspiring. I would love that to be true, right? When I do strategic planning, I use all of this methodology to do so and often I'll ask, okay, a year from today, what would we be celebrating at our cocktail dinner to celebrate our year? What would be be seller celebrating? What would we be giving ourselves awards for?

 

in our ideal future. Those are kind of fun ways to open this up instead of the dreaded, where do you want to be in five years, which unfortunately is fraught with all kinds of expectation that there's a right way to answer that question. You're supposed to have a pre-programmed response, which is the antithesis of actually using our imaginations to think about what it is we really, really, really want.

 

The other limiting piece to that is that our brains are typically wired to go back to that what is and what was, which then leads to this lineal change versus exponential. I was in a class and what you're talking about, I just wanna resonate. I don't know if you know Dr. Ben Hardy at all, but I was in a meeting with him and one of his questions was, write down your 10 year, what did your

 

that beehag that you have. Now what I want you to do is how could you accomplish that in 12 months or 24 months? And it just, like to your point, when you start talking about the future differently with the right questions, it starts to open up different ideas because you couldn't do some of those things in a linear fashion. And not that there's anything wrong with linear and that might be somebody's truth, that that's where you want to be. And that's fine.

 

Michael Palumbos (22:26.19)

But if you wanted to take that leap or that jump or maybe to expose yourself to ideas that you haven't thought about before, the only way to do that is to ask yourself some unique, jarring questions.

 

Well, yeah, you're talking about a very important distinction. I actually have a workshop specific to it, which is to really understand the nuances of different kinds of change. So the linear, our past based approach to change, which is sort of a, okay, you know, let's look at what's been and then let's extrapolate our future forward. What that favors is incremental change.

 

And there's incremental changes is appropriate. If that's what's needed in your organization, incremental changes, you know, a little bit better than, you know, 10 % more of that kind of thing. What the other field is transformative change, where you take a fundamental leap in a state of existence, where you go from, okay, we were this kind of organization before, and now we have come into a completely different sense of identity changes the game. And that is.

 

the field in which we need engage in our imaginations to conjure a vision powerful enough to allow us to really figure out how to get there, not know how to get there, but figure it out. Something else you said, Michael, think important to note is let's say, you know, we go to the linear, not because that's where our wiring is. It's just, that's the wiring we've been exercising the most. haven't.

 

That's really powerful. is, I make sure everybody hears that just because you've been wired a certain way. And I know 25 years of being in business, it was always do your business plan. What did you do last year? What are you going to do next year? And it's just been programmed into me. So the first time I started hearing about transformational change, you know, it's like exponential change. It really was mind opening and we're in the middle of a huge transformation that I just am very excited about.

 

Michael Palumbos (24:16.45)

but it wouldn't have happened without somebody posing those questions and asking them differently and opening myself up to that. I apologize, but I just wanted to make sure, this is what you're talking about right now is super powerful for people to hear.

 

And yeah, and so, if we think about this, right, we, tend to, you know, exercise our, know, what have we known and what have we experienced? Because those are the muscles we've exercised the most in conversation over time. But the second conversation around possibility, we have those muscles too. They're just different and we may not have exercised in a while. In fact, in the United States, we tend to begin the sorting process about grade four of who are we going to continue to develop their imaginations and who are we going to, you know, tend toward, you know, realism and.

 

in rational thinking. And of course the United States favors rational thinking and, you know, proven practices and, we, we, we educate to tests, not educate to, you know, endorse how we learn, right? All these things reinforce that mindset. So it's important to remember if we came from the factory with an incredible imagination, we may not have exercised it in a while and it's going to feel different. It's going to feel like, honestly, I'll put it this way you can, you can edit this out, but

 

you know, the creating futures, the art of making shit up. And it truly is. mean, how long ago? Right. Remember when you were a kid and all you needed was like a stick and a rock and you could make an entire narrative out of that. It's the same thing for our businesses to say, hey, you know, let's reawaken our imaginations and just dream a little bit and see what of those dreams seem to stand out and are powerful. And, know, I'll say this again about the nature of change to the degree that we want a future different than our reality that we're in is the same degree.

 

catalyst needs to be present and there are two distinct kinds of catalysts. One is you have to because there's a threat of your future right. So you're being forced to change that that's one I would say not not the healthiest of the catalyst. The other is there's a future we want that's so exciting that we're willing to play to win to get there and that's a much different kind of catalyst and the difference is one's going to shove you around the other is going to pull you forward.

 

Brent Robertson (26:22.474)

And when it has to do with an inspiring future, that's the kind of catalyst that draws us, not just draws us forward, but draws more out of us. And it's a much more powerful experience to be driven by a catalyst like that. And we can create those catalysts if we're willing to have the conversation.

 

And said the first person, I had a person come into my mind as you're doing that, I'm trying to practice focus on the generative listening and just being present as you're doing it. But my brain couldn't help it, Elon Musk popped into my head. And I think that's a really good example of, you know, he's got the fear based, you know, where we need to develop, how do we get to Mars? Because I think we need to be a multi planetary species to be able to make this. So there's some fear based for him. But then the flip of that is Starlink.

 

I think is a really good example of something that didn't exist before that he said, you know, we're trying to fund this to happen. What are some inventive ways that we could think about this? And if we just looked at, you know, internet connectivity and we only got 10 % of that market share, yep, that'll fund a whole lot of what we're doing. You know, that's obviously he's somebody that lives in that world to the point that I think that some people are like, my gosh, okay, enough already. It scares people.

 

that somebody can be that creative, that outside of the box on a pretty regular basis. But if you were just able to take 10 or 15 or 20 % of that in your own business, think about what that could do. If you always do things the way that you've always done them, you're never gonna innovate or change or be ahead of the curve.

 

Yeah, you know, there's a one of my favorite books of all time is James Carson's finite and infinite games. That book was recovered by Simon Sinek who made what's to say a more distilled PG version of it. But the original text is incredibly powerful. And what it talks about is is those two domains of thinking the finite game being that there's a clear end in sight and it's contained within a certain conversation, the infinite game being what am I up to that's bigger than me that I want to have outlive my lifespan. And when you think about what

 

Brent Robertson (28:25.29)

Elon, whether you are not you like him or whatever, you know, just always surrounding things around visionary people, but he's playing a bigger game clearly, even the technologies that he's developed to make that are making money are needed for being interplanetary. And so like, like, you know, that technology is needed for communications, the boring company is needed so that we can, know, all this stuff is in service to, okay, what, how do we use our planet to perfect the technology that we need to be a multi

 

Planetary so it's a really interesting example of what does it look like to be playing the bigger?

 

game. Love it. You talked about that there's another dimension beyond the future. Do we want to dive into that now or?

 

Yeah, let's do that. the third dimension. So let's just say, you know, we've got the, you know, the reality conversation and the possibility conversation. Those are sort of on a horizontal field. And then the third leg of the stool on top of them both is what I would describe as existential conversations. Before everyone shrieks and be like, okay, what is, you know, okay, we're off the, off the rational spectrum here. No, no, Existential conversations are simply conversations to do with existence. And they're the most important conversations to be having, which

 

are an attempt to answer, you know, who am I, what, what am I here for? And why does any of this matter? It's the place in which we find meaning. Meaning is context. Context is what gives everything meaning. So no matter what kind of present we have, and no matter what kind of future we want, we really need to answer the question of why does it matter? And why, why does what we do matter matter to us matter to others? What's the greater meaning in this work that we're doing? And or what's the greater meaning of my life in it?

 

Brent Robertson (30:03.33)

What's the greater meaning in this work that I'm doing as a leader? And so it's an important conversation to be having. One of my favorite prompts, it's often met at first with people gasping, because they're like, what, you want me to talk about what? And then they jump into a conversation that is so life-giving and rare, which is what do you believe you were designed for? Let's just say you were thoughtfully put together, perfectly put together for a reason. What hunches are you getting about what that reason is that you've been put here? Right? I mean, that's just the...

 

Talk about using listening as space. The only place that we actually come into existence as it relates to even the two of us right now in this conversation. Like, I don't know how I exist or who I am for you right now, unless you tell me like you're listening for me is actually calling me into existence and vice versa. My listening for you is literally calling in you into existence right now. And based on the way you're asking these questions and you're even just watching your

 

body language as you do, this is a deeply meaningful thread of conversation for you. And I noticed it when we met, like there's something about what you do that's greater than the business that you're in, that's clear in the things that you do. And this is what I know to be true about you, Michael. And it's being demonstrated right now. That's identity. That's who we are. That's how we understand who we are for others. It happens through even the conversation we're having right now.

 

Very, very interesting. So my wife, Victoria, retires in June of 2025 and has said that, you know, I have, I have seeded the come work with me. think that together we can do some really incredible things. The core purpose of our business is to strengthen family wealth and legacy. And for me, the core of family is self. And I know that sounds different for a lot of people, but

 

unless you're willing to work on yourself, how can you have a great impact with your spouse or your children? When wealth, it needs to start with all the wealth that money can't buy. It needs to start with the relationships and do you have a good life and the social aspects of things. Because if you're not happy and gracious and full of gratitude without money, then when you do have a great business or big lots of real estate or investments, what's the matter? And then the legacy piece is all about

 

Michael Palumbos (32:18.646)

Again, go back to what's the impact I had on myself and what's the impact I have on my family and what's the impact I have on others. And that framework has just been coming forward in the last couple of months since we've met. A lot of these things have been coming out and it's coming from that space of why do I exist? And it's, I went through a divorce and I had a dad that died when I was five years old and I had a father.

 

that reinvented himself and I watched what he provided for our family. And we did 25 years of Palumbos family vacation where everybody in the family and dad, you know, made that come into existence for us. And now the children are responsible to make it go forward. And so I've been trying to unpack, there is no model, you know, there's no three circles or whatever, cause it's so complicated. But when you start to take the family wealth and legacy circles that I just talked about,

 

and all of the inner circles and all the outer circles that go in that and then you put it over, it's life and it's messy and it's hard. And so if I can just help people a little tiny bit to make life, whether I impact on the business or the relationships or themselves just a little bit, that's why I exist.

 

Yes, yes, yes.

 

Wait, let me ask... Go ahead.

 

Brent Robertson (33:35.522)

No, I've just, I've just, yeah, yeah. I'm just wallowing, swimming in the goodness of what you're talking about.

 

When you look at yourself and I think it's fair we're asking people to start thinking about why do you exist. Why does Brent Robertson exist?

 

Yeah, you know what, what I'm really interested in is, I'll phrase it this way. You know, I, I've committed the rest of my professional career to helping people come back into relationship with the infinite capacity that they possess and are unaware of. And all of it is, is I think we're in a time right now where we are in a place in which we have the means and the technology to be asking bigger questions.

 

to be challenging ourselves to take on the economic, societal and other issues that continue to exist that are minimizing others. And I think even with the rise of AI, I think it's given us the ability to let's just raise the tide of, well, what are human beings going to spend time on? And are we willing to seriously exercise our potential as a species to unravel some of these very challenging things that we're facing right now? And, you know, as it relates to my work, you know, I put it this way is, you know, what if we

 

created a world that demanded our full expression, would accept nothing less because we're up to something that big. And that would be a place that I would love to spend time creating more instances of. see it in work with organizations to create micro versions of that instance. But what if we started to scale that at large and say, what kind of world would we create that would have all of us put down everything that's in the way of getting access to the depths of the human beings that make up this planet and put that to work on something truly inspiring?

 

Brent Robertson (35:14.008)

to all of us or many things that are inspiring to all of us that we would see that it's our best interest to create conditions that draw out more of those ourselves and those around us.

 

Yeah, one of the things that's helped me was watching Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and And when you you know I was much older than Mark as I was watching him and he did way more than I ever did you follow me at a very young age and that infinite possibility that he saw in what was happening opened my

 

thinking up to really rely on the younger people in my organization to say, don't understand, you I don't know it all. If I knew it all, we would have already solved it or we would have already done it. So I need to be open to the conversations and listen to what you bring to the table as we're doing things. And, know, to your point, that big pro, what if we started to do and teach at the education level when we start getting kids at three, four, five, and take them through and teach them how to think?

 

about these things rather than just teaching them how to take tests.

 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Actually we one of it. So be generative. The company I launched in June is this is again, my, my commitment for the rest of my professional career is bringing these programs to life. And so the, what you experienced a year ago has become its own company. And I've got four others who have joined me who have also experienced this work and they're all wildly influential professionals in their own right. If gathered around bringing this to life at scale. And I think, you know, you're pointing to something really important.

 

Brent Robertson (36:45.942)

One of our focuses is, the academic channel, business channel, leadership channel, academic channel, professional listener channel. But the academic channel is really a commitment to how do we better equip those that are going to be taking over the future of the world with what they need to be successful. We failed. We failed them in so many ways. And you know, the pandemic, all these other things have occurred, but, what we have as a generation coming in that has not had an opportunity to be equipped. you know, and there's, you know, there's all kinds of.

 

books and whatnot on this topic, but that's part of it is, okay, how do we take responsibility for the fact that in so many ways we failed them and how do we pour back in and invest in that generation coming up to make sure that they're feeling that they're in a place of resilience to be able to take the future on the one that we've are the one we're leaving them.

 

I love it. If you're sitting in front of a group, let's talk about this from the family business and succession standpoint. Where does this fit for our family? know, everything that you've been talking about, it fits for everybody, which is awesome. But, you know, now I'm the CEO of a family business. I'm thinking about succession, whether it be for the first time or the 10th. What are you talking to them about? What are some of the things that you're saying to them to open up these conversations?

 

Yeah. So one of the things is, you know, one of the things I'll say is this, if you want to change your future, you got to change where you're thinking from first. And often when we think about succession, it's all about, okay, how do I hand this business off to others that say I'm the leader? I feel embodied the same characteristics or whatever needed, you know, whatever that may be. And it's usually the attitude is how do I minimize disruption as much as possible through this process? And in doing so we tend to

 

do Senate kind of funny things. A lot of it happens in the background doesn't happen in the open. It typically comes by surprise like tada I'm gonna retire and you know that kind of thing or you know there's a financial and legal plan but has anyone actually had the vision plan right? I look at it this way and actually we've proven this out with many many organizations which is what if succession were a natural part of any organization's genesis if you're a leader that intends to have your organization outlive you succession should be something you run toward and have an open conversation about and

 

Brent Robertson (38:54.766)

how do you have that conversation? What if we thought of succession as one of those catalysts for growth, not catalyst to minimize disruption catalyst for growth, right? And to say, Hey, you know, as we move through generations of leadership inside of this organization, me included, it's an instance in which we can start to say, okay, in this next season of leadership, what do we want to accomplish? What do we want to create? I've taken some legendary companies through this process that experienced a doubling and tripling of organizational performance.

 

through succession planning because it was looked at it and started to engage the entire organization in those prospects of great, you know, let's let's face leadership transition as a natural States, part of any organization that intends to grow and outlive its current leaders. How do we continue on an ongoing basis, engage the team in conversations about well, what's the future anyone here is interested in creating because then that becomes a beacon to engage the next generation of leaders in

 

that engagement process. I'm in the throes of helping an organization five generations, one three generations, and one two generations right now, a family moving in and these are legendary companies that are moving into their next stage of leadership. And it's much more about, huh, well, what kind of future do you want to have? Not the one I created as I was the leader. And I tell you, it's amazing to me how little those conversations are happening. And in the absence of those conversations, we fail to engage.

 

the leaders coming in envisioning what they want. And what we do is we snap back into how it was and how do we keep it the way it was moving forward. So, and of course, as it relates to anyone listening that is in that moment right now, the only way you're going to be successful is if you're the current leader who's succeeding, your job description has now changed, which is how do I become increasingly non-essential to my organization? How do I become a mentor on demand that doesn't get many phone calls? That is success of a succeeding leader.

 

Not how do I remain vital because it's so bound up in my identity. We need to let go so that others can take responsibility, screw it up, recover and learn what it's like to lead, which you can only understand through the frontline experience of doing so, not in some book or somebody else's memoir. You need to be right there in the front lines. And so we often squander that experience for our up and coming leaders because of the absence of having the conversations around, what kind of future do you want to create?

 

Michael Palumbos (41:13.87)

putting Brent Robertson on my cheerleading squad because that is I, I'm a certified business exit coach and I just have been going through this, you know, this idea and we're going to be doing some writing about it. Stop exit planning, you know, stop succession planning. It's, two sides of the same coin, exit planning and growth planning and growth planning is way more fun and it's way more about the future and opportunity and you know, just ideas than succession planning is.

 

And the same holds true. would, you you mentioned something that I want to hit on. We just finished a process, creating a process called for CEOs called from success to significance. And it's all about getting them to take their future and start thinking about where do I want to go with the time that I have left? I'm not going to be the CEO of this. I know that. So I need to retire to something and get excited about something and go someplace. And it's been, we've taken now one CEO through it. We just beta tested it and his response was just,

 

He's like, this is the best conversation that I've had about thinking about where am I going? And I can't wait to be, you know, non-meaningful within the business any longer and to have that self-sustaining organization without me. So very, very cool. Shouting from the, from the mountain tops about that one. Yeah. Stop.

 

yeah.

 

Brent Robertson (42:36.558)

I would give a little nugget, I think to anyone that's in that position right now where like, okay, there is a window of time in which I am going to be available to my organization and then not. And what's important for anyone in that position is that you equally need to be building your own vision for what you'll be up to not in that role. That's as so exciting in fact, that it becomes a catalyst to let go.

 

what I see leaders do a lot is they don't do the work of building well, what life am I stepping into? And in the absence of that, they've got nothing really to hold on to except what was and they have a hard time letting go, as opposed to taking the time to say, Hey, let's dream up a future where I would be so excited to live into that I'm willing to let go and actually starting to put a plan together say, okay, 12 months from now, I want to be doing that. So here's what's going to need to happen to get there. It's amazing how quickly you know, people are it's going to take years and years. I'm like,

 

It all depends on the power of the catalyst. You'd be surprised how little time it can take if there's something that you're up to that you're really excited about that would allow you to create conditions that favor the next generation of leaders taking responsibility for the organization that is.

 

Yeah, the one company that I took through just recently and when I met them, they're at X amount of dollars of revenue. They have five, five times growth since then, but it was because they did start turning it over to the next generation and allowing them, even though it was really neat. controlling generation did not think that the goals that were being set and the things that they were talking about were even possible. They were stuck, but they were also knew that they needed to let go of the reins.

 

and allow the next generation to do what they want to do with the business. And now there are one, two, there's three businesses that the family controls that didn't even exist eight years ago. And so when you look, and now they stop looking at this one company that, know, the golden goose kind of a thing. And now they started looking at the company, the family of companies that are there. And it is because they were open to opportunity and different conversations and they started to see things differently.

 

Michael Palumbos (44:42.414)

It's a very powerful conversation.

 

Yeah, okay. Yeah, but no question about it. You know, one of the things that I find interesting too, as it relates to, you know, contemplating those possibilities is this assumption that gets in the way, which is that we assume that we need to know how to declare the possibility we want. It's the enemy to possibility that mindset. What if we just freed ourselves from needing to worry about how and simply declared what we want and all the joy is figuring it out. That's where the joy is. So we actually

 

we actually foreclose even speaking to the possibility we want because in our back of our mind is, I don't know how to do it. So I can't say that that's exactly when we need to speak to say, I don't know how let's figure it out together, but this is what I see that I want. And so as it relates to leaders, this is a place in which you, because of your influence on your own organization have a distinct ability to create space for, which is we're going to have a conversation about daring possibility. We're not going to worry about how let's just get it all out and see what we see. And then

 

Boy, is that amazing what kind of fruit that produces.

 

Nice. Talk about your business model today. What are some of the ways that you interact with people? Are there ways that they can get a little bit of Brent to get a start on these things or to get opened up to these ideas?

 

Brent Robertson (45:58.648)

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that's really powerful about the be generative practice and business model is its ability to have multiple points of engagement. And so those points of engagement could be programmatic. For example, what you attended was a foundation's course on generative listening, which tends to span it from an hour to three hours in length and is easily able to get brought into an organization virtually or in person. And those are great places to start. Often I get brought in to do keynotes and things like that, just to sort of introduce some of these ideas into the organization.

 

And then from there, we have programs that bring this practice, whether it be to a leadership team or an entire enterprise over the course of weeks and, or sometimes months, even years. And that's another way to go. then of course, what also engage around often is using these practices to help organizations. actually facilitate design the critical conversations that they really need to be having. For example, tomorrow I'll be spending all day with one of my favorite clients.

 

facilitating one of those conversations, which is all about bringing possibility into language to start to direct the company's next chapter over the next 24 months. And so, you know, have a conversation, bring some of this thinking into your organization through an event, bring on a program that is based on certain objectives you have as a leadership team. or if you've got a critical conversation coming up and want to see these principles in play to have a, I call it a conversation of a lifetime inside of your own organization.

 

That's something to talk about as well. It's B-generative.com. B-E. Yeah. B-E-generative.com. I'll explain the name. B generative represents a state of being that generates more. Be Generative being things that create more than themselves. B is being generative or being in a state in which more is produced just by my state of being.

 

and the website is.

 

Michael Palumbos (47:30.072)

Thank

 

Michael Palumbos (47:47.906)

Love it. Brent, any final things that you want to throw out there? Anything that we didn't talk about that I, or a question I didn't ask that I should have? Yeah.

 

I'd say as it relates to listening as a pragmatic practice for anyone on list tuning into this is to recognize that listening actually is a precious gift that isn't always available and to use it responsibly. And so what does that mean? It means if you want to make it clear to someone that they matter to you, give them the gift of your listening. If you are hijacked by your agenda or other things and don't have the capacity to give them that experience and they still want a conversation with you.

 

Don't fake it. Tell them and be honest. I can't I don't have the listening for this conversation right now. Can we get back to it another time? Because there's one thing that you're pretending you're listening with your when you're not that there's one clear message that sends, which is you don't matter. And it's important to recognize that that's the effect when we pretend listening when we're not. And so if you want to demonstrate how important a conversation or someone is to you, clear the way, put your phone away and be fully engaged in that moment with them.

 

I'm telling you it is life-giving for both of you and we're not, we live in a world that we're so busy that we're not having that experience enough. And that's an opportunity for a leader to make a huge impact by just creating a space to allow others to pour themselves into and be there to receive them.

 

Yeah, and a father and a spouse and I want to reiterate because these skills it matters an awful lot. Your children would really, really, really love to hear you say, don't have time for this right now because of what's going on in my head. Can we get picked this up tomorrow? Can we pick this up at bedtime? Whatever the, and the same for your spouse, that respect, that level of respect. I have utilized that since we've talked about it and it does go an awful long ways. Thank you.

 

Brent Robertson (49:33.198)

I'll say this last thing. When was the last time you gave the people you're walking your life out with the best of your listening? Yeah. And if it's been a while, engage tonight. Engage, you know, right after you listen to this, make it a priority to engage your family in that conversation.

 

Love it. Brent Robertson, Be Generative, really, really appreciate everything that you've shared and you poured your heart out on this one. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks everybody for joining us today. Again, my name is Michael Palumbos with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York, and you've been listening to the Family Biz Show. We cannot wait to have you listen in on the next episode. Have a great day, everybody. Take care.