Financial planning
In this episode of I’ve Been Meaning To Do That, host Oscarlyn Elder is joined by Jeremy Spidell of the Truist Leadership Institute. For the conclusion of our series on running a family business, they explore how you can help younger family members take on more responsibility and grow as leaders.
Oscarlyn Elder:
For business owners, succession planning is a crucial aspect of continuing the company's forward progress. If you own a family business, finding and training the next-generation leader from within the family can pose a number of challenges as well as rewards.
I'm Oscarlyn Elder, co-chief investment officer for Truist Wealth, and this is I've Been Meaning To Do That, a podcast from Truist Wealth, a purpose-driven financial services company. We appreciate you listening.
This is the third in our series of episodes on family businesses. Previously, we discussed what defines a family business and what are their goals and the importance of introducing younger members of the family to the business, as well as identifying roles family members can take on within the greater family enterprise. In this episode, our guest will discuss training the next generation to take leadership roles within the business. If you want to take notes on today's episode, we have a worksheet that you can download and print. You can find it by selecting this episode at truist.com/dothat.
I'm so pleased to introduce Jeremy Spidell, director of client engagement at the Truist Leadership Institute. Welcome to the podcast, Jeremy.
Jeremy Spidell:
Thanks, Oscarlyn. I'm really excited to be here.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Jeremy, you are the first guest that we've had from the Truist Leadership Institute. Can you share with our listeners what the Leadership Institute is all about?
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah, absolutely. The Leadership Institute is a really special thing, and it is something that we use to help develop our own leaders at Truist and make sure that our teammates have access to some of the best development possible. It's something that we offer to our clients and prospects, which is really unique. No other financial institution offers something like this, and then we also have elements that we offer to our community partners and some of our philanthropic groups that we work with as well.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Jeremy, thank you for sharing that information on the Truist Leadership Institute. Now, can you tell us a little bit about your journey to the institute?
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah. My journey with the Leadership Institute has been a unique one. I first experienced it as a client. I was a small business owner and invested in myself and teammates going through the journey and the process. Ended up doing a career change where I got into the mental health world and became a therapist, and eventually found my way back here to actually become a teammate and become part of what we're building at the Leadership Institute. I'm able to leverage my experience in small business, my experience in mental health to do the work that we do, which really helps people be better, whether that's our Truist teammates or our clients and prospects or our community partners. That's what we're about. That's what we're after, and it's a real honor for me to be a part of it.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Jeremy, that's an incredible journey. I love that you shared that with us. I'd love to hear about your purpose. Truist is a purpose-driven organization, and so share with me about your purpose.
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah, my purpose is to grow, create authentic connections, and inspire joy. I want to grow. I want to get better. I want to create connections, whether that's understanding myself better, understanding other people better, understanding the world at large better, and I want those connections to be real and authentic and genuine. Then through that, hopefully, I think that I've found, at least in my experience, that when all that stuff is clicking, all that stuff is happening, that's a chance to create space for joy. If I can do that for myself and others, that's a good day, and that's a good piece of what I get to do here at the Leadership Institute.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Jeremy, that's incredibly powerful, and I love that you shared that with us. I can definitely see your purpose really connecting in a deep and meaningful way to the work that you do at the Truist Leadership Institute.
Jeremy Spidell:
It does. Yeah, it's well said. It's hard for me to imagine a better fit in terms of being able to express different things that I care about that are meaningful to me, and so, yeah, I'm grateful for the opportunity and excited about the chance we have.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Jeremy, let's turn and talk about the topic at hand. Within this series, we've spoken with David Herritt at the Center for Family Legacy, and he discussed the importance of introducing family members to the family's business at an early age, and he talked about maybe touring the company, having these next-generation family members complete internships and other mechanisms that could be used to introduce family members to the family business. But preparing the next generation to take on leadership roles in the business also requires other work. Can you talk to us about how you think about the steps that need to be taken to prepare next-generation leaders for family businesses?
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah, absolutely. I love David's suggestion there. I think it's fantastic to get kids involved in the business and understanding it from an early age, and I think that gives them a great foundation, a great platform for them to understand the inner workings of this organization that is so key to their family and their future and their legacy and everything that's being built around it. That's one piece of it, and it's one thing to understand the business. It's another thing to be prepared to lead that business. Leadership's hard. I had one leader recently tell me as he was mentoring some young leaders and he starts out asking them, "Why do you want to be a leader?" And if there's any hint of ego or, "I get to be the boss," or any of that stuff, he stops them pretty cold and says, "Listen, that's going to be very short-lived."
It's complex. It's difficult, and particularly in a family business when you're walking into a situation where a lot of people are going to be older than you, some people are going to be younger than you, a lot of people are going to be giving you a little bit of the side-eye wondering if you have what it takes or if you just got the role because ... We joked earlier in one of the conversations about the COO, the child of owner situation. That's a very difficult and unique situation to step into, and so what we find, and we talk about building leadership capacities here at the Leadership Institute, a lot of leadership development firms talk about skills and competencies, and we do too. Skills and competencies are essential. You’ve got to have certain elements of skills and be competent in those skills to be able to execute.
We also feel like that's a little bit surfacey, right? The skills and the competencies, they live on the surface. What's underneath that is capacity. Do you have the capacity to deploy those skills in competencies, in challenging ways, in challenging times with different people, with different personalities, with different competing interests and priorities? I mean, that is an art, and we talk about leadership being the art and science of creating an environment that inspires people to implement critical strategies consistent with an organization's beliefs and values.
I know that was a mouthful, but I'll just go back to the beginning, which is the art and science. Yeah, you can have the science or the skills, the competencies. Do you have the art? Do you have the capacity to implement that under pressure and in this ever-changing environment that we find ourselves in? That's been really rewarding for us to come alongside companies and organizations that do want to transition their business to the next generation and say, "How do we make sure that next gen is ready?"
Oscarlyn Elder:
Capacity. So you're talking about capacity building. How do you think about capacity, maybe generally, and then specifically. That's a broad term, it's a general term, so what do you mean by that?
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah, it's a great question, and we break it out into five different areas. The first capacity, and I mentioned this earlier in my intro, is really about conscious leadership. That to us is about instead of just sleepwalking your way through on autopilot as a leader, truly being deeply aware, self-aware, understanding who you are, understanding what makes you tick, understanding what your limitations are, what your strengths are, how you leverage those, how you make sure things aren't getting in your way. Some people call it emotional intelligence. We may talk about that some more in our conversation, but to us it's about really being conscious and intentional, about understanding who you are, how you're showing up, and what's going on with the people around you. So that's the cornerstone for us that we do really great work around.
The second piece of that is how are you thinking, right? What are the strategic thought processes? So when you are a leader, you're going to have to make decisions. You're going to have to solve complex problems. How do you do that? How do you make the best decisions possible? How do you think strategically? We work on training your mind and training your approach to making sure that you are optimizing your chances to make successful choices and strategic decisions.
The third piece is how are you developing the people around you. If you want to be a great leader, also become more self-aware, do better with how you're thinking and your strategy, that's great. But great leaders are also able to develop the people around them. So what does that look like? How do you do that for your team? How do you do that for your organization?
The fourth is team optimization, and this is actually pretty fun. We find that when leaders start to really do some deep work on themselves, the first place that that ideally would manifest itself would be on their teams. And so we do a lot of work with teams. We're doing a ton of work with Truist right now and new teams that have been formed, and we find that even our external clients, it's one of the products that they love the most is being able to come here or we come to them and we spend a day and a half with their team and say, "Hey, how are you optimizing your relationships, your communications? Are you aligned in what you're trying to do and what you're trying to build?" Because if you're not and your teams are out of whack, it's going to be tough going for everybody, and leadership at that point is compromised. So we’ve got the conscious leadership piece for yourself and the strategic thinking thing for the individuals, and then we really start breaking that out into people development and team optimization. Those are the first four.
And then the last one is organizational agility. If you do those first four things really well, it should translate into your organization becoming very agile, and we picked that word intentionally. You've heard the phrase before, probably, that change has never been faster than it is right now, and it will never be slower than it is right now again, in the future. It is coming at this just rapid-fire rate, and so organizations that aren't able to be agile and aren't able to engage people and continue to maintain and build their cultures while they're being agile and nimble, they're going to struggle in the future. So we look at those five capacities, and then we have a lot of different things that sit underneath those and really leverage those as ways to help leaders and help teams and help organizations be better.
Oscarlyn Elder:
So, Jeremy, thank you for sharing the five. I think that will be very interesting to our listeners. Let's take a moment and really zoom in on the first one, which is the conscious leadership. And really the heart of conscious leadership it seems like is self-awareness, which is a key component of emotional intelligence. Which tends to be viewed as perhaps a soft skill, but from a leadership perspective is so essential within leadership. You've got to have really strong emotional intelligence and deep self-awareness. So let's start out with, how do you think about self-awareness? What would you like to draw out for our listeners?
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah, it can be this abstract term that at some point it's almost so simple it's obvious, but on another point it can be so nebulous and esoteric that people are like, "Eh, self-awareness. What is that, and how does that fit into leadership?" I'd like to think about it as if you have a camera lens and you've got it super tight and you've just got it lasered in. Great, you're only able to see what you've got there in that field of view. If you open up the aperture a bit though and you start to expand it, you start to take in more data and you start to understand more about what you're seeing, and we look at that for yourself too. The more that you're able to understand deeply who you are, and we'll take a look even back into childhood. A lot of us are getting programmed and wired into what we think matters and how we need to be to be successful, and what we don't want to do to get in trouble or to hurt our self-worth or our value as humans. We all want to belong, right? We're hardwired for that.
So we're doing things and picking up on things and cues from a very early age, and a lot of that doesn't just magically go away when we turn 18 or turn 38 or turn 60. That stuff's in us. It's wired into who we are and how we think and how we approach life. So we help leaders get in touch with that in a meaningful way, not in a way that's kind of this woo-woo weird thing. It's a way to say, "Hey, I know that for me growing up, one of the ways that I was successful was to be responsible for a variety of reasons. So as a leader, I'm leveraging my ability to be responsible." That could be a great, great asset until it's not, until the volume on me being responsible is cranked a little high.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Right.
Jeremy Spidell:
When that starts to happen, all of a sudden that thing starts to get in my way, and my responsibility could become being too controlling, being too driven, not worrying about relationships and focusing only on the task because I'm responsible to make it happen, right? If I don't know that, if I'm just sleepwalking through my journey in life, my journey in leadership, I can still be successful, but I don't think I'm going to be as successful as I could be. I don't think I'm going to reach my potential, and I know that I'm going to do some damage to the people around me and even to myself, even to my own ability to sustain and be durable as a leader. I've had moments of burnout, and a lot of that is when I'm chasing those elements. So that's just an example for myself.
If I'm not aware of those things, it's absolutely going to impact my ability to lead myself and to lead the people around me. So we really help people get clear about those kind of elements. What are your strengths? What are your overdone strengths? What are your values? What is your purpose? When you're under stress or conflict, how do things shift and change? 360 reviews, what do people say about you? How are you coming across to your peers, and is that different than your direct reports? Is that different than your manager? Understanding all those little nuances can be sometimes painful by the way. The mirror can be, "Ugh, I didn't know that I was doing that. I didn't know I was coming across that way." But also, wouldn't you want to know? Don't you want to know that? If you really want to get better and you want to improve, don't you want to know how all that stuff is showing up? So then with that knowledge, with that awareness, you’ve got a shot in managing it and showing up better for yourself and the people around you.
Oscarlyn Elder:
So, Jeremy, if someone's out there listening right now going, "This is fantastic information for my journey," how might they go about improving their self-awareness?
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah, great question. There's a lot of ways that we do it. I mean, one of the ways you mentioned earlier was through the executive coaching process, through some of our programs. I mean, there are ways that through our trained consultants we're able to help you see some new insights into yourself and help you unlock some of those elements. So there's a process like that that we can walk people through. But we also find that assessments are a really helpful tool in this journey. One of our consultants, Dr. Sally Woods, likes to say that all assessments are limited and some are useful. I think that's likely to be an accurate statement. I would say that every time I've done an assessment, there's some that I'm doing on myself, and that's great.
You can find out from Myers-Briggs, or we use one from a company called Core Strengths. It's the Strengths Deployment Inventory. I can find out, "Hey, am I a little more motivated by people, by performance, or by process, or maybe a blend of all three?" I tend to lean a little heavy towards performance. I like to get things done, make things happen. For example, if I come across somebody who is a strong process person, we could have instant conflict. I'm driving trying to perform and get a result, and they're saying, "Hey man, you need to slow down a little bit because if you don't do this, this and this, this way, you're not going to get the result that you want." Me understanding that about myself through that assessment can be really valuable.
But I find too that a lot of those assessments, that's just deeper insights into some of your inner workings and journeys. What we find to be really helpful is when you do some 360 work, and you're able to say, "OK, this is not just about how Jeremy thinks he's showing up. This is about what other people are seeing and experiencing when he's showing up." Usually there are some differences in that. The way our 360 is structured is pretty interesting. I would fill this out on myself. I would have my direct reports fill it out on me, my manager fill it out on me, my peers fill it out. There's quantitative pieces, there's qualitative pieces, and what you get to see is a lot of patterns and themes start to emerge.
In a lot of leaders that I've worked with, for example, I've noticed they do a really good job at leading their direct reports, right? That's their job. They're making sure that the direct reports are doing well, and you can see that reflected in their scores. They do a really good job of managing up, making sure that their manager is happy, but what happens when they look across at their peer scores? Often I find that their peer scores are lower, for example, than direct reports or managers. Isn't that an interesting insight?
The higher you go in an organization, the more ... Well, I would say that your peer relationships are essential and valuable no matter where you are. I would also say that as you go higher, I noticed that sometimes leaders maybe neglect those peer relationships and focus just on a more vertical thing and don't go side to side. That's been really helpful for leaders to say, "Hey, this is a gap for me, and what can I do to reach out to my peers and foster those relationships because they need me, and I need them." A 360 can help pull some of that data out and allow them to become more aware of some blind spots.
Oscarlyn Elder:
So what I'm hearing from you, Jeremy, is that if someone's trying to increase their level of self-awareness, assessments can play a really important role in that, and you've named a few. And within the assessment category, the 360 can be extremely valuable because it's not only allowing you to give information about yourself, but you're able to get that comprehensive view of how people are perceiving you’re walking the journey. If you're open to that feedback, if you're open to listening, which we know is really important ... So if you view it as a gift-
Jeremy Spidell:
Yes.
Oscarlyn Elder:
And you want to work on yourself, and you want to increase your self-awareness muscle, this is a really good place to start the journey. I want to call that out because part of what we're doing here is hopefully moving people to action. It's not just enough to say, "I want to increase my self-awareness." You actually have to go out and do something to make that happen, and this is one of the paths that we recommend folks investigate if they really want to move the needle on self-awareness.
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah, I think that's spot on, Oscarlyn. I love the way you said it, and I would totally agree that any assessment that you do on yourself can be helpful data, then do it, right? But if you're only doing that stuff that's just giving you personality traits or different preferences, it's going to be limited. When you get that 360 feedback, that's a whole other layer of really how you're showing up in a way that people are experiencing you. Yeah, it could be painful, but isn't it fascinating too?
Oscarlyn Elder:
Yeah.
Jeremy Spidell:
Don't you want to know?
Oscarlyn Elder:
Absolutely. So as we think about leadership and the toolkit, we're focusing a lot on conscious leadership and self-awareness, another element of emotional intelligence, because self-awareness is really the beginning of emotional intelligence. You have to have a view of how you're walking the journey, how you react to people. You have to learn, frankly, how to mute the edges at times of those reactions and what's causing them and get to the root of it.
Another element of emotional intelligence that I just want to highlight for folks, and I think it's captured in that 360 element, but it's really an awareness of how others are walking the journey and an awareness of, perhaps, their emotional intelligence. So it's not just about the self, though the self is really important, but great leaders also have developed, I would say, a higher level of functioning around understanding how others are walking the walk. Perhaps their both technical journey, but also their emotional journey as well.
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah, it's essential. I mean, if all you're doing is just learning about yourself, that's great. It's important. And if you want to be a leader, you got to be thinking about the other people in the room, and particularly the people that you are leading and realizing that just like you, they're human and they have different beliefs and different values and different things that matter to them and different things that are going to inspire them and different things that are going to make them pull away. So it's important to be really connected to them and understand who they are, what they're about, and that's hard. I think the old-school way of leadership is more like, "Hey, it's my way or the highway. Now you have to adapt to me." Look, there's still a piece of that that is part of leadership and likely always will be.
I think the shift that we've seen is that it's also essential now, and more than ever, and I think this is good evolution, this is good progress for us as a species to say, "Hey, what about everybody here? We're all working towards something. This is not about me. This is about us, and how do we solve these things together and collaborate together?" When you see teams doing that, those are the ones that are really unstoppable. So for leaders, they’ve got to be paying attention to that and saying, "Hey, Oscarlyn is going to be motivated and inspired a little more by this, whereas Jeremy is going to be motivated and inspired by this, and how do I as a leader flex on, flex off, pull this lever, push this one, and make sure that everybody's getting what they need?" Back to the art form, that is the art of it. You got to be really aware of other people to be able to do that.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Jeremy, this has been a great discussion about really some of the capacities with a focus on conscious leadership, and self-awareness specifically, that are required to lead a business. Next, we're going to talk about some of the specific challenges for the next generation of business leaders.
We've been discussing some of the key capacities required for leaders. For someone who is starting their tenure, starting their leadership journey, what are some of the main challenges?
Jeremy Spidell:
Well, we find there's no shortage of challenges. Every leader has their own special blend. I think when you're taking over a family business, though, there are three things that we've noticed that tend to be fairly pervasive. One is, and I think we alluded to this earlier, the COO syndrome, child of owner syndrome. It creates a couple things. One, the perception of the people in the organization could just say, "Well, hey, they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth and they had it easy, and now they've got this job. What have they really done to earn this?" So, fair enough. Look, even when you're not the child of the owner, people often ask those questions. I mean, that's part of being a leader, right? So there's that, and I think that that can also create a bit of an imposter syndrome potentially for the child of the owner.
Oscarlyn Elder:
What's the imposter syndrome?
Jeremy Spidell:
The imposter syndrome is essentially, "Hey, I'm a fraud in a way. I maybe don't really deserve to be here. I'm in over my head, and I just hope nobody figures it out." And-
Oscarlyn Elder:
So, Jeremy-
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah.
Oscarlyn Elder:
I'm going to give a personal example of this.
Jeremy Spidell:
OK. Let's go. Let's go.
Oscarlyn Elder:
A personal example. So I went to Duke for my MBA to the Fuqua School of Business. I kid you not, I went to a special program that started a week or two weeks before our regular classes started. I remember distinctly walking down the hallway, this beautiful building, starting that program going, "I cannot believe they let me in. They have made a mistake. I cannot believe that they have let me in." Still walking the walk, pushing it aside. Look, I finished that program in really good standing. I was a Fuqua Scholar, but there was this moment of, "They've made a mistake. They're going to find out that they really shouldn't have let me in." I think a lot of folks have those thoughts that at different moments in their lives, frankly, penetrate our being. They're just there. I don't think it had a name back when I went to graduate school, but there's been a fair amount written in the last few years about this imposter syndrome.
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah, absolutely. So how did you push past it?
Oscarlyn Elder:
I think I just did. I think I just showed up every day and kept working at it and working at it and knowing, "Hey, I may not have proficiency and mastery from the beginning, but I'm going to work really hard, and I'm going to prove that I belong." So I think a combination of trying to change my thoughts and maybe faking it until I made it and just walking the walk. Putting the effort in to prove to myself that I did belong there.
Jeremy Spidell:
I love that response. What's interesting is when we work with young leaders or leaders that are rising into these new spots and new levels, we often find that they'll take that approach. You get a little knock on the door of like, "Yeah, you don't deserve to be here," and so your response to that knock is, "Well, I'm going to work harder, and I'm going to prove that I do deserve to be here." Look, I love the edge that that takes, I love the confidence that that takes, I love the fire that it takes to do that. I respect that, and it takes a lot of energy, right? Like-
Oscarlyn Elder:
It does. It took a ton of energy so-
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah.
Oscarlyn Elder:
I'm hoping you're going to tell me there's a better way because, again, this has been a couple of decades ago. I was not necessarily the most enlightened being at that time. Not that I am now either, but there may be a better strategy, so if you have a better strategy, please share.
Jeremy Spidell:
Yeah. Well again, I love that you used it as fuel, and I think that is a great response to it. I think the opposite end of that is a lot of people will just robustly push back against that notion and then almost over-index on the ego and arrogance to say, "No. I do deserve to be here, and I'm going to act like it," it shows up in a lot of different ways of maybe entitlement or maybe arrogance, and that's not awesome either in terms of-
Oscarlyn Elder:
Right.
Jeremy Spidell:
So I like your approach better, but I think maybe there's something in between that would be acknowledged like, "Yeah, OK." This gets back to the self-awareness. "OK, I'm having this thought. I don't deserve to be here." This would get back into some of my old clinical days of a little bit of good old cognitive behavioral therapy, right? Let's examine the evidence here. "What did I do to get in here? What have I done to develop myself and to do the application and to go through the process to get admitted into this thing? I did it, and I earned that. So now I'm here, and now I've got this opportunity, and I would rather spend my time and my energy focused on, how can I explore and grow in this opportunity versus proving to everyone that I'm not a fraud and I did deserve to be here."
To me, that would be a better use of the energy and would allow people to, not in a denial Pollyannaish kind of way, but in an authentic way, say, "Yeah, OK, I hear that voice, and let me push back against that with some evidence," and then find a way to not have to use all that energy towards fighting that voice and instead use that energy towards exploring and growing.
Oscarlyn Elder:
So to call this out specifically, again, we're talking about the imposter syndrome in the context specifically of next-generation leaders of family businesses. I think there's general applicability to our conversation, but then also bringing it back to our topic at hand, we just want to make sure that folks who are in family businesses who might be that next-generation leader are aware that this particular imposter syndrome could rear its head. There seems like there are at least two typical types of reactions. One is, "I'm going to put my head down and work really hard, fake it until I make it, just keep pushing through." The other is an arc to ego, "Hey, yes, I belong here," which can come off as entitlement. Both responses take a lot of energy, and what you're saying is there's probably a middle path that takes less energy that may be more effective over time.
So we just want folks to have this awareness. If you need to do that deeper work, certainly our Truist Leadership Institute has capabilities there. But again, for awareness, we want folks to know that this could happen to you if you're that next-generation business leader.
Jeremy Spidell:
I would say it probably will happen to you.
Oscarlyn Elder:
It will happen.
Jeremy Spidell:
Just go ahead and expect it, and that's OK. That is part of the journey. I think this gets back to, we started talking about purpose earlier ... If I am that next-gen leader that's stepping into it, if I'm really clear about my why ... "Why am I doing this? Because I love this business. I grew up around it. I saw the people, I saw my parents or my grandparents or my brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, I saw all the amazing people out in the factory or the plant or wherever it may be," like, "This is part of my home. This is part of my heritage. I want to be part of this, and I want to lead this for the next couple of decades in a way that preserves this legacy and builds on it and creates even something new and evolves into what's next. That's my why, and that's why I want to be a part of this."
I think when people start to hear that and see that and understand that, honestly, if they're paying attention to the other alternatives, right, let's be real about that because the other alternatives are what? They're going to sell it. To who? And then you got a whole other situation where I had a leader recently who's in his 60s and said, "You know, the easiest thing would be to sell it, but I don't want to do that. My son wants to take this thing over, and I want to give him a chance to do that, and I care about our employees, and I don't know what would happen to them if we sold it. This matters to me. This matters to the future of the people that I care so much about."
In a lot of ways, the next gen taking that over and carrying that legacy on is ultimately also in the best interest of the people that work there. So again, if you can build that kind of narrative, if you can build that belief and collaboration, I think that can really channel that energy towards something a lot healthier than just, "I’ve got to prove, I’ve got to prove, I’ve got to perform. I’ve got to make sure everybody believes this," and better use, better investment of time and energy.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Jeremy, thank you so much for the conversation today. I hope that folks out there as they hear this episode are really inspired to dig in and to learn more about leadership and to focus on their leadership. This is a really important topic, and it has just been a delight having you here and having this conversation.
Jeremy Spidell:
Well, it's been a delight to be here, and it's been really great to hear more about your story, your journey, and just love how you are applying. You're doing what we hope with the Leadership Institute. If we can work with our teammates in ways that before coaching and after coaching, it's a hard line in the sand of your journey. The fact that we get to be a part of that with our teammates and then we get to talk about this in ways that maybe help our clients or prospects or community partners, that's special work that we get to do. That's a special thing that Truist brings to the table that I'm proud to be a part of, so thank you for the conversation. It's been fun.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Now, Jeremy, before we go, we have a tradition on I've Been Meaning To Do That where hopefully guests are willing to share their “I've been meaning to do that” items. Is there something that you would be willing to share with me and our listeners?
Jeremy Spidell:
Yes, there is. Given that this is wealth-oriented, I'm going to go with a little bit of a wealth estate plan kind of thing. I’ve got to update my will. I've been talking about it; my wife and I have been talking about it. We did it in 2003 when she was pregnant with our daughter. Our daughter's about to turn 21, and a lot of things have changed in those 21 years. It's time to update that. It's time to think strategically about estate planning and tax planning and all those different things that we were in a different place in a long time ago. So I'm committing here for you, Oscarlyn, ultimately for me though and our daughter and our family. We're going to get that right here.
Oscarlyn Elder:
All right, Jeremy. Well, you've said it now on I've Been Meaning To Do That. You've said it publicly, which means you're more likely to follow through and actually get it done. That public commitment is really important.
I went through this process last summer. We had our first estate planning document, I think in 2006 when my daughter was born. She will turn 18 this summer. But last summer I just really had this intense, "I know I need to update this. I need to get this ready for her turning 18. I just know more about who she is, we know more about our family now," and really had a view of how if something were to happen to me that I would want both her and my husband taken care of and what roles people may play in that. So I encourage you to do it, get it done, and then follow through with the other actions like retitling accounts.
Jeremy Spidell:
I like it. Good advice. I'm in.
Oscarlyn Elder:
Jeremy, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and your expertise with us today. This has been an incredible conversation. And for you listening, thank you for joining me today. If you haven't already, check out the other episodes in this series. If you liked this episode, please be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast and tell friends and family about it. If you have a question for me or a suggestion for this podcast, email me at dothat@truist.com. I'll be back soon for another episode of I've Been Meaning To Do That, the podcast that gets you moving toward fulfilling your purpose and achieving your financial goals. Talk to you soon.
Ready to keep your family business’s momentum going into the next generation? In this episode of I’ve Been Meaning To Do That, host Oscarlyn Elder talks to Jeremy Spidell of the Truist Leadership Institute about how you can help younger family members grow into confident leaders as part of your succession planning. They discuss (time stamps are approximate):
Learn more about how the Truist Leadership Institute is empowering people to lead.
The podcast team has created a template for taking notes on each episode.
Listen to the previous episodes in this series on running a family business:
Have a question for Oscarlyn or her guests? Email DoThat@truist.com.
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