Have you ever considered how wealth, power, and/or control can negatively affect your family heirs? Have you ever reflected upon what tools, traditions and family values that you currently rely on to enhance your success and make your family great? If you are like most family business owners, you aren’t spending a lot of time reflecting on these questions, or if you do, they likely go left unanswered. This highly engaging session will present convincing new research around successful transitions and provide several real world examples of how families are beginning to incorporate values-based succession planning. The examples will shed light on how family values can influence the health, well-being, and success of future generations. Finally, it will outline a process for how your family can harness its own family values and begin to incorporate those into your own estate plan and/or business transition. Participants who attend will be able to:

• See compelling statistics on how trust, communication and values are at the core of successful transitions.
• Complete a brief survey to assess their own values around “money”.
• Experience real examples (videos and case studies) from other families who are moving through transitions.
• Learn the necessary steps to develop a “values-based” succession planning processes for your own family

Her conviction in honesty stems from an experience as a manger at Avon in the early days of her career. Field says she wouldn’t let her staff in on the steps to attaining goals, and the people on her team had a meeting to tell her the truth about her lack of managerial skills. She is thankful to these coworkers not only for teaching her how to articulate goals with a step-by-step approach, but for the larger truth she gained form this conversation. “The lesson I learned, which I think has made a big difference for me, is the importance of telling the truth, and being in an environment where truth-telling is valued, just the way these women came to me and told me the truth about what I had done. I vowed to create an environment in which truth was important. And you know, it takes a lot of spine to tell the truth, especially in a large organization, where obfuscation is a political skill that I don’t have,” says Field.

Field has been a consultant for roughly 20 companies, and being an outsider means it has been easier to tell the truth. She has also learned the value of what she calls the “Hillary Clinton listening tour.” For the beginning three weeks at every job, she spends time with everyone, asking questions such as “What’s stopping you from being successful … What is working for you that you wish you could build on?” Then she writes a report and shares this information with her client.

Field also takes a novel approach to backing up her team members. She always tells her staff “that if something goes wrong, it’s my problem; if something goes right, it’s their success.” This works on a few levels. First, people don’t fear telling her the truth; if people think she has a crazy idea, they tell her that. If people know they won’t be blamed for a problem, they are more willing to bring up an issue. And it takes away the “individual performance” conundrum, meaning it’s not about what you did wrong, and you can try for difficult goals and it is OK to fail because Field will “take the bullet.” Lastly, Field recognizes her employees for what they do right, which doesn’t always happen in the corporate world. Again, Field says it best: “The point is to make people feel safe and make them feel like they have a chance of recognition.”

Does your company have a culture of trust? How can you make sure your employees feel safe enough to tell the truth? And how can you make sure your staff is recognized for all the ways they do their jobs well?

Linkner tells us Detroit is an “unfinished book” and breaks its story into chapters for us. In Chapter One, Henry Ford and people like him bring prosperity to the Motor City with “entrepreneurial fire.” In Chapter Two, Detroit turns to “entitlement, arrogance and hubris,” says Linkner, winding up “spinning in hopelessness and despair.”

Now we all know that the world is watching as Detroit writes Chapter Three. Linkner calls on his city and its people to follow this game plan:

• “Creativity has become the currency of success.” Innovation is vital.
• “Get scrappy.” The fire and willpower that built the Motor City is necessary for its rebirth.
• Leaders need to share one “clear vision.”
• “Celebrate what we are.” There’s no need to compare Detroit to any other city.

Linkner tells us we all are an unfinished story. We can all take Detroit’s lesions for our own lives. He asks us to seize our own moments: “Envision your own 2.0 version of both your company and yourself.” Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. What are you and your company’s strengths? What can you build upon to create a new vision? Feel the fire within and begin. Finish your own story.

Perhaps you have heard this tale before, but did you know that 3M holds 22,800 patents, and lots of these parents come from this think time? Every single person at 3M can participate in the 15 percent program because great ideas can come from anyone.

Other companies have their own version of this program. Goetz writes that “Google’s 20 percent time famously gave birth to Gmail, Google Earth, and Gmail Labs” and Hewlett-Packard Labs also extends personal creative time to its employees.

Usually people work on ideas that may have come from work time but that they “didn’t have time to follow up on.” Of course, the success of any program like this depends on its execution. Goetz tells us about integral parts of think time programs:

• Programs need to be financially supported.

• “Creative competitiveness” helps; this is a culture where “impressing peers” is important.

• Ideas can take time to flourish; often innovation happens when employees revisit old concepts that didn’t work through collaboration with coworkers or after technology has advanced.

Not only can companies gain patents or great new business opportunities through think time programs, often these programs are great for recruiting new employees. Who doesn’t want open space to foment great thought and innovative ideas?

Löscher believes business succeeds when a group works together with this kind of deep trust. People work at their highest level while also working to “make the team better.” How do you build this kind of trust? For Löscher, it’s worked to build teams with a diverse group of people, and to spend time listening and getting to know these people before he creates any change within a company. Since he has often come in as a leader to a company, he spends the first 100 days really getting to know the business, talking and really listening to as many people as possible.

Löscher also credits transparency and openness as keys to creating trust. Of course, without chemistry between team members, he points out, great teamwork just isn’t possible. With trust and chemistry, Löscher believes everyone within a leadership team can strive for both individual and team excellence. The question for a successful leadership team, says Löscher, is this: “How can we make ourselves better in every little single step that we are taking?”

In this blog post, Pink interviews Amabile, asking her why small wins are so important. She points out that reaching enormous achievements are rare, but “small wins happen all the time.” This type of progress motivates people on a daily basis.

Their research also showed “people perform better” when they were less stressed. “People are more likely to come up with a creative idea or solve a tricky problem on a day when they are in a better mood than usual. In fact, they are more likely to be creative the next day, too, regardless of that next day’s mood,” says Amabile.

Amabile also relays a good way to improve one’s work life. “Religiously protect at least 20 minutes – and, ideally, much more – every day, to tackle something in the work that matters most to you. … Then make note of any progress you made (even if it was a small win), and decide where to pick up again the next day,” she says.

Recall the endurance you needed for any sport you have ever played, or strap on your running shoes and start training for a running race: Sports teach you to keep going and to get a job done, no matter how long it takes. Bell believes the best qualities of her college coach are also excellent attributes for any boss: kindness and toughness. Bell says the physicality of sports also has helped her adhere to a difficult international travel schedule; travel is akin to an endurance sport.

Not all of Bell’s advice is sports-related. Bell advises us to “take wild advantage” of good events. Even just calling colleagues to tell them about a great thing that happened is valuable. She notes that bad stuff happens a lot, so you have to relish and share the good stuff.

She also advocates shortening your to-do list. “Dave Farr, our C.E.O., says that if you have a to-do list of 10 things, rip it and do three. Just do three,” says Bell. In other words, focus your attention on the issues that matter the most.

Bell also realizes that paying attention to the rich questions is important for her role as a mentor. “I think you want to ask [people you mentor] about being delighted in life and what would make them incredibly happy.” Of course, this is an apt question for you as well. In your work life, what would make you blissful? Aim high, just like you do on the playing field.

Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president of People Operations, points out the most significant finding for Google. This company has always believed in a hands-off approach to management, letting engineers ask for help instead of micro-managing them. “We’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you,” Mr. Bock says. “It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.”

Project Oxygen is also noteworthy because of the training programs created thanks to the research. “We were able to have a statistically significant improvement in manager quality for 75 percent of our worst-performing managers,” Mr. Bock said. For example, through on-staff coaching, a once-despised manager became a better manager.

Instead of letting staff members do their jobs in isolation, Google managers are learning how to give “clear and direct feedback,” said Mark Klenk, an engineering manager who has gained managerial skills through Project Oxygen training.

Making time for employees and being consistent are the best take-away pieces of advice for managers, says Bock.

Click here to see the Eight Good Behaviors list.

First, she writes, empathize. “Listen, and then show that you’ve heard by recapping how it looks from the team members’ point of view.” We all want to be heard, especially during or after a tough moment.

Secondly, be supportive by strategizing solutions with your staff. Offer to help with one action item, she says, but give support though letting them do what “they think needs to be done.”

Lastly, ask your staff: “Why are we doing this in the first place?” Kanter believes uplifting people by recalling higher principles and a larger perspective eases ugly situations and reenergizes everyone. This question takes us out of the hard moment, and when we dive back in, we are better able deal with difficulty.

So as you strive to be a leader and partner in a constantly challenging and often tense business world, consider the possibilities that Kanter suggests as a means to helping create a more supportive, positive and growth-oriented environment.

First, she tells us not to believe a person needs “one perfect mentor.” It’s a good idea to find a handful of trustworthy advisors. Kathy E. Kram, author of Mentoring at Work, calls this team a “developmental network.” Choose whatever number of people that works for you, and even think about asking your spouse or partner to be part of this group.

Mentoring doesn’t need to last as long as your career lasts. Sometimes you only need an hour’s worth of great advice from a person you meet on an airplane. It’s also good to remember that some of the best advice you receive will most likely come from someone who knows you well and is well-versed in your goals. Both types of advice are good, though: a one-time conversation with a stranger as well as talks with a long-term mentor.

Throw away the idea that only young people need guidance. Seek mentors whenever you need them, especially during major transitions. Lastly, know that “mentoring should be useful to both parties involved.” Gallo writes that people don’t guide someone just because they are good people. Think about what you can offer someone before you ask her to be your mentor. Even if all you can give her is a promise of assistance in the future, let your potential mentor know this when you ask her for help. All relationships have give-and-take on both sides, even mentorships.