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Ivey Lecturer and Serial Entrepreneur David Simpson, MBA ’88, sat down virtually with David Bentall to discuss his latest book, “Dear Younger Me,” where Bentall discusses important lessons for next generation leaders through his personal journey, as well as those gleaned from mentoring and supporting advisors, and prominent Canadian business families.
For over two decades, David Bentall worked for the family business, which included a seven year stint as President and CEO of Dominion Construction. Bentall co-founded the Business Families Centre at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, where he served as founding chair for five years.
Bentall is also a mentor, advisor and founder of Next Step Advisors. Prior to his latest offering, Bentall authored the award-winning book, “The Company You Keep: The Transforming Power of Male Friendship.”
David Simpson is an entrepreneur and Director of the Ivey Business Families Initiative and Faculty director of the Family Shift program.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
‘Dear Younger Me’ with David Bentall
Introduction/Outro
You're listening to the Ivey entrepreneur podcast from the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Ivey Business School. In this series Ivey entrepreneur, and Ivey faculty member Dave Simpson will anchor the session.
Dave Simpson
Hey, we just finished a great video of Brad Paisley. They're in his classic song, write a letter to me. And that's one of our subjects today with my dear friend, Mr. David Bentall. Welcome from Vancouver, David. Thank you, sir.
David Bentall
I laughed at that video. He was writing himself when he was 17. My book is written to me when I was 30. You got you got a theme Exactly.
Dave Simpson
Welcome, everyone. I'm Dave Simpson from the ivy Business School. This is our annual Winter Classic, where we talk to enterprising and entrepreneurial families. And we try and share some positive vibes to get us through this. today. As many of you know, it's Groundhog Day. And if you're a fan of the classic Bill Murray movie, you know that Groundhog Day he really lives over and over and over. And many of us in our COVID confinement feel a little bit that way. So we thought we'd break the routine and have a lunch hour with some special dialog. For those of you that are fans of wiarton Willie or Punxsutawney Phil making predictions about the weather. Spring is actually coming early according to word and Willie this morning. So with David's optimism, we'll make sure that we bring you some positive vibes going into the spring. David, our audience here today is our class of family shift members, our alumni of family shifts, some of which you wrote about in your book, my students at Ivey and friends of the Ivey groups, people that are interested in learning about business family. So we brought them all here today to to hear a bit about what your view is on helping next generations. I want to start though you tell your family story at the beginning. And I noticed you put your family coat of arms. And it says aim high, strive hard and you express that your upbringing was all about that working hard and going for it. So much so that I noticed most people write books that have seven traits of something you found nine traits in your book that you are an over achiever. So start with what was the genesis of the book? Why did you decide you want to do it at this point in your life?
David Bentall
Well, Thanks, David. So great to be here. And for everybody. It's actually funny, you're talking about me being an overachiever? I say the nine traits are the the nine areas that I know looking back, I really lacked in my life. I lacked empathy, curiosity, listening skills that are. So how did I come to that conclusion? Why did I want to write this now? Dave, to be honest, I was on an airplane flying home from a couple of family meetings, we had some very meaningful family discussions, two separate family meetings with two separate clients. And as I was reflecting on the meetings, I thought I'd prepared well, I thought I did a pretty good job of facilitating, but frankly, the meetings hadn't gone very well. And I was wondering what had gone on and I was thinking about, I thought, you know, in one meeting, one member, the next generation, one successor seemed angry. And that kind of poison the discussion a bit. And then I noticed in one of the other meetings that was one member of the family kind of seemed like they couldn't forget over a hurt and couldn't forgive somebody. And that had kind of set a tone for the meeting. And I thought, I'm sure glad I wasn't like that, was I? That was me when I was I was I was unforgiving. I was angry. And so I grabbed the scrap of paper and started doodling. And I noticed very quickly there were these nine things I was impatient. I was arrogant, I was critical of others, I didn't listen. And I thought, Gosh, I wonder whether I could help if I wrote a letter to these younger six.
Dave Simpson
So you know, I'm laughing because you're saying you thought perhaps you were a perfect role model. And that's one of the things you start the book with is we don't have our heroes, mentors role models, including I know how much you thought of your father and grandfather in the business context of what they handed to you. But just society, you have some champions that you looked up to and you said, sometimes our heroes are sending us the wrong message for the situation we're in. So talk a little bit about how you learn a bit from mistakes of what the heroes that you look up to.
David Bentall
They are so great. You're absolutely right. My dad and Mike and my grandfather were heroes, because they were hard working men. They were men of integrity. They were men of vision, so I wanted to be like them. But as I as I grew up in my career aspiring to lead, I started reading biographies, and I read about Churchill, I mean, he delivered the world from the Nazi threat. So what, who, what better leader to be like, and one of his mentors was never, never never give up. And then I as a young boy, when I was 10 years of age, I watched the first Super Bowl, it's coming up on Sunday, I watched the first Super Bowl 55 years ago, all by myself, my mom and dad just got a color TV back. And the pixels were the size of quarters. And girl is one of his mantras was winning is not the most important thing. It's the only thing. So I brought these two ideas to my leadership quiver. And I started trying to lead by never, never giving up and always trying to win. And Dave, if you're going to war, probably a good thing, if you're playing football, probably a good thing. But in a family enterprise, to be a never, never give up person. And winning is the only thing person that's not very good. And that those are two things that really, those messages really undermine my ability to become a good leader, I think in our family anyway.
Dave Simpson
So over time, one of the traits that you identified and shared with us early is the concept of humility, being humble, I've often talked with our high achieving family businesses in family shift, and of course, our hyper outgoing HBAs. And MBAs at the ivey business school where I tell them, you know, the cars on the humility highway don't face a lot of traffic, right? There's not many of us that can be successful and humble, at the same time. So talk about how humility and being humble is a lesson that took you a while to learn, but it's a positive thing in the context of family enterprise.
David Bentall
Yeah. Well, David, I think the first thing is I thought humility was the opposite of what I needed. I thought I needed to drive hard and hammer ahead and be driven. What I've come to discover is that humility, properly understood, is not thinking less of yourself. It's just thinking of yourself less than, we often get that mixed up, right? It's not thinking that you're bad, not thinking less of yourself. It's just not thinking about yourself so much, thinking about others more. And I think, I wanted to lead so it was all about me, rather than now, as I seek to as an advisor to families, I seek to serve them and help them rather than have them follow me if you fall, because they're different. And so you know, frankly, it took me get getting knocked on my my behind to realize that trying to make it all about me is not a very good idea. And I think that one of the most fascinating things I read recently, was Benjamin Franklin's biography. And he talked about how he was working on his 12, he had 12, he had more weaknesses than he had 12 I only have nine, he had 12 weaknesses. And then one of his friends said, you looked at this list and said, Benjamin, you got to add, you got to add humility, because you're so arrogant, so proud, you bug everybody all the time. And Benjamin Franklin was his friend said, you always have to be right. And Dave, he could have been describing me I mean, that just asked my wife, we're early in our marriage, I had to be right about everything. And that was not good for my marriage, either. And Benjamin Franklin blew my mind when he said the following words, he said, I decided to deny myself the privilege of ever disagreeing with anyone. Well, that requires a total shift, downward shift, total shift in thinking. And so I've been working with this idea, Dave, because if we deny ourselves the privilege of disagreeing with others, that makes us more curious, and helps foster this humility thing. Well, do you see it differently than me? Why is that? So that's one of the big lessons for me. And it made a huge difference to me trying to cultivate that.
Dave Simpson
And your wife appreciates it. I know.
David Bentall
She's right, an awful lot do.
Dave Simpson
Curiosity, David was another thing you threw in there. And I'm wondering that in the family business context, when you grow up knowing and being steeped in your own family business, that might actually lead to a lack of curiosity, because in many ways you thought your career and life path were planned out, because you were the heir apparent to be the the third generation, but you speak about how curiosity really helps you understand that you don't always know better. So talk a little bit about why being curious is important.
David Bentall
Yeah, so I was afraid that someone would find out I didn't know everything. And so I didn't want to ask any questions. Because if some like I'm the son of the chair and son of the chairman, son of the founder, or grandson of the founder, I can't let anybody know. I don't know anything. So I didn't ask anything. I, if I ever spoke it was to tell people what I knew, which is the exact it's the exact opposite of curiosity, and how do we learn we learn by asking questions. And so Dave, I ran around our company, telling people what I knew, rather than trying to learn and it's funny, most professions, whether it be law or medicine or even in the trades that carpentry or electricians, everyone goes through an apprenticeship period or residency or a period of time where you're learning. I've wanted to jump right past that to lead. And I think curiosity is what we need in order to be a good apprentice. And I think family enterprise successors, if we can be curious, Dad, why do you do it this way? Mom, what Why is it always been done that way, we might actually find that they're not as crazy as we thought they actually might have a good reason for doing things differently. So that's been a really interesting journey for me.
Dave Simpson
And you might even find you're helpful to the senior generation, because you ask questions that there's a lot similar between a rut in a groove, right? They just keep doing it this way. But if my child asked me an interesting question, maybe I'll look at it a different way. So it's helpful to the family in general, I gotta say, I tell my students all the time that your good lord or maker provided you with two ears and one mouth, which should give you a clue that perhaps you should listen twice as much as you speak. And yet, we're trained to get out there, and talk and present and pitch. And you have a great story in the book of a guy that I really admire. And you do, too. Jim Patterson, a very successful entrepreneur, that really emphasize for you that listening is an incredibly important skill. So talk to a little, a little bit about how listening is a valuable thing and family enterprise.
David Bentall
Well, you talk about Jimmy Patterson, so I was invited to an event, an event I shouldn't say I was invited to a meeting. And Jimmy was invited. It was there were 20 people in the room was four o'clock meeting in the afternoon. And I was the youngest guy, frankly, my dad was invited, he couldn't go. So I was I went in his place. So all these people were senior executives from the City of Vancouver. And we were trying to recruit someone to head up a fundraising campaign for the new Vancouver library. And we were trying to figure out what kind of person do we need to lead this effort. And it was a bit of a high profile position was also the person who was meeting before it left. So we had to get this right the second time around. So the chairman of the meeting kept asking people what they thought and somebody said, We need someone who's synonymous with downtown, and someone who can appeal to the wealthy and donors and someone who could appeal to the everyday man, etc. and I'm the youngest guy in there. And I kept looking over Jimmy Patterson, a billionaire well known to everybody. And he's sitting there silently. The meeting started at four. And at eight o'clock in the evening, Jimmy still hadn't said a word. And I'm going this is that's not how I would expect this talk. But I figured, but you know, he'd tell us what to do. And at 830, so four and a half hours into the meeting, Jimmy said to the chairman, may I just make a comment. And everybody in the room lean forward to listen what what? When EF Hutton speaks, everyone listening, Jimmy Patterson speaks, everybody listens. And he said, If I didn't hearing things correctly, I think we're looking for somebody who's knowledgeable, his name is synonymous with downtown, it's got the time with all the criteria we'd listed. And then he said, if that's what we're looking for, then I think Kip Woodward is the right guy. And everybody went perfect. Got the check, paid for the bill, and approached Woodward next day. And he and he did the project did a fantastic job. And it David marked me for any of this that happened in 1986. So it's had a huge impact on me that a guy like Jimmy, who's so brilliant and so well respected, would listen for four and a half hours before he said anything. But then, of course, when he said something powerful, so I'm trying to be more like that.
Dave Simpson
So he had respect for hearing the views of everyone in the room. And that makes his comment even more impactful at the end of the day.
David Bentall
Yeah, yeah.
Dave Simpson
Now you move to another thing called empathy. And as soon as I saw some of your descriptions, I could see myself, both you and I are hardwired to fix things, right? Whether that's being a dad or in business, that if there's a problem, let's go fix it. And not everything in life needs to be fixed. Sometimes, empathy means something other than solving someone's problem. So talk to me about your frustrations with trying to fix things for people who didn't really want it to be fixed.
David Bentall
What is this the time I talked to you about the word the stupidest thing I ever said? So, so my wife and I were living in Toronto in 1985. And we just had our third child and my wife Allison, I need to preface this by saying we're still married 40 to 42 years later, but you're not gonna believe what I said. So we just had our third child and my wife was feeling not very fit and not feeling very good about her figure. And so she said to me, David, I'm feeling fat and ugly. Now, she was not asking me for a fix. She was not asked me to fix the problem. But I went immediately into fix it mode. And I said, you'll continue to feel fat and ugly unless you get out and run. that was not the right thing to say and as you can anyone who's listening will know if you're married to do not do as i do so but you know what allison wanted was my empathy she was feeling lousy and she wanted me to come alongside her and instead i just told her what to do and they may i be permitted to talk about a couple of years ago last year what i've learned in 30 years because you know last year last year we had our our daughter and her husband and their four children so 65642 and brand new so for kids under six living with us for two years and one day my wife allison was feeling kind of overwhelmed and she said i'm feeling overwhelmed and i didn't jump to fix it mode i'm very proud i think is the only time in our marriage that maybe done this right day but i went in and sat beside allison on the bed and took her hand and said i'm sorry you're feeling overwhelmed is there anything i can do and you know it's as simple as that maybe not simple but it's it's as profound as that perhaps now dave i this has been a hard one i'm in the remedial class for empathy because it's been something taken me a long time to work on
Dave Simpson
well as it's a big subject of course in the united states that it's a capacity that they felt previous president didn't have and under our circumstances joe biden has it in spades so no matter what political spectrum you're from empathy in your toolkit is something that we should all take away and think about so that don't jump to the solution seek to understand is what that message was in one of your series there
David Bentall
and dave kind of just talked about that in the in the family enterprise context
Dave Simpson
yeah please
David Bentall
it research says that members of the elder generation i think many of our listeners are successors or perhaps the majority are and what the research says is that the elder generation requires from the younger generation empathy more than any other thing what so think about my dad what my dad needed more from me as a successor coming along than anything else was empathy and the reason that my dad needed empathy was twofold one is if you build an enterprise and then you are later on devolving that authority to the next generation that's a difficult trick because it's the exact opposite of everything you've done your whole career trying to bring power and authority and responsibility to yourself to give that away that's a completely new requires clearly a new skill so the older generation needs empathy because we're asking them to give up the their baby what they've spent their whole life building so that's that's one and then my dad you know he went through a difficult time in our family enterprise being shunted aside by my uncle so he needed he needed someone who was willing to understand and care for what that was like for him so the older generation needs our empathy
Dave Simpson
gratitude is a family trade that you are a big proponent of and i think you describe in the book that you know you grew up relatively affluent but it's not something you really thought about because your parents were hardworking frugal people this is just the way we live and you're not totally aware of of how much better you have it in my house that's what we call the f word that our kids are never allowed to say that's not fair because it's not fair how good we have it actually right the you talk about an experience where you took the kids down on a selfless project to a country that perhaps didn't have it as good as canada does and that really brought you guys together so please share your your experience with your kids down building in mexico
David Bentall
yeah well thanks so our son john we have three daughters and a son and our son is our second eldest i think he was maybe 15 at the time 14 or 15 and i think i was pretty grumpy when i was 15 and my son john was no different he was she was pretty grumpy and so we went down to to build a house in mexico and we spent five days there in the hot sun building out this wonderful experience frankly to go down day one there's a little concrete pad and day five there's a home for a family of five and so we had the privilege of being part of this and the girls were all rolled up our sleeves and swung a hammer and painting and it was a great experience and the end of the week we hopped in the van and we drove across the border first thing we did was stop that in and out burger and as we started in and out burger right we went in and got got hamburgers and our son john got in the back of the van we had three lanes three rows in the bed the girls were in the middle seat my wife and i in the front john was in the back of it as far away from his dad as he could possibly be and i remember john saying you know what's wrong with this family and i thought all right now right now
David Bentall
and he said i said what's wrong i actually didn't want to know but i said what's wrong with this family john he said dad was not enough gratitude thanks for the burger Dave, I think that's the first time I send it over. Thank you for anything. And I thought, you know, all it takes is five days in Mexico building a house for an impoverished family, for our son to understand that hamburgers don't grow on trees, I think I need to do this more often. So I frankly, I've been back 10 times now. And I'd like to try and go every year now. And we've taken we've started taking our grandkids, so one of our grandsons has been and so we're hoping we have eight grandkids, so I'm hoping all of our grandkids will go with Grandpa to fill the house. And to help them learn what we have ain't fair. Well, it's what we've got. It's not fair, because we have so much. We have so much
Dave Simpson
But I got to share that. In family shift, we had the pleasure of my friend, Jeff Beatty, who worked with Thompson family, Canada's wealthiest family as their advisor. And some of the students were asking him about whether or not there's a challenge with the next generation feeling they're keeping up with the older generation or whether they got the job because that's their name and the the self esteem issue. And he sort of had the opinion that, there's so many advantages to being from a family enterprise that you kind of have to get over it and use a phrase here, successors can never earn, what is a gift. So stop worrying about how do I earn this, I'll talk a little bit about how you came around to that conclusion that the successors have to deal with the fact that you can't earn a gift if your parents are giving you something.
David Bentall
Yeah. how did I come to that conclusion? That was actually in a, in a private conversation with a young woman who said, You know, I want to earn the opportunity to lead the business. And I said, Well, that's different. You can earn the opportunity to lead the business by working hard and being conscientious whether going to school, whether it be getting experience elsewhere, whether it be just working hard, and your job, so you can earn a promotion. And then she's but she said that I also want to earn the shares. And I said, That's not possible. If your parents give you the shares, that's a gift, the proper answer is to say, Thank you, which comes back to this gratitude idea, right. And so I think sometimes we get mixed up that. And, you know, I remember reading a couple years ago, Dr. Keller from New York said, you know, New Yorkers tend to think, they're the top of the heap of the evolutionary chain, or whatever. And they don't tend to think some people in New York, some people in Canada think that we are self made men and women. And Tim Keller makes a very powerful observation. He said, If, if you were born, in the 1300s, in Tibet, in a out in the middle of nowhere, and you grew up in a grass hut, you couldn't get an ivy school degree, because Ivey school didn't exist. So some of them, we just need to accept the fact we were born out of place. And at a time that gives us nothing, Gladwell talks about this in outliers that how we need to be thankful many of us think that we have earned what we've got. And frankly, we need to stop and recognize actually much of what we have our brains. If you have a good brain, you didn't create that. So David, as more thought about it, we can't earn we can't earn our place in the world, let alone a gift. that make any sense.
Dave Simpson
Yeah, thank thanks for that. Gratitude goes hand in hand with the next one I want to talk about. Because at business schools, we don't spend a lot of time talking about forgiveness. And at some point in your life, you have taken ownership of the fact that you were an instrumental part of the friction that happened in the transfer of your family business where your uncle Howard teamed up with your Uncle Bob, to push out the notion that you would be the next leader of the business. And as frustrating as that was for the direct line within your family with your dad, it was his wishes that you'd be there. Later in life. You said, I spent the time and commitment to go back and talk to my uncle hard and say, recognizing I was a bit of part of that and ask for forgiveness. That's an awkward thing we don't talk a lot about, but how did that feel for you? And do you have to have a certain comfort level to be able to do that you have to have earned your stripes and be happy where you are already? Or can a young person actually learn that forgiveness is something that we could start right now?
David Bentall
Well, it's really great. Just starting with the last part of that, how do we get to the place to do that I write in the book about a woman who, at age 14, her mom left their home. And she went through graduate from high school, went through university graduated from university. For the next seven years. She had no word from her mom from age 14 to age 21. And so obviously, she was missing her mom in lots of important circumstances. And she said then her mom picked up the phone when she turned 21 said, Hey, happy birthday. I'd like to get together with you and to kind of go Hold on a minute. Where have you been for the last seven years? And it took her a lot of walks on the beach to get to the place where she could do that. so it does require i think to be able to forgive requires us to look ourselves in the mirror and we need to think deeply because it's not easy to regardless who it is your if your mom disappears for seven years and comes back how do you we can't just say oh yeah okay that's fine mom yeah i forgive you so it took her a long walk and what what helped her this young woman bethany what helped her to get over herself and be able to forgive her mum was to realize that the pain she was inflicting on herself by being bitter was far worse than the pain she was inflicting on her mom one of my friends says bitterness if we allow it to grow is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die like it does doesn't hurt it you know like i've been mad at my uncle for the rest of my life and all it's going to do is hurt me and so david was when i realized that but how likely this is actually maybe good for our relationship but it's actually good for me as well so one of my friends said david forgiveness is actually a selfish thing at one level because it's actually caring looking after yourself so but frankly you know when i went to see my uncle you know it was after for any one of my friends and i said to him i think i'd like to fix things with my uncle can you go with me and he said nope you're not ready unless you're ready to go by yourself so it took me a year to want to get ready so i think it does require a long walk on the beach and for me i took time talking to my wife and my friends took time praying to be able to get to the place where i could let go actually took me another forgiveness circumstance writing a letter writing a letter all the things i was unhappy about this person and then putting a match on them putting in the fireplace in getting rid of all that venom i had so takes work thanks for
Dave Simpson
physically getting rid of it so you're mentally prepared to move on we talked about a family business have all the same business problems that any other business structure does you know competition moving you talk about tradition versus innovation but they also have the family layer on top which is is really complex and you talk about pursuing something called critical thinking and i'll share with you that we start our family shift program every year with my friend tom bit off comes and talks about how the betop brothers get together and remain entrepreneurial even though they're doing different things but they support each other by saying this is the tradition of our family these are the the goodwill's and good skills that we got let's not throw that away but you go do what you like to do and you go do what you like to do and we'll support each other so what does critical thinking mean to you when you help us think about how to push our family enterprise forward
Dave Simpson
well dave thank you so much the critical thinking for me is right he lives right next door to a critical spirit and it wasn't actually i didn't discover how important critical thinking was until i realized how it had been damaged in my life by moving towards critical spear let me explain what i'm thinking so critical critical thinking is assessing what's going on and figure out what's wrong and what needs to be done so my first mentor actually as a leader was dr john stott who was the chaplain to the queen of england years ago and he was in vancouver when i was 23 and i said what's the key to leadership and he said the key to leadership is a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo not being happy with the way things are we need to go somewhere else follow me let's go there and so i thought okay that's what i need to do i need to figure out what's wrong and then we can figure out what we need to fix well that makes that led me to becoming hyper critical here's what's wrong here's what we need to fix here's what's wrong here's what we need to fix that's that developed in me dave a critical spirit i looked at every buddy as wrong and i needed to correct them right beside that is critical thinking which is what is wrong or not optimal that we could make better that's critical thinking so i can give an example from it while disney walt disney when he was most of the listeners have been to disneyland most have been on the pirates of the caribbean and if you have you'll notice you go into the pirates of the caribbean there's the beginning of the ride you go through a new orleans scene where there's some people sitting on the porch and things like that and disney just before they open the critical care pirates of the caribbean he felt it wasn't quite right so he brought a whole bunch of staff and said there's something missing so he said does that look right does it smell right does it feel right does it sound right and everybody thought it was fine checked out and then said but there's something missing and then one of the young staff said mr disney i'm from the south he said in new orleans at night there would be lightning bugs lightning bugs fluttering around on the porch and this he said that's it that's what missing and so they actually they imported live lightning bugs at first and then later on they imitated the but they actually imported live lightning bugs and that illustrates critical thinking for me because disney was not saying who's done what wrong he was saying what is missing he was he was asking questions that's critical thinking whereas david but david 2030 years ago would have said who's left out so what have you done wrong that we're missing so for me that's the difference and bran ramsey i quote her from in my book and for britt land and engagement she talks about in their company they believe that we should be hard on ideas and soft on people and that's what critical thinking is about it's being hard on ideas soft on people whereas being having a critical spirit is being hard on people so that that's for me that's a really important distinction
Dave Simpson
it's easier to celebrate anybody that comes up with some good critical thinking instead of thinking about them as their age or rank say we're all in this to think together but as you know young people do not have patience david and when i'm dealing with family businesses where next gen say hey when do i get to take over and we often are doing this in our our iv classes and we're looking at cases or videos where the next gen is frustrated that they don't know when they're going to be the ceo and i turn it i asked you know my existing students well you know that internship you had this summer at kpmg or royal bank when did they tell you you'd be the ceo and of course they don't ever tell you that but somehow in family business we assume they do your job to tell me when this is all going to be mine david when when i'm the lion king being held up the everything the light touches is yours so how do we develop patience and what's the downside if we don't develop patience
David Bentall
how do we how do we develop patients interesting so i when i was doing the research for my book actually what am i trying to understand what what the word patients means and it was fascinating for me because i think most of us think of patients that means waiting but it actually that latin the latin root for patients comes from pathi pa ti and the root word pathi means to suffer so patience is about learning to suffer complete definition would be to suffer without complaint or without getting irritated and i think that for me that that's that's the deal right and so i think how do we do that i think it has to do with expectations i met i met a guy a number of years ago who who's in his profession his phd research focused on human resource relationships he took a phd in human resource management frankly and i remember saying to him so you did three years studying human relationships and i said what's the key to relationships and he said david i can give it to you in one word and he said its expectations he said you know if you say to your wife i'll be home at six o'clock you come on 630 you created the problem because of your the expectation you created and so i think the way we cultivate patients day is to change our expectations i expected to become president of our family company within 10 years why was that because my dad told me he wanted me to be president my uncle was 55 i figured he was going to retire at 65 so i had in my head i want to be president 10 years that was my expectation that's what undermined my patience if my how do we cultivate patience by changing our expectations if i could say i will work hard and and i will wait until i'm invited to take on more opportunity i'll work hard at what i've got so i will earn my stripes and then wait till i'm so that that will change expectations which is more like the royal bank experience or kpmg right you wait until you're given more authority bloom where you're planted and then wait until you're out does that make any sense it's expected
Dave Simpson
yeah and we often talk about the the monarch leaders you know using that model to say these are the people that are going to die at their desk so note to prince charles if you're frustrated with your life the queen isn't going anywhere right until she dies but then at least it's his choice to decide what i'm going to do with my life and so we want the next gen is to say hey carve out something that you're interested in go for it and bring more value back to us when you're ready so that the patience is is a two way street but you're saying manage expectations is the more critical element of that
David Bentall
yeah and if i can just offer a footnote to men who i think were great examples of leaders who became ceo of their family enterprises what they did was They were waiting. So Harry Rosen Jones dad, sort of Larry Rosen, son of Harry Rosen, Larry, what did he do, he didn't jump into the company, say, dad get out of here I want to lead. He went and took his undergrad degree, took his law degree, took his MBA, work for a while at a law school and then join the family company and then patiently waited 15 years after that, so he was just into his mid 40s, before he became president. So he he used that time, productively. And then the most bizarre example, is fist Johnson. Most people know of Ziploc bags and raid, and Johnson wax. sc Johnson is the family company. Fisk Johnson, had a father who was a strong leader, he thought, I gotta go work for dad, because he'll never let me have authority to do anything. So Fisk, Johnson, Dave took six earned degrees when he while he was waiting, he went took his master's in physics and his master's in business, his PhD in physics, he took six degrees. And then he joined the family company just prior to his 30th birthday, and then waited another 10 or 15 years. So I actually think if you can't wait, these two men probably would have had trouble waiting 20 years inside the business. They took more education, both of them multiple degrees, experience elsewhere. So I think change our expectations and do something productive while you're waiting. That's my thought.
Dave Simpson
So folks, I am going to ask David, one more discussion point on one of his pillars that he's pointed out here. And then we'll let you throw in some questions. If you want to hit your hands up participation feature so that I can see that you want to share something. But I want to finish off with David's last sort of subtitle point was called content meant. Now contentment when we're in the business school context is odd. Because we think of, you know, creating sharks that have to keep moving, right? sharks have to keep moving or they die. So if you're building a business, you have to grow or die. That's the kind of thing we teach. And how do I then start saying to people, well, don't worry about you know, what your classmate got for their signing bonus, or how much they're making in New York? Are you happy with what you're doing? What did contentment play a role in your understanding about how to be a happier person,
David Bentall
not only happier person day, but also more successful. Many of the listeners would have watched the Toronto Raptors win the NBA championship a year or so ago. And kawhi Leonard was the superstar for the for the Raptors who you know, who led them in many ways to that championship. And if you but if you nobody could say that he didn't work hard. Nobody could say he was not fiercely competitive, driven to win. But if you watched him closely as I did, he actually was masterfully content. What do I mean by that? He was content if he gave 100% that allowed him to stay on an even keel if he missed a shot or made a shot. If you made a shot, he didn't get overly excited. He missed a shot. He didn't get overly discouraged. He stayed constant, because he was content. If I give 100% I'll stay where I am. And I first learned this from my waterski coach, who were an American guy from Florida, Jet reily. And he went to the US National Water ski championships. He was the second seed so he was the second last ski. And when he skied, he skied a lifetime personal best. And he set a new US record for his age group. And then the guy after and went out and skied better. And so he said, David, you know, I would be a fool to not be content with my result. It's when we compare with others that we foster discontentment. If we focus on doing our best, we can be content and any family enterprise successor any family leader, what do we want from our employees, we want for our kids what we want from ourselves, if we give our best like kawhi Leonard, we give our best like my coach Chet, really, if we give our best we should be content with the results afterwards. So for me, it's about doing our best breeds contentment. And the last thing I'll say about my performance coach, I'm a competitive water skier. As you know, my performance coach says, preoccupation with our own performance undermines our performance. The more we think about how we're doing the poor we perform, if we're thinking I can't miss this part. We will miss the putt. If we focus on the whole, we're more likely to put it in. So the focus is on doing our best and not being focusing on how we're doing. There's a couple thoughts on contentment.
Dave Simpson
Even a Vancouver guy's a Toronto Raptor fan. That's, I like to hear that. Okay, folks, contribution is a big point at Ivey so you know, everybody likes to get in on things. So I'll throw that out to our family shift and our classmates here to say if you want to raise your hand, I'll recognize you here and we can pass along a question to David so Tara, if you want to let them do that, Catarina go ahead and throw a question to our friend. David,
Tara
I just first wanted to thank you for coming and speaking to us today. So I feel like I've already learned so many lessons. Probably a question for most of us in our class as we're going out and graduating, is there any, maybe one specific lesson or like a takeaway that you would suggest us to keep in the back of your mind as we're going to join family firms maybe joining one from our own family or somebody else's family firm,
Harri
Catarina may be permitted to. So to those of you know, me, well know that the biggest regret I have in my life was that I worked for our family company, right out of university. And I didn't spend very much time working outside of our family enterprise. I ended up after a couple years of the business going to Toronto, working for the Cadillac Fairview Corporation, which at the time, were the largest real estate company in North America. And Katrina, if I was to redo my life, again, professionally, as someone who aspired to lead our family company, I would have stayed at the Cadillac favorite Corporation until I was invited back. And some of you know, the Del Rey family and they own Power Corporation and power financial. I remember talking to Paul gamma ray one, one day, and I said to him, you know, what do you aspire for your children, he's second generation as well, you aspire for G three. And he said, We want our kids Catarina to go as far away as they possibly can, and be so successful elsewhere, that we beg them to come back. And so Catarina, my invitation to all of you is go as far away from your family company as you possibly can be is so successful elsewhere, that they beg you to come back. So that's my first thought. And then the second thought is, Dave asked me about my mentors, and I, you know, I was following Churchill and, and Vince Lombardi, that wasn't very helpful, I would encourage you to choose your mentors, wisely. So you know, we talked about the theme of forgiveness. So Mandela is a hero for me, because he was only willing to forgive the people who put him in prison for 27 years. So I would choose mentors who can help you to develop the qualities that will make you the kind of people who will be able to get along with those in your family. So those are the two thoughts, choose your mentors wisely and work elsewhere as long as you can. Thanks, David. Go ahead, Harrison.
Harri
David, thanks for coming to talk to us. I had a question for someone who is not from a entrepreneurial family or who's not going to a family business after graduation. But I was wondering if you had any takeaways from your experience in a family business that you think could help individuals who will be working in a non Valley business or more traditional Corporation? Thank you.
David Bentall
Great. So thank you, Harrison. So I yeah, the first thing that comes to my mind is a young man who I mentored for many years, he was a CPA by training, and he was working in a very substantial company that all of you would recognize the name of this company, but public company, now a national company in Canada. And he was getting very frustrated, because he wasn't getting the opportunity to grow and advance the way he wanted. And he saw and he said, you know, the problems are those, those those dumb people up in senior management, they're not doing things, right. If I could just get up there, I can fix things, everything will be better. So he came to me for advice. And I said, what do you what do you think I should do? And I said, Well, I had that same problem in our family business, I wanted to get to the top. So I could fix things up there, because I felt things were wrong up there. And Harrison, wherever, wherever there is. And I said to him, if you focus on doing a excellent job where you are, you will be invited to take on more responsibility. If you are much mucking around trying to fix other people's jobs, you're not going to do a good job of your own, you just going to make yourself unpopular, politically or otherwise. And so he doubled down on his current job, and it was only a matter of a few months before they said, hey, you're doing a great job with what you're looking after, can we add a few things to your list? And so they gret he gradually was able to take on more responsibility. So you know, it's a bit like a garden, Harrison bloom, where you are planted. And then I think you'll be given more responsibly do do with excellence, what you've currently got, we have two sons and author, three of our daughters live in Vancouver, all three of our daughters in Vancouver, two are married now. And our two sons in law, I've told them same advice I would give you, Harrison, do you want to get a raise? Do more than you get paid for? Eventually, someone will notice and fix that. So those are the two the bloom where you're planted and do more than what you paid for.
Adele
David, I had a question that's, I guess, 50% business and leadership advice. 50% relationship advice. You're telling your story about your conversation with your wife where you know, she didn't want you to necessarily solve her problems. She just wanted you to be there to listen to her. I think that for most Lee there's like a in any sort of position there's always this need to feel like it is your responsibility to fix things but then i guess that's not always the case but how do you sort of balance that between you know taking ownership and solving things versus recognizing when you need to kind of take a step back and just be there for people
David Bentall
great well you know the first thing that comes to my mind i know his his name is perhaps been salin quite a bit in recent years by association but you know the former mayor of new york rudy giuliani is a very he wrote a book on leaders to the powerful and i you know i'm i used to be a bit of a fan of his i'm not so not so sure anymore but rudy giuliani talked about when he was mayor of new york what he did was he spent his time not telling people what they needed to do but finding out what he could do to help them which i thought was a brilliant leadership model and say what can i do to help you with your problems today and i think for me that's a much better leadership model than than most because most of us i grew up thinking we need to figure out what's wrong fix it and go in a new direction but the people who are on the on the that's on the front line so to speak usually know what needs to be done and so for me i found really rudy giuliani's advice ask others how we can help them with a very practical bit of advice for leadership and of course that comes to relationship advice you know when i said to my wife allison what can i do to make things better it's funny i met a woman in california years ago who had been married 25 years and her marriage had ended and i said i don't want that result in our marriage and i took her out for lunch and i said what's one thing you can tell me she was quite a bit older than me i said what's one thing you can tell me speak to me and my mum's gone now speak to me like a mother what's one thing you tell me to do to help my relationship with my wife and she's she said every day ask your wife what do you need from me today and what's been fascinating about that is if i asked my wife allison there's three possible answers one she'll say there's nothing i need from you today and that's a great answer because then i don't deal i don't have to do anything but at least get credit for having asked the question or she might say here's this simple little thing can you just do this so it's a simple little thing i can do easily so i can i get credit for doing the simple little thing or then there might be something really difficult but if that's the important thing then need to focus on doing the important thing so ideal for me relationally that's made a huge difference for me asking what leadership principle relationship principle what can i do to make things better thank you sara go ahead
Sara
david thanks for coming my question is more so around running a family business and you know the challenges and mixing family with business so i would assume that family politics escalate when there's a business in the middle so i guess from your experience how do you keep the two separate is it possible and how so
Dave Simpson
how do you exert thanks sir so i think it's important to recognize in a family enterprise by definition it's typically not possible to keep family and business separate and so to actually try and make it to make a separation where there isn't where is impossible is actually a fool's game and some people actually try and keep them separate which actually is i think an unhelpful way of approaching it's there so for example when i say it's not possible you know my father was chairman of the board of our family company and i was an employee but he was also my dad i was also his son so i we can't say okay now pretend you're not his son no more we couldn't do that right or i couldn't ask him to pretend you're not chairman of the board so to try and to say let's keep them separate is actually a fool's errand we can't keep them separate because they because they overlap so that so what i try and encourage families to do sara is to think about how to wisely manage the overlap i think the wisest way to manage the overlap is to recognize what hat you are wearing so for an example there's a wonderful article written many years ago called unraveling communication in a family family enterprise and give dyer in his article talks about how we have we all have many different hats so you all of you on this call are presumably a son or a daughter that's a role you have you're also a student that's a role you have when you get a job that'll be another role when you get married that'll be another will maybe become a parents we'll have lots of roles and sarah the key is to be clear what hat you're wearing so when i'm having a conversation with my dad it's probably really important for me dad may i speak to you as a dad what would you advise me to do as your son may i speak to as chairman of the board what would you recommend i do as an employee so i think the most important thing is to identify what and actually use that language and that helps a lot to clarify and keep the traffic from getting mixed up
David Bentall
Hey, Brandon, go ahead.
Brandon
Hi, David, thank you for coming to speak of us today as I'm also from Vancouver as well and like your family's very well respected here. I guess one of my questions is because you spoke a lot about killing content with your own effort and like practicing gratitude. Do you have any advice on how we can practice gratitude on a daily basis?
David Bentall
Yeah, great granite. Thank you. So my sister, Helen, who's 15 years older than me, Brandon. It's public information, because she's shared this publicly. She's 32 years into recovery as an alcoholic. And so she's had to do a lot of work on herself trying to wrestle with some of the demons that she had in her life. And she needs an organization. Some of you, the ladies on this call might be interested. My sister started something called the Avalon recovery society. There's three different storefronts where they help women to get into recovery from alcoholism. And my sister Helen taught me about gratitude. And she said, Every morning, she pours herself a cup of coffee, and she has a little journal. And every morning, she sits with a cup of coffee and writes out three things she's grateful for. And that's and what's interesting is, that was a, that was a beautiful idea from my sister. But then I read a book A number of years ago, and again, speaking to the ladies, you might be interested, there's a woman from Saskatchewan by the name of Ann voskamp vo s k MP, she wrote a book that was on The Oprah Winfrey book last five or 10 years ago, the book was called 1000 gifts. And this woman and boss camp was unhappy often with her life, and one of her friends that I think you're half unhappy a lot, Brandon. So her friend said, I dare you, I dare you to list 1000 things you're thankful for. And so Ann voskamp bought a little journal, and she started listing the things she's thankful for. And so I decided that I would take these two ideas that daily making a list, and 1000 a challenge a dare to list 1000 things. And I was telling one of my friends that it took me I think I got it took me to get 1094 before became a bit of a habit. But you know, if we take time, each day to list what we're grateful for it, it changes us and I have not arrived. I'm at 4681 this morning. But if we if we list what we're it begins changing the way we look at life rather than so I have one quick other one final one. I have a friend whose hobby is buying thank you cards. Probably most of you don't know what thank you cards look like but they're actually available in in hidden stores. And this friend of mine, whenever he travels, he used to be president of one of Galen Weston's subsidiaries. And this friend of mine everywhere he travels, he buys 10 thank you cards in a pack. And every night he sits down beside his bed and he writes a thank you note to at least two or three people every night, who helped me today that I want to be thankful for. So there's a couple of ways of cultivating
Dave Simpson
fantastic data. One last one here, Duncan, please.
Duncan
Awesome. Thanks, David. Appreciate you coming in found the conversation quite insightful. Two quick questions. So the first is around integrating family members into the family business, who are not necessarily involved in the operations. And we've talked about this in class, but I'd be interested to hear your perspective on that. Because I know speaking from experience, family business tends to dominate dining room table discussion, I think that sometimes people can feel left out on that front. And then the second question is, if not going to the long route and going through a different business before you add to your family business is an option for you. Are there ways that you can achieve the same thing or at least get close through other activities? So those be my my two questions?
Dave Simpson
Crazy, David, I know they're over cheating I the person that I say we have time for one more question. And he asked to so go ahead and see what you can do with that.
David Bentall
So So on the second question, what I tried to do working on our family company was I was actually not a bad idea. What I sought to do was to learn as much as I could about the different divisions. So we had companies in real estate construction, electrical, mechanical contracting, interior design, property management, leasing. So Duncan, if you're going to work in your family enterprise, I would look to try and get as much experience in as many different areas as possible. That's, that's number one. Number two, get geographic exposure. So we had offices in Calgary and Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, California. So I worked in Toronto, Winnipeg, California, Vancouver, so get diversity of experience geography and and enrolls. Now, the other thing that I think is very helpful is don't be too proud. I, for me, you know, big humility has been a theme here already. Start with doing the simple job. So back to Larry Rosen as an example. You know, he started as a salesman on the floor selling and then he worked in it. inventory control. And then he worked in, in the buying group. So Duncan, I would suggest get diverse experience start at the bottom. Your first question was
Duncan
this if people aren't directly involved in the family business kind of how to integrate them or make them feel not left out?
David Bentall
sure how to integrate people if they're not directly involved. So there's two things. One thing is that we all can learn as a family together. So I've heard of one of my mentors, the bigass, baby and family Phillipe and me, because people ran from Montreal, they say that families that learn together stay together. So one thing families can do, you can so they started there, they have three kids, who are all Harvard MBAs, all three Harvard grads, they spent three years of family meetings, and all they worked on was learning to communicate. So we can we can call it anybody and everybody can benefit from being together and learning about communication skills, regardless whether you're in the middle, so that's one, I've heard others say that families who play together, stay together. And so you know, I know a family for Vancouver, every other year. They're eight kids. Every other year, the patriarch of the family flew everybody to why all expenses paid for a couple of weeks. So they could play together for a week, the alternating years that could be with their spouses, families, but every other week they played together. And others say that families that pray together, so you know, focus on what unites you as a family. So Duncan, you don't have to be in a family business to play together or to pray together or to learn together. So I would encourage, find things you can do to get.
David Bentall
Okay, a couple summary things, David, I met you some 15 years ago, shortly after you were transitioning out of the Dominion construction. And I've got to say, every year that goes by, you're happier. And I've got to think that has to do with your curiosity to meet people to work with people. The more you meet other enterprising families, the more you gain from this as well. And I can see this in your energy, your quest to be the top waterski guy in the world. I see that one coming true very soon, because you're peeking physically as we go along. But I'm so proud that you shared words like gratitude, curiosity, forgiveness, patience, things that we don't throw around a lot at a business school. So on behalf of our family, shift alumni and our family shift program partners, and the ivy Business School in the Ivey community, we want to thank you for the privilege of you sharing your thoughts with us. And we wish you all the best. The book, ladies and gentlemen is called dear younger me. I'll hold it up there. You can contact me I can get you directly lined up with David and his advisory firm. And we'll make sure David that we spread the gospel of humility, empathy, curiosity, listening, gratitude, forgiveness, critical thinking, patience, and above all else, contentment. Thanks so much my friend, David Bentall.
David Bentall
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. And if anybody is interested in the book, if you order it through my website, I'll sign it personally for you just let me know, because we've got coffees here at my home. So I'd be delighted. It's really fun this morning. Thanks for the great questions. David. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Introduction/Outro
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