Andrew Doust: 0:00

If you think about the assets that have been transitioned from one generation to the next, depending on the report, there's up to $15 trillion worth of wealth transitioning from one generation to the next over 10, 15 years into the hands, I would say, mostly of people who are unprepared for it. And so, if we think that is true, that even if it's a fraction of that transition, what difference could it make for that wealth to go into hands of people who know how to have great impact with that wealth?

Marco Blankenburgh: 0:29

and know how to make it sustainable.

Andrew Doust: 0:31

It's a massive multiplier effect. So I feel like even the work with a few families I do can have a massive impact on the world, and so if we can multiply the number of families we're working with, we can multiply the impact.

Marco Blankenburgh: 0:58

Welcome to the Cultural Agility Podcast, where we explore the stories of some of the most advanced intercultural practitioners from around the world to help you become culturally agile and succeed in today's culturally complex world. I'm your host, marco Blankenberg, international Director of KnowledgeWorks, where every day we help individuals and companies achieve relational success in that same complex world. Welcome everyone again to another episode of Unlocking Cultural Agility. And today I have a dear friend and colleague with me, andrew Doust, who has quite a unique job actually, and it's all about families and culture. So I am very happy today that Andrew has walked into our mini studio here in the office. So welcome, andrew. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me.

Marco Blankenburgh: 1:42

Very happy today that Andrew has walked into our mini studio here in the office. So welcome, andrew. Thanks for joining us today.

Marco Blankenburgh: 1:47

Thanks for having me.

Marco Blankenburgh: 1:48

So it is a unique topic, but it's still on the topic of culture, something that of course, at KnowledgeWorks, we're very passionate about. But tell us a little bit more about yourself, the mini version, the short version, and then we'll go into the topic of today.

Andrew Doust: 2:03

Well, if it's not clear from my accent, I'm Australian, but I have lived in Dubai for a while. I came here for three years, 18 years ago, like many, I stayed, and so now I work here, based here, but actually work with families of wealth all around the world. And so Plenitude Partners, my firm we work exclusively with families who have accumulated significant resources and are now working out how they navigate and, I guess, work with their family, with those resources.

Marco Blankenburgh: 2:28

So that's indeed quite a unique, almost like a niche in terms of specialization maybe. How did you drift into this.

Andrew Doust: 2:38

That's right. Well, to be clear, I don't work on the money side. I work on the money side, I work on the relationship side, and my observation was, a few years ago, when I was working in a family office, that I kept meeting families who were very successful financially, they'd accumulated a lot of success in their business and portfolio, but actually they weren't doing well on the things that really matter, things like their well-being, their happiness, their family relationships. I thought, well, actually the business and their wealth puts a lot of pressure on those things. They have a plan for their business, they have a plan for their estate, they have a plan for their tax, they have a plan for everything else, but not a plan to ensure their family flourishes and thrives in the midst of their success. And so I thought I wonder what it would look like to help those families. And so then I created Plenitude Partners and launched now what I'm doing a process we'll talk about.

Marco Blankenburgh: 3:30

Right, right, it almost sounds like you know. It's one thing to advise somebody on their finances, on their estate planning, etc. It's a whole different thing when you need to get personal. Why aren't more people doing that? That's a whole different thing when you need to get personal.

Andrew Doust: 3:45

Why aren't more people doing that? That's a great question. Well, I think it's easier to give people the solution around their money or around their legal structure, or around their estate plan or what they do with their will or their giving. In some ways, that's an endpoint. You say, well, here's a piece of advice, here's a plan, now go execute that.

Andrew Doust: 4:03

But when it comes to relationships, it's a different story, isn't it? And it involves our emotions. It involves our fears, our anxieties, our hopes, our dreams. It involves hurt and the way we've treated each other in the past. It involves so many things that are complex and aren't easily addressed, and certainly usually not addressed without some help from a person like me. So I think that it's not obvious what people need, but even when it is, it's not easy to help people through a journey of really personal growth and family growth, and that's really what this is. It's a journey, not a destination, and so what I take people through is not really an end point of a report, but a process to help them grow stronger as a family and as individuals so they can navigate whatever their future looks like.

Marco Blankenburgh: 4:47

Yeah, and we've had the privilege now of working together quite a bit and from the beginning, really our desire to have a meaningful, transformational impact in people's lives, in the relationships they have, starting with the relationship with themselves, but also the desire to build healthy families, in your case, or healthy cultures, because a family has a culture, even if they've never thought about it or haven't intentionally worked on it. So we'll talk more about how that synergy is growing. But why is building a healthy family culture? Why is it so important?

Andrew Doust: 5:24

Well, maybe, if I just start with two stories that give an insight into this world, that then bridges into culture. I usually ask two questions of families when I begin working with them and even to decide whether I'll work with them. The first is what do you really want more of? What do you really want more of? And for these families I'm working with it's not more wealth, they have plenty of it I really want more of. And for these families I'm working with, it's not more wealth, they have plenty of it. I mean, they obviously are working to create more, but it's not what they really want more of. And then, what do you most fear? What do you most fear? What are you anxious about? And so, in answering those two questions, I get to the heart of what really matters to them and what they feel like they need more of, and what they're most anxious to avoid.

Andrew Doust: 6:00

I remember one gentleman, when I asked him what he really wanted more of, with tears in his eyes, he said I really want my family to love each other more. He was, so you know, sitting on his lovely yacht, but it was clear that what he most longed for was that he had missed that in his family. He was missing that in his family. Another family said we really want the brokenness to stop. They had had broken marriages through their family. They were running a very significant business and they were finding that it was broken in relationships.

Andrew Doust: 6:34

And so I guess the bridge to culture is this that many of the families that have built something significant together have done so on the back of hard work, of resilience and tenacity and all those sort of things that go into building success. But along the way they've lost something. They've often lost something, and that is some sense of who they are, a sense of the love they long to have in their family. The drive to succeed often are not the things that sustain our family. Those things are often lost, and so I think culture helps us be intentional about shaping who we want to be as a family, not just what we want to do and what we want to achieve as a family. And that cultural element has to be called out and has to be intentional, and families have to want that as much the culture of love, trust, forgiveness, respect. They need to want that even more than the success of their business, Otherwise what's the point?

Marco Blankenburgh: 7:36

Sounds like, at least at a high level. You're almost. You said the families I want to work with, so there's a process of back and forth there, but it's also taking people back to more of an inside-out approach. Would that be a fair thing to say?

Andrew Doust: 7:52

Absolutely. I think that's a really good way to put it. When I speak to families, I'll say listen, this is going to be an extraordinarily difficult process. It's going to take time and it's going to be painful time and it's going to be painful. And I need you to know that, unless you're willing to do some inner work and not just your children, but you as a founder or a father, mother or couples you actually need to be prepared to do the work of transformation yourself, because if you won't transform, the family won't be different as a result of this work. It needs to come from within. So, yeah, very much a personal transformation journey. Another reason why I think a lot of people don't do this work, wow.

Marco Blankenburgh: 8:31

So at a macro level, then take us through sort of the main stations along the way. What does it look like? What does a process or a journey like that look like?

Andrew Doust: 8:40

Yeah, so when people engage Plenitude partners, we take them on a journey and the journey begins with the individual. So we have a four-stage process which, of course, you know, flexes a little bit for families depending on where they're at, but effectively the process is me, we where, how, me, we where, how, okay, okay. So the how work is I'll start there briefly, because the how work involves things like doing our estate plan, working out our investment plan, maybe doing our charitable plan, which is what other people typically do Absolutely.

Andrew Doust: 9:14

Most of this industry revolves around those things, and that's where people do most of the work. But the problem is that if you do that how work without understanding what the family wants to achieve, it won't really work. And so the good advisors in that space will certainly work with the family and say what do you want to achieve? But most of it's done in isolation, so the estate planner may not necessarily be talking to the chief investment officer and his or her responsibilities in that space, and so there's not alignment in all of the how work. But even if you have a clear vision from a family about what they want to achieve, if the family is not functioning well, they're not gonna go anywhere. That totally makes sense.

Andrew Doust: 9:53

But if the family can't function well, if the individuals in the family aren't confident in themselves and have a sense of their own purpose and well-being. And so what we do is begin at the beginning, which is the me. We do a lot of work with the individual. We help them with some profiling, we get them to know themselves better, growing confidence and maybe become more self-aware, so that when they come to the we table the conversations with the family, they can actually do that with confidence and we can hear every voice. And the we conversations are really about building trust and communication and defining the values and culture of the family, how it's going to operate together. Once they've got that, they can then look forward and say where do we want to go, what do we want to achieve together?

Andrew Doust: 10:33

But it's also collective and individual. We need the family collectively to think about that. But if the family collectively isn't also honoring the individual, then that doesn't work. So we need to help the individuals work out their future and the family work out its collective future and even whether there will be a collective future. It's not always the best thing to have a collective future, at least financially. And then finally, once that's clear, it becomes a lot easier to do. All the how work, the how work falls out of that and you can brief your advisors more clearly. You can actually get alignment on all those things. That's kind of the overview of the process, yeah fantastic.

Marco Blankenburgh: 11:10

So you alluded already that in most cases multiple generations are involved. That also means these generations have lived a very different life. They might have a very different relationship to the wealth of the family. What are some of the challenges that you? See either across the generations or, in general, amongst the families you work with.

Andrew Doust: 11:33

Well, the families are forged in the battle to survive, in the battle to create something, usually their business of financial worth. But having established that and won that battle, these families are not likely to be poor anytime soon. The next battle is to ensure that the comfort that that provides doesn't destroy the ingredients of the success, and so that is one of the challenges that actually, for the founder maybe if I say, if I use the word G, it's generation, generation one and two, for example they know what it took, the sacrifice that took to build something and for them, building that thing, that business, was more important than anything, often than family, and that has its own challenges. But actually, when they see the next generation coming, say generation three and four, for whom that isn't their reality, they think well, why don't you love my baby as much as I love my baby? Why aren't you willing to, you know, sacrifice everything for its existence, like I am? And the reason is because, by the third generation they're saying well, the business and the fruit of the business, and by now it's probably a portfolio of businesses or investments, it's more than just one thing.

Andrew Doust: 12:43

By the third and fourth generation they're saying well, your purpose was to build it, and so you were sort of serving the business, the family was serving the business. Now we want the assets built to serve us. We want to actually use these assets as a tool for what we want to achieve ourselves. And, of course, the next generation have different dreams and aspirations. It's not necessarily the same dream and aspiration as the founder, and so that clash is really significant, this desire for more meaningful contribution myself, as a generation three or four, to do something I'm proud of, to create my own thing, not just inherit somebody else's. Imagine if you're raised in one of these families and say congratulations, your job is to basically continue my job, and you say well, I don't want your job, I wanted to make my own job, I wanted to make my own success. Thanks very much. And so that tension you can imagine plays out in lots of different ways.

Marco Blankenburgh: 13:40

Yeah, and in performance management, one of the things we always see is that good people want to be measured, and if there's nothing to measure you by, then you see a lot of uh, easy riders in the movies, for instance. You know, born into wealth and just run, you know, enjoy it, yeah, yeah, um. But then you see others, you know, on, maybe on the other side of the spectrum, who who might say I don't want to have anything to do with it, I want to make my own way or you know, make my own mark?

Marco Blankenburgh: 14:22

what do you see amongst you know those, those generations that follow?

Andrew Doust: 14:26

yeah, I mean a really wide spectrum, and it depends in part on the culture of the family. You know, in some families and one I'm particularly thinking of, the the expectation was that the children would follow in the father's footsteps and would do what he did and give everything to the business until it was decided that those children were not necessary anymore and they were effectively discarded from the business, having thought that their life would be all about a role in the business. At one point they were just put on the bench and said not needed anymore. And so you can imagine them living their later life thinking I'm a spare. I'm not even a spare, I was just put on the bench and forgotten about. That's crushing. And so there's that sense of I failed because I couldn't make it where I was most expected to. That can be very debilitating, and sometimes people are put into roles where they shouldn't be given that responsibility because they're not capable or suited for it. They have other passions and gifts. And then you'll of course have others who see their future as completely secure because they've got all the financial resources they could ever dream of.

Andrew Doust: 15:29

I think the stereotype is that we have these spoiled kids who just live off the fat of the past. There is certainly some of that. Not usually in the families I work with, because I think it's self-selecting Families I work with don't seem to have that as part of their culture. Most families are concerned about that. Most kids actually, I think, want to prove themselves. Most kids want to actually make something of themselves. The battle they face is that they're always in the shadow of the achievements of the past. So whatever I do is not going to match up to what grandpa did or grandma did, because theirs was such significant achievements, at least in one sense, financially. What can I ever do? So you can see, for many they start life feeling like whatever path they pursue, they're going to fail because it won't match up.

Marco Blankenburgh: 16:16

Next to the ones that have come before them and it's fascinating just listening to you that you know, we often think of oh yeah, if only I had a little bit more money, if, if you're, you don't have it. But then, listening to you, it's like once people have it it, it comes with a whole bunch of problems and challenges. How does that then impact the family culture? What starts happening when, when these people start?

Marco Blankenburgh: 16:43

you know pulling in different directions and in their relationship with wealth and relationship with one another. How does that play out in a negative way?

Andrew Doust: 16:51

yeah. So, uh, I'll just comment, before I answer that, the comment on the complexities of wealth, because I think it's important to understand that. Yes, for most of us who don't have what these families have, it looks like our lives would much better better with more. If only we, if only, yeah. And so if only-ism is a real thing, isn't it? If only I had this, then I would be happier. And so what I want to encourage families to lean into is the idea of contentment which is not circumstantial, contentment which is based on the science of flourishing, which says actually good relationships, which is based on the science of flourishing, which says actually good relationships, enough, but not too much, income, the opportunity to strive and do something for myself, and to taste achievement these are all things that Harvard and other schools have researched on to talk about what flourishing looks like. So we want to understand the idea of what flourishing looks like first, and then, if we actually understand that, then we'll be less obsessed by how much I have or how much other people have.

Andrew Doust: 17:49

But in the context of family, inevitably people are comparing how much does my sibling have or my cousin have, or why did they get that opportunity and I didn't? And I think what happens is that the money or the opportunities to be in the business or to play a part in the family, that is really a proxy for love. Am I really loved? Am I really accepted? Do I have to perform to earn my place? And so that idea of performance that people feel in order to be accepted drives so much of, I think, the unhealthy cultures in these families, where they are wondering whether they are good enough, whether they'll ever be really accepted enough, and also, if somebody has more, that's because they are loved more.

Andrew Doust: 18:34

So, yes, there are some very unhealthy dynamics that run through families like this, when you have this abundance and you'd think, well, the abundance is all they want. But actually it's the comparison that starts robbing the family of some of the joy they could have. There's a great phrase, you may have heard it the comparison is the thief of joy. The thief of joy. Most of the families have more than enough. In fact, all of the ones I work with do. But if somebody has more than I and the reason to me looks like because you were favored and I wasn't that's pretty, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marco Blankenburgh: 19:09

I'm reminded as you speak of, uh, something that my mentor from singapore used to say. He's 84, 85 years old now. He used to say you know, does it add value to you or do you add value to it? And he was always saying if it has to add value to me, maybe money or a car or a yacht or whatever else, we have an unhealthy relationship with it.

Andrew Doust: 19:36

Yeah.

Marco Blankenburgh: 19:38

So we talked about some of the challenges. About some of the challenges, Do you have a story of sort of a turnaround where that unhealthy environment of family said we don't want this anymore? You? Even started with that today. What does it look like when that gets turned around?

Andrew Doust: 19:56

Well, a couple of stories I'll share. One is with a family I worked with, where the siblings approached me to ask for some help, and when they described their father, who's in his 70s and they had a fairly large business to do I thought I'm not sure if their father is going to want to do this work.

Andrew Doust: 20:14

It was one of those situations where I thought the kids will benefit, but the father probably won't want to engage. And so we agreed and the father actually agreed that I would work with the kids. The kids are in their 30s, and so I was working with them for about three months and I said, listen, I think at the beginning of this, if we do this job well, the father is going to look at the changes in you and he'll be intrigued and maybe want to get involved. And so, sure enough, in three months time I get a call from the father saying what have you done to my kids? They're talking to me.

Andrew Doust: 20:49

They're listening to me, they're respecting me and they're respecting each other. There's a change in energy, there's a change in their manner that I'm intrigued by. Can I get involved? Wow, which is great. And then so then I worked with the father for about three to four months on the similar things that I'd been doing with the kids, and towards the end of that period I get a call from the kids saying what have you done to our dad? He's not who he was. He actually listens better, he wants to know our opinion, he's willing to be receptive to our ideas. It's not what it was, and so I worked with that family for a couple of years and still do on and off, but it was a really clear turnaround in their relationships that then had a profound impact on their role as owners together, and so, even though no family is perfect, of course, they continue to have a much better relationship and a much better functioning family unit that then can own and run their business more effectively.

Andrew Doust: 21:44

One other brief story I was running a family retreat in London a few years ago, and it was the end of it was a culmination of about a year and a half work with this family who own a very significant business and the patriarch before the workshop and this was a whole family workshop, so three generations were together he took me aside before the workshop at the hotel I owned and he said listen, I need to tell you that this has been perhaps the most painful and invasive and difficult processes I've ever experienced.

Andrew Doust: 22:18

Nobody has asked the questions you've confronted me with. It has been at times, really distasteful. It's not a great start to the workshop. And then came the but. And he said but it was absolutely essential for us to be where we are today. If it wasn't for this, we couldn't have this meeting as a family. And he said thank you, and actually he did that in private, but actually, even more significantly, in the workshop he repeated that sentiment to the whole family, which was to me a really great evidence of the turnaround in that family. Again, every family needs to keep working on this. It's not like you go to the gym, get fit and then stop. You have to keep working on it and the families that do, they succeed.

Marco Blankenburgh: 23:00

Well, you know, in our work we see that no matter who you connect with, you're always building culture. And the question is are you intentionally doing that in a positive way? And the same goes for families Every time they meet, they're building culture.

Andrew Doust: 23:17

And so they're the disciplines of culture, aren't they? Because the ingredients, the behavior that got people to where they were successful, as I mentioned earlier, is not the behavior that will sustain families, and what wealth enables is greater isolation, greater independence, greater separation from each other. They're the enemies of creating culture. How can a family create culture? If they never see each other, or if they are so independent they don't need each other anymore, and so if we want to build family culture, we have to rediscover and actually be intentional about creating those things that build culture.

Marco Blankenburgh: 23:49

That's pretty profound, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know it's always dangerous to ask can you repeat those? But yeah, the enemies of culture. Yeah, independence, self-sufficiency, no need to ask for help.

Andrew Doust: 24:04

No need to ask for help. I'm self-contained. And, of course, culture is all about being effective collectively, more effective collectively than we can ever be individually. And I like to describe, too, culture as kind of the invisible hand that guides our decisions and our actions and also helps us withhold the harmful impulses we might have towards each other, the harmful impulses we might have towards each other. So in families where they're really intentional about culture, instead of me hearing from you something that triggers me and think well, you know, you're the favorite sibling, so of course you'd think that I withhold that and say is that going to be helpful to build you up and to build us stronger together? And may I actually pause at that point and say can you help me understand a little bit more about why you feel that way? That's building culture, because it's saying I care more about understanding you than I do about judging you. I care more about helping you and having empathy for you in your circumstances than I do about winning. That's culture.

Marco Blankenburgh: 25:02

Yeah, there's one tool that we use in our perception management toolbox. You're actually describing it in the examples you give. So you know, often we get emotionally triggered because of something somebody said. Yeah, sometimes what they say is is a conclusion that they drew too early. Yeah, they don't have enough information available, but but then if that emotional trigger comes, I want to punch back, you know, or I'll disengage and walk away. But this whole idea of we talk about DIR, describing first, then only concluding and interpreting and then connecting that to an emotion, how do you feel about what we just discussed? How do you?

Marco Blankenburgh: 25:46

feel about what we just discussed, and we often find that exactly what you just said, going back and hey, can you explain where you're coming from, or can you tell me more about how you ended up thinking this way and not being triggered or driven by the emotions that that might unleash, especially if there is?

Andrew Doust: 26:06

some baggage where there is a repeat of that same pattern.

Marco Blankenburgh: 26:08

Yeah, undoing, that really requires us to go back to you know. Tell me the backstory. Where did this come from?

Andrew Doust: 26:17

and filling in the descriptive details?

Marco Blankenburgh: 26:19

yeah, so that we both get a fuller picture of, of, uh, understanding from your perspective and from my perspective.

Andrew Doust: 26:27

Well, I, I confess, because we've worked together, dir is actually part of the toolkit I use with families. That's been so powerful because it has done exactly that. It's stopped people rushing to judgment and a triggered response that has built up over generations. And remember, in organizations you'll get a lot of turnover. You might be in an organization for five years, but in families you're there for life and these uh patterns of behavior take a long time to undo. And providing tools like dir and I use the emotional intelligence profiling that knowledge works, provides and helps me with, and they're all such good tools to help people grow in self-awareness and help them see that actually I need to look at myself, do the inner work, if I want us to grow stronger together as a family.

Marco Blankenburgh: 27:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Now you've already touched on a number of more sort of technical steps that you take, and it also sounds like every family is different. But what are some typical steps that you take in those four macro level steps that you've? You've already explained at the beginning yeah, what does it look like?

Andrew Doust: 27:30

yeah, so at the beginning of the journey the me, the me phase, for example I'll start the process with an intake assessment, a family strength assessment. It's about 70 questions based that I've refined over the last three or four years. That helped me get an understanding of where the family is strong and where they may need to develop, and every individual completes that. And then what we can do is look at the individuals and see where they might be needing to grow, and then we look at the family overall where they need to grow. The power of that tool is that it's them critiquing themselves rather than me as the expert saying here's what's wrong, and so it then creates this wonderful conversation when we come to the we, about how they deal with those things. There's things to do with people's character and identity in there. There's things to do with our relational strength, things to do with our governance as well and our succession planning. They're more, more technical areas, but they're important. That's an intake assessment, if you like, and provides a baseline. I then also do, as I mentioned, the, the agile eq assessments to help people develop their own sense of understanding and awareness. That includes debriefs with every individual in the family. So if it's a large family of, say, 20, I'm now meeting with 20 people, usually three or four times in that me phase, and we'll do love languages. That's a helpful tool as well.

Andrew Doust: 28:42

Sometimes strength finders, different tools that help people just grow in their insights and understanding. I'll also just get the backstory of every person and under, and partly my goal is to make sure I know the individuals better than anybody else does, because when I get into the we phase, which is about bringing the family together, yeah, I need to know all the pieces that might actually come out and also need to know the things that do need to be brought out. And so in the we so the individual, the me work is much more individual conversations and tools. The we is much more around getting the family together, and sometimes it begins with a look back when have we got to? What are the narratives that are really painful in our family that we've always brushed under the carpet? Inevitably, there are things that people have formed assumptions about one another and their responses to each other are based on sometimes faulty information or information that's 10 years old, and they haven't allowed one another to grow and become different people as we all do through our life, and so a lot of it is about looking back, sometimes going through a forgiveness journey, saying, actually, is there things you need to forgive and let go of? That's hard and that can bring about a lot of emotional anxiety and challenges, and sometimes that's where other providers, experts, might be involved sometimes psychologists and counselors who can provide specialist expertise where that's needed.

Andrew Doust: 30:02

But the we work is really about having the family come together, build trust and understanding. We practice things like DIR. We practice things like reflective listening, which helps us grow better at how we understand each other. We rehearse that. We practice it. We do it every time we meet. We also work on who do we want to be as a family, which is really the essence of culture. Who do we want to be, not what do we want to do, who do we want to do, who do we want to become, and we think about those cultural developments or attributes that we want to characterize our family. So we do that work in the we work yeah.

Marco Blankenburgh: 30:33

so it's interesting you, you mentioned four different assessments one that the intake assessment you've developed yourself, and then even some psychometric tools, which is quite a wide variety, so all the way from emotional intelligence to strength finders to even love languages. I'm just curious why did you land on that cocktail? Because I'm familiar with love languages. I've even used it in our family, but to use it professionally in an environment like yours? Tell me a bit more about that.

Andrew Doust: 31:05

Well, I mean part of the insights to these tools obviously came through my relationship with you and my understanding of knowledge, works and the things you provide that help conversations of substance. But I was also thinking that because my clients are family units where they have so many other dimensions that are emotional, that need to be unpacked, and I needed to have tools that could help trigger and have those conversations. And so you know, the disk profile is great, but the agile EQ is a sort of a more focus on the emotional responses and that was helpful in a family context. Love languages likewise, although in some ways I'm a little tool agnostic, although they're all helpful because the goal of the tool is to create the conversation, the insights and the conversation. And if I've got common language created through the tools, it's so much easier and people have a sense of, oh, that's me and I can be okay about me.

Andrew Doust: 31:57

So when people, for example, do the Agile EQ, they often say is this okay? Where am I? Am I okay? Is that good, is it bad? Because you are where you are. That's that's you embrace it. Now let's help you embrace that and bring that to the conversations with the family, knowing that actually, if you only stay in that dot, that place. You may not be able to bridge into other conversations if necessary. Yeah, so it's really about getting people to grow in empathy and appreciation of others. So that's it is a cocktail, and, but sometimes people are struggling with the sense that I just don't know what I'm good at. So that's why strength finders can be helpful and other tools as well.

Marco Blankenburgh: 32:34

Yeah, and I think also what I see time and again tools like that are, you know, helping people also with a neutral language, and and it it shows them you mentioned it already that it's not a it's not about how high I score or where I should be. It's where I am and this is what I need to embrace, as you just mentioned, and and that creates that freedom to just engage to be yourself and to engage yeah so you use an upfront assessment.

Marco Blankenburgh: 33:04

You might use some psychometric tools as you move into the journey. You already shared a few stories. What else have you seen? Because you mentioned the dad versus the kids. I assume sometimes you even work with more than two generations. So I'm curious, as you work with families around the world, right? So how are some of those stories potentially different? Um, so I'm curious, as you work with families around the world, right? So, um, how is it? Uh, how are some of those stories potentially different?

Andrew Doust: 33:32

okay. So here's one out of, uh, out of the uk again, a family that went through and still uh, sort of working through the journey. But when we got, we did the me and the we work, and what that revealed is that the individual so that the mom and dad, and then some kids the kids are in their 30s. When I did the individual work with the kids in their branches because some of them are married it was very clear that what they wanted for their future was different. This really comes to the where work, so me, we, where and as I looked at what each individual branch wanted from their family for themselves, they were different, and so we were able to have a really good conversation about hey, do these different desires or aspirations? How will they work if we keep them all together? And the answer was actually it may not work. So do we want to keep it all together or do we want to think about an independent future?

Andrew Doust: 34:27

So they've gone through the process of actually demerging their business and their assets. The children have taken their portion and are now building their own things, and the parents still have a residual, a significant residual, which they'll need to work out what to do with through their estate. But it was an acknowledgement that actually we don't want to run together or own together everything that's been built, because that may not be best for our relationships and we've got our own things we want to do. So it's freeing for them to think we don't have to have this collective future. Not every family is free to do that, because some families are structured in a way that's just not possible. But what it did allow us to do is actually have the conversation of what really matters to you where are you going and how can we help you do that, Because the greatest goal of the family isn't taking care of its wealth, it's taking care of each other, and so if the wealth stops us doing that, we need to find another way, and so in this way it was possible to do, if you like a demerger, and so in this way it was possible to do if you like a demerger.

Andrew Doust: 35:26

That doesn't stop them being collective as a family. They can still do shared family services, which they're doing. They can still have family gatherings and they can have some family social activities and even giving activities and other things. It just means their main economic activities are now separate. So that's a good example of whether where, when you look at the collective and the individual, really makes sense.

Marco Blankenburgh: 35:46

Yeah, so in other words, there isn't a formula.

Andrew Doust: 35:51

And I think that's the risk, isn't it? Because so much of the industry says you must keep a dynastic future for your family because if you don't, you're robbing them. Well, my argument is you're not really robbing your kids. You've given them a great foundation to build the best things we do in life. We build ourselves or build with others. Yeah, it's much more fun to build something than to receive something in their caretaker. So how about you give your kids some building blocks to go and build their future and see what they can do with it? Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's a much, much more fun journey than than just taking care of the assets somebody else's bill it's really interesting.

Marco Blankenburgh: 36:26

And which and which continents have you had a chance to work on? Is it every continent except for Antarctica?

Andrew Doust: 36:32

Yeah, almost so. I do work in Europe and the UK and the US. Here in Dubai I'm working with families from the region, some from India and Pakistan and even families from parts of Africa. So it is a wide range. So I have had the chance to look at the sort of cross-section of the way different families do things.

Marco Blankenburgh: 36:55

That's great. That's great. Now, the generational differences. We quickly touched on that. But what are you seeing? Are there global trends that you see amongst families? Shifts in the way they think, shifts in the way maybe the younger generation thinks. Anything you could share about that?

Andrew Doust: 37:16

Yeah, I think some of the families from this part of the world, and maybe in Asia, are much more collective in their thinking. So we'll just talk briefly, generationally. And then there is much more collective future obligation. It's's, it's a communal focus, yeah, and so when kids go off and get educated in usually america or uk or elsewhere, they come back with much more individualistic mindsets, which is, hey, you are your future, it's in your hands, you do what you want, um, and so that can be a wrestle. The parents saying, well, well, you have some responsibilities. And they're saying, well, thanks, but I want to do my own thing.

Andrew Doust: 37:52

So that tension I think a trend would be that because families of wealth who have maybe traditionally been community-oriented, tribal-oriented, and now seeing their kids come back with a more individualistic mindset, wrestling to know what that means for how they transition their wealth into the next generation, because the kids come back and say, well, this is a great foundation, but I want to do my own thing. Thanks very much. I don't want to feel stifled by the family's expectations of me. So part of the tension I help families navigate is this that in this difference between my own aspirations and the family's, um, you know, communal vision, yeah, collective vision. I want to fuel people's desire and aspiration for their own thing. That's important, yeah. If they don't feel I had that, they just feel stifled and I'll just be compliant with the family but ultimately resent that, yeah. On the other hand, we don't want them to neglect the responsibilities they have their parents and to the family and to the assets that have been created. So just helping them navigate that tension is key.

Andrew Doust: 38:51

I think the other thing that I would say is that kids are coming out of university now with a greater desire not just to accumulate more wealth, but to actually be more impactful with that wealth, and so their meaning, their drive for meaning and purpose is greater, I think, than their parents was. And that's hard for parents who are saying, well, we built our business on coal. Kids are saying, well, thanks, but that's not aligned with my beliefs, that's not aligned with my values, we can't continue doing that. Parents are saying, well, that's what we've always done. So I think that sense of social impact and the need for meaning and purpose in what I do is an increasing driver that's changing the shape of portfolios in families. As this next generation take the reins of those portfolios, they'll be asking, as they already are, their portfolio managers. Show us how this is making a difference of the things I care about, meaning returns, if you like, more than just financial returns.

Marco Blankenburgh: 39:49

When you describe that, you're actually saying that you see that as a trend across the continents.

Andrew Doust: 39:54

Absolutely yeah, I've seen it with every generation and every continent.

Marco Blankenburgh: 39:59

Fascinating. Yeah, Two weeks ago I met a gentleman who is right in the middle of that tension. That's the oldest son and he described to me how he felt that there was no room to have that conversation and, as a result, he's in a commitment now to the business and to the family and I asked him so when do you think your family would be willing to have that conversation again? He said, well, I need to be in for five years now. Yeah, wow, and he had sort of made peace of peace with it. Yeah, but it was also. It wouldn't have been his first choice well, it's common.

Andrew Doust: 40:41

That is a story of, uh, some business here or in the region with some of their kids who are saying to their father hey, uh, why are we growing so much? Why, what are you trying to achieve? You know you're close to your retirement age. What's the point of all this? They're asking what's the point, and I don't think he knows the point other than the only way he and this is true for many the only way they need to know to value their life's work and to feel like they are making progress is through the growth of their assets or their business. And so if you say, hey, that's not success, and kids are saying that's not success for us, then that really rips out their foundations of what is so.

Andrew Doust: 41:25

I think it's a very, very um. Well, it's a conversation I navigate a lot, trying to understand the drivers of the parents, often the parents who are saying growth, growth, growth. And the kids are saying what's the point? What's it all for? Yeah, what's the purpose of this world If it's not to achieve the things we care about in the world? What's the point?

Andrew Doust: 41:42

Yeah, if we're just making money which we maybe just then give away. Well, that's great, but actually we want to make money that in a way that makes a difference to the things we care about Much more integrated.

Marco Blankenburgh: 41:52

So is that more moving away from hardcore enterprise to more social enterprise? Maybe?

Andrew Doust: 41:58

I think it is, and I think when you see family members who have access to private equity funds or venture capital funds in their families, as many now do, what ventures they're giving birth to are much more socially driven. I can think of at least three or four where the kids say you know, obviously we want this to be a financial success, but the reason we're doing it is because we want to, you know, restore health and well-being to this community, or we want to, you know, do these things that will actually protect and preserve some of the environment that we're concerned about. So there's always a social story, not just a business story.

Andrew Doust: 42:32

yeah, um, now some of them have the luxury of capital they would probably never have if they had to go and compete for it in the open market sure so there is that and some of the parents will say, well, it's great, they've got their cause and their impact, but this has got to make money, and it's true it does. I mean these things they need to actually be self-sustaining. It can't just be project, but nonetheless it is interesting to see when, given the opportunity to create something, they're creating things that are impactful and in ways that matter to them.

Marco Blankenburgh: 42:59

It's really hopeful to hear that I think so too.

Marco Blankenburgh: 43:02

Yeah. So they do have a lot that they are responsible for and should be, but also, you know, in the bigger scheme of things, be held accountable for. So it's great to hear that those trends into, into transformation and impact that's happening as you're sharing the stories. You know you've alluded already to this idea of am I accountable to the family, to the community, or can I be accountable to myself and where people get educated, what they get exposed to? So that's one of our 12 dimensions on the cultural mapping inventory. There's another one that I was thinking about is that whole idea of how you become. You become by achieving something or you become because it's been ascribed to you. You know you have the same dilemma with uh, in a much different way, but if you're the son of the soccer coach, you are ascribed to be the son of the soccer coach, if you're the child of the religious leader, if you are the son of the king, et cetera.

Marco Blankenburgh: 44:10

But in these families that sounds like there's that same dilemma. Yeah, so we talked a little bit about you know they want to go and achieve for themselves. Talk a little bit more about this. This, the pressure of being ascribed to be the child off yeah what does that do to people and how do they deal with that?

Andrew Doust: 44:30

yeah. So I have these conversations often in families. Parents who have gone to great lengths to give their children freedom say you know, you're a different person to me, you don't have to be me, go and be you, which is a wonderful thing, and many parents I work with believe that and I do want their children to do that. The trouble is the kids don't feel it Because they feel a pressure to be like their parents. They feel the pressure from everybody else. They feel, gee, I thought you'd be more than you are, given the family you've come from and that sense of I just don't feel like I'm enough. Given all that has been invested in me, I should be more than I am.

Andrew Doust: 45:10

That is so common and so crushing.

Andrew Doust: 45:12

And it's, um, the narrative of failure that runs through so many. I think the narrative even that I have to well, feeling like an imposter, I don't belong here, I'm not worthy of what I've received, and, um, what that is really crushing. So I think for helping parents realize how crushing it is, or potentially crushing it is, not because of what they've said, necessarily the narrative they have themselves and also what they might hear from their friends. So you're always living in the shadow of the achievements of others and what I want to help people say is hey look, success isn't the scale of what has been created before. Success has been faithful to create impact with whatever you've been given to create impact with and enjoy that. It may be that you're a teacher and you get to impact 25 kids a year and see them grow over that year. Enjoy that and take great pride in that impact because you're using your gifts to actually help others do better in life, but you're also, you know, put the finger on something fundamental is that identity is not in what you have.

Marco Blankenburgh: 46:15

It's knowing who you are and knowing how you can bring that to bear on the world, and I think also the narrative. You talked about that multiple times in our conversation today, that what narratives are running through the family what conversations are parents having with their children, how that shapes identity as opposed to oh you're the son of or the daughter of. So yeah, how to get from just being ascribed to actually having a firm identity that might exist even if the wealth wasn't there.

Andrew Doust: 46:52

Yeah, that's the key, isn't it? I am. I think you've highlighted exactly the work I try and do with next gen and families and we've done together actually, and some of the work we've done together. But that's so key because if I, if I, rely on my ascribed identity, I'll always doubt myself and I'll always feel like I'm only safe in the tribe and I'll always feel resentful because I, you know, I'm still dependent on, on, on the tribe, and I'll always feel resentful because I'm still dependent on the tribe, if you like.

Andrew Doust: 47:16

But if I actually have the chance to grow my confidence and that's why I do a lot of this intake work if I get a chance to say, hey, I'm uniquely made, I've got great gifts, I want to actually help people with those gifts and if I do that, that'll be satisfying and rewarding. And if I can see that as success rather than accumulation of success, then actually that's my measuring stick. I can feel good about that. You know, what I want the families to do is say let's change the narrative of what we celebrate. So when family gatherings happen, typically it's a, it's a review of the family's um, you know portfolio and things have gone up and that's great, so we're celebrating that.

Andrew Doust: 47:54

The trouble is, what it says is that's success? And so what I encourage families to do is say no, when you get together, it's important to have a business update, but let's do that after we've done the personal updates. Let's hear what people have been doing in their lives, the sort of wins they've been having. If somebody's gotten through a difficult time, or somebody's taken on a new job or somebody's seen success in whatever field or vocation they've chosen, let's talk and celebrate those things and make that the focus, and really a byproduct or a secondary element should be the business, because, remember, the fruit of the business is simply a tool. The profits we generate should be considered a tool to achieve all those other things that matter, rather than a goal in itself.

Marco Blankenburgh: 48:36

yeah, it's not a good goal it's sort of shifting away from the doing to the being.

Andrew Doust: 48:42

Yeah, the who I we've used this phrase together before, but the who before the do, yeah, so give people really think about who they are and who they want to become one of. When I'm getting families in their where work to work that out, I get them to think about where. In a few ways, I get them to think about who they want to become as a family. I say, hey, look fast forward 10 years with your kids. What would you like to be able to say about your family? Yeah, you know. Oh, we still talk to each other, we love each other, we're always there for each other. Well, think about what you're wanting to become as a family and now think about the ingredients that will get you there. You've got to share dinners together, care for each other, all those sort of ingredients and habits. But the who piece dominates. Who do you want to become as a person? Who do you want your children to become?

Andrew Doust: 49:33

Many families want their kids to kind of be able to be resilient and able to make it in the world. But actually they raise them in a zoo and they provide them all the comforts they need so that all the risk is taken out. And so they're surprised when the who the kids are is ones who are dependent and not able to make it on their own. So starting with the who we want to become is the fundamental question for all of this. It's a much. It's really a question of character. Yeah, character, the family, which is really culture. Character, the individual, which is their identity and sense of purpose, and what they do raising them in the zoo.

Marco Blankenburgh: 50:06

the uh the. You know that we use the, the three colors of worldview. Yes, it's one of the tools we use, and this whole idea behind it is that you create cultures where all three worldview drivers can become present. So, instead of you know, super protective yeah, which actually, in what you just described, becomes disempowering to people, it becomes inhibiting.

Marco Blankenburgh: 50:32

as opposed to that, to how do we create a culture that's empowering and that's life giving to its members? How do we honor the individuals, the family, what has been entrusted to us, how do we do right by one another from a, you know, governance policy, procedure, estate planning, etc. Point of so, this litmus test that we call this idea of behind the three colors worldview, creating cultures where you do right by people, you honor people and you're empowering the way you engage with one another, the way you make decisions.

Marco Blankenburgh: 51:08

If you take that sort of as a summary of the cultures to create, can you talk more about that? How have you seen people shift to doing right by each other, to honoring the individual, the family, the estate, the bigger cause to become empowering as opposed to?

Andrew Doust: 51:24

you know the deliberating to disempower yeah, now let me share a negative story first and then maybe turn it into a positive or at least find a positive story. But this is not an uncommon situation where a strong founder who has built a significant business and has kept a tight control over everything in the business and everything in the family. So the rules he's used or she's used to build their business and their fortune, they bring those into the family and it's very directed and it's very controlling and it's very power and fear based. If I step out of line, maybe I'll be pushed out of the family or I won't get what everybody else gets. Massive imbalance of power in families of wealth like these, because so much of they feel like their future depends on what the founder decides, and so that's an unhealthy culture that is too focused on power and everything. Everything goes up, yeah, um, and everybody feels like their future is entirely dependent on that person who holds all the power. Yeah, and, and so in the families where I get to work over a long time, I get to say, hey, your future isn't dependent on what he or she decides for you, because if you've got and discovered now your own sense of purpose and your own sense of identity and you are building your own economic future that isn't just dependent on handouts from the family, then actually you can actually approach your father or mother or parents as a peer or a partner instead of a parent.

Andrew Doust: 52:55

And so many families operate, even with kids in their 60s and 40s and 60s, as a hierarchical family model, and it shouldn't be that way. What should happen is it should become a partner and a peer model Sure, they're still your parents, you'll honor them. A partner and a peer model Sure, they're still your parents, you'll honor them. But instead of the power all residing in that one branch, the generation above it ought to be a power sharing model, and so helping families through that and I've seen that's a pretty hard battle actually is to shift that perspective. But where I have seen that the family I mentioned earlier about the kids, where they say what did you do with my father? I think they've actually managed that. I think they've managed to create a partnership model for the way they run their family now that actually appropriately uses power. It honors the individual but recognizes there is authority in the father, and I think they've done it in a really, really healthy way. But that, to me, is where families ought to move towards.

Marco Blankenburgh: 53:52

And I think that's also something you can pass on to the next generation and the next generation, because that super hierarchical all power resides with the person at the top eventually disintegrates. Yeah.

Andrew Doust: 54:04

Well, especially if you then move to a multi-branch model. It can't be so. You've got to kind of. There's one thing I'm working with and I was talking about these issues and the need for a transition from the sort of hierarchical model to much more of a peer and partner model. And I said, look, while you are alive you can help bring that about, because we need the kids to work that way. And he said, to use the cricket analogy, you mean we need to bat in a few overs before the innings begins. That's to you know, for those who don't know cricket.

Marco Blankenburgh: 54:36

We'll cricket you for being an Australian.

Andrew Doust: 54:38

But the reality was that he needed to have his kids practicing a partnership model with him as a partner, not the director before he died. Now, four days after that conversation, he died Wow, before he died. Now, four days after that conversation, he died. And so we're now having to piece together a partnership model. They've never had experience of it, they've never known it because he's always been the power figure, and so bringing that power, healthy use of power and honoring the individual, but also recognizing authority, that's the tension. I guess another one would be around honor and shame and right and wrong A situation where a father was needing to move his son out of a role in the business because he was not appropriate to run it anymore. Now, a lot of shame associated with that. So, anyway, a deal was done, if you like, that enabled that to happen, but in the process of the deal, so that son's out of that role, in the process of the deal, he was provided a bonus that was probably well in excess of what would be commercially realistic or explainable. And so now that one sibling has lost his job there's some shame has a bonus and now the right and wrong perspective of other siblings saying that's not fair.

Andrew Doust: 56:03

What about me? So you can see here the challenge of trying to honor somebody, but then do it in a way that creates another problem, which is that doesn't seem fair. Yeah, it's not doing right. Everybody exactly, and so you know the conversations with other family members. Hey, listen, uh, you need to understand the, or try and understand the perspective of your father and what he was trying to achieve. It may not feel fair to you, but in a sense it doesn't matter, does it? Because you have more than enough and it's not like you're going to be deprived because he was provided more. Um, so let's just think about it from a from an honor perspective. It was a way to honor the son, even though it doesn't feel fair to you. You're not really losing out on anything, yeah, um, but, but it might feel like it's um. Well, I mean, let's say, look some, some peels feel bitter to swallow. Just swallow it and get on with it, because there's no point letting that ruin your family future.

Marco Blankenburgh: 57:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah wow, I really appreciate the examples, the stories you've shared. We've had the privilege of working together and as you do the work with the families, of course you get to know their businesses and that's become the crossover. So not just providing assessments for the family work, but then also working with businesses that these families own and vice versa. So it's been our privilege to work with companies that are family owned and then, of course, once family members are to confide in us, we start to hear a little bit of of the challenges behind behind closed doors. And being able to introduce you as a trusted partner has been has been a lot of joy and and it's been really powerful to sort of cross-pollinate and synergize together that way. So hopefully we'll keep on doing that into the future.

Andrew Doust: 57:59

But what does the future hold? Well, just on that. I mean, I think that partnership we have with those families where there is a business is so powerful because, actually, the family challenges are often brought about through seasons of transition know they're exposed in seasons and transition when kids getting older and think about what's next for my life, what's next for my parents, what they're gonna do with a business, we're gonna do it the world, all that sort of stuff, yeah. But it's also true usually and often for the founder, they're in a season of transition and wondering what's next. And so the way where they've run their organization, which is often very, very dependent on a founder or founding team, it needs to go through a transition to building strong leadership, taking leadership which is centralized into one which is more collaborative and that's what KnowledgeWorks does so well and then helping go from personality driven to culture in the organization. So I'm really excited that we've had the chance, and'll continue to have the chance, to do that.

Marco Blankenburgh: 58:50

Yeah, and the other thing that really gets me excited is this whole idea that you're busy building the family culture. But it's not always the case that that family culture is either clear to the people who run their businesses, sometimes not even clear to the family themselves, and then the business is run in such a radically different way than what the family believes in or wants to stand for. And building that connect between clear understanding of the family culture but then also allowing that to flow into the way their businesses are run or the way they do philanthropy, etc. I think that creates also a much more sustainable future. I think that creates also a much more sustainable future, but also it gives the family something to be proud of when that culture of their family starts to show up in their business, starts to show up in the philanthropy, the way they make decisions, the way they allocate their resources.

Andrew Doust: 59:58

So how do you see that? Going to the future? Yeah, I mean, I think what this work has proven to me is there's an extraordinary need for this type of approach to work with families of wealth. So my hope and dream would be that every family of wealth actually every family, but every family of wealth alongside of developing their investment strategy, their philanthropic plan and their estate plan strategy, their philanthropic plan and their estate plan they actually see an even greater importance the need to create what I'd call a well-being and transition strategy for the family, where they actually intentionally do this type of work, but not just as a once-off. They embed it into their family operating system and so, just as they would always review their other parts of their business, for example, they do the same with their family in that sort of intention, with that sort of intentionality.

Andrew Doust: 1:00:37

I'd love that to become the norm for every family. Now, how do we do that? I mean, there's not many people doing this work around the world, I've discovered. I thought there would be, there's just not, and so what I'd love to see is more people doing this work. I'd love to see these tools that have been created being used by many more people. Obviously, I can't do all of that work. I don't want to. I want others to do the work, and I'd love to see people coming beside me and saying, hey, how can we do more of this together and how can I take what you've done and deliver that in my context, wherever it might be?

Marco Blankenburgh: 1:01:08

So I think there's a great opportunity and a great need yeah, as you're, as you're explaining that, I can see your facial expression. For you, it's not just a job, no, not at all.

Andrew Doust: 1:01:17

It's a vocation, really it's a. It's a, it's a passion to, to really see and multiply impact. So I'm driven by impact. I know you are too, yeah, and when you see impact it's so rewarding. Now I mean impact with financial returns is obviously uh, important, but but I'm more excited by impact than I am by financial returns.

Andrew Doust: 1:01:35

And so when I get to see families transformed. If you think about the assets that have been transitioned from one generation to the next depending on the report, there's up to $15 trillion worth of wealth transitioning from one generation to the next over the 10, 15 years, into the hands, I would say, mostly of people who are unprepared for it. And so if we think that is true, that even if it's a fraction of that transition, what difference could it make for that wealth to go into hands of people who know how to have great impact with that wealth?

Marco Blankenburgh: 1:02:09

and know how to make it sustainable.

Andrew Doust: 1:02:10

It's a massive multiplier effect. So I feel like even the work with a few families I do can have a massive impact on on the world, and so if we can multiply the number of families we're working with, we can multiply the impact fantastic.

Marco Blankenburgh: 1:02:23

Well, thank you so much for this conversation. It's a really inspiring and a work that's needed in this world, so thank you you for stepping into that. So how do people get in contact with you, either if they want to come alongside you or if they are one of those families and say I want to talk to Andrew.

Andrew Doust: 1:02:41

Sure, I mean I'd love to hear from anybody, but probably the easiest is on my website, plenitudepartnerscom. It's actually getting updated at the moment so that people can still find details on there and get in touch that way. Or, of course, if they know you and want to reach out directly, they're welcome to do so.

Marco Blankenburgh: 1:02:55

And we'll, as always, we'll share the details in the notes that come with the podcast release, so we'll share your email address, the website and, yeah, I look forward to ongoing partnership with Plenitude Partners. With you, andrew. It's been a joy. It's been a lot of fun. We've had a lot of amazing.

Andrew Doust: 1:03:14

We really have, and a lot of locations, too great locations. But thank you, marco, thank you for the work of KnowledgeWorks. It actually helps my work in so many other ways and obviously our partnership too. It's been a real joy, so I look forward to that continuing. Thank you so much, thanks for.

Marco Blankenburgh: 1:03:29

Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Cultural Agility Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, share it with someone. The best way to help us out is by leaving a review on your favorite podcast app or channel, or forward and recommend this podcast to people around you. As always, if any of the topics we discussed today intrigue you, you will find links to articles discussing them in greater depth in the podcast notes. If you would like to learn more about intercultural intelligence and how you can become more culturally agile, you can find more information and hundreds of articles at knowledgeworkscom. A special thanks to Jason Carter for composing the music on this podcast and to the whole Knowledgeworks team for making this podcast a success. Thank you, nita Rodriguez, ara Azizbakian, rajitha Raj, and thanks to Vip and George for audio production, rosalind Raj for scheduling and Caleb Strauss for marketing and helping produce this podcast.