HMG Paints, a leading manufacturer of paints and coatings, has been named the Manufacturing Family Business of the Year at the prestigious Family Business of the Year Awards 2023. The awards, hosted by Family Business United, took place in the serene Medicine Garden located within the grounds of the Royal College of Physicians. The event aimed to recognise and celebrate the invaluable contributions made by family firms to the national economy. “Family businesses are the engine room of the UK economy and with 6 million family firms employing around 14 million people in all corners of the country they make a massive impact each and every day” commented Paul Andrews, Managing Director of Family Business United. “Incomes are generated, jobs provided and wealth created but as one of the family members said to me, ‘That is just the tip of the iceberg. Family businesses care and want to be seen as doing the right thing, doing business the right way.’” The accolade of Manufacturing Family Business of the Year is a testament to HMG Paints’ commitment to excellence, innovation, and the preservation of its family legacy, with the judges also recognising the companies support for the wider family business community. As a multi-generation family-owned business, HMG Paints has consistently demonstrated its dedication to producing high-quality paint products and industry-leading solutions for over nine decades. John Falder, Chairman of HMG Paints, expressed his gratitude for the recognition received by the company, stating, "Being named the Manufacturing Family Business of the Year is an incredible honour for HMG Paints. We are immensely proud of our heritage and the values that have guided our family business since its inception. This award is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team, who consistently strive for excellence in everything we do." HMG Paints Ltd has been at the forefront of the manufacturing industry, continuously delivering innovative products and solutions to a diverse range of customers. The company's commitment to sustainability, customer satisfaction, and community engagement has further strengthened its reputation as an industry leader. Paddy Dyson, Marketing Manager “Being able to collect the award on behalf of all the team back at Riverside Works is an honour. We’re extremely proud just to be nominated for the award and be in the company of so many fantastic family businesses but to receive the Manufacturing Family Business of the Year Award was a fantastic surprise.” Family Business United, the host of the Family Business of the Year Awards, is a leading resource centre and advocacy group dedicated to supporting and promoting family businesses throughout the United Kingdom. The awards ceremony provides a unique opportunity to highlight the importance of family enterprises and their significant contribution to the nation's economy, you can find out more about FBU and the awards by visiting www.familybusinessunited.com.

A Glasgow support group for children with autism and additional support needs will be able to keep their charges occupied over the holidays after a £2,000 donation from Allied Vehicles Charitable Trust. The AutisFun Group was set up in north Glasgow earlier this year by three parents to autistic/ASN children – Lyndsay Flemming, Amanda McNee and Cheryl Maxwell – to create an inclusive, safe space in the community for the youngsters, as well as their siblings. They run support sessions every Friday which now cater for more than 50 children, who are all encouraged to socialise and try new experiences alongside other kids. The youngsters recently began venturing outside when the weather is decent and the Allied donation will help fund more trips, along with additional play equipment. “We are absolutely delighted with this gesture, it means so much to us and our families,” said Cheryl. “We have worked really hard, as normal everyday parents dealing with kids with ASN/ASD, we know and can feel how much this group was needed, hence why we decided to start up and help out other families in a similar position locally. We know how isolating and challenging life becomes and we are so grateful to now have built up a peer support network for the children, siblings, parents and carers and we too feel the benefit." “Once again, we want to thank you, the board and everyone at Allied Vehicles for having faith and letting us be able to put on some extra trips and buy in some new equipment for everyone on board.” Allied owner Gerry Facenna said: “The women who set up AutisFun have done a brilliant job with the children and families they work with and I’m sure they’ll do even more in the future." “I’m delighted that we can help give the group something to keep all the youngsters occupied over the holidays.”

The quintet of riders selected to represent Britain in the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ of Great Britain has been named. The squad comprises reigning Olympic gold medallist Ben Maher (Exit Remo), British number two Harry Charles (Casquo Blue), Tim Gredley (Medoc De Toxandria), British team stalwart John Whitaker (Equine America Unick de Francport) and Donald Whitaker (Di Caprio). The four riders who will make up the final team will be announced at the Nations Cup draw on Thursday 27 July, ahead of the competition itself on Friday 28 July. “What a fantastic squad we have coming to Hickstead for this year’s Nations Cup,” said Hickstead Director Lizzie Bunn. “John has been on countless winning teams here over the years, and it’s great to see his nephew Donald make team selection here for the first time. “To have the two highest ranked British riders in Ben and Harry gives the team chances a real boost, while Tim Gredley has had some great results with Medoc De Toxandria this season too,” Lizzie added. Great Britain will be aiming to pick up points at this home leg, as will France, Germany, Ireland and Italy. They’ll face further competition from the teams from Brazil, Sweden and the USA. Britain currently sits in sixth place in the European Division One rankings, with the top seven teams qualifying for the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ Final in Barcelona. However, with one less start than those above them, the British team has the chance to climb the leaderboard if they can produce strong performances at both Hickstead and the final leg of the series in Dublin. The Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ forms the feature class on the Friday of the Longines Royal International Horse Show (26-31 July). Thursday’s main highlight is the Ashby Underwriting Eventers’ Challenge, while on Saturday crowds can enjoy the Breen Equestrian Queen Elizabeth II Cup. The show concludes on Sunday with the Grand Prix – the Longines King George V Gold Cup. The Royal International is one of the oldest and biggest horse shows in the world, with five-star international showjumping alongside championship showing, scurry driving and national jumping classes of all levels.

High Wycombe based RH Amar, is celebrating reaching the £2m milestone in its charitable giving. Over the past 10 years the company, which acts as a distributor for some of the UK’s best-loved food brands, has donated over £2m to charitable causes. The milestone has been reached through RH Amar’s commitment to donate 10% of its profits each year to charity – a commitment made in 2013 by RH Amar’s MD, Rob Amar. Charities which have benefited from donations over the past decade include local Buckinghamshire charities Rennie Grove Hospice Care and Heart of Bucks Community Foundation, industry charities such as GroceryAid and Farm Africa, and national charities including Macmillan Cancer Support and Guide Dogs. RH Amar officially presented the donation that would take them across the £2m mark to the Heart of Bucks Community Foundation – which RH Amar has supported for over 15 years. The special presentation was made to Henry Allmand, CEO, Heart of Bucks Community Foundation, at RH Amar’s HQ on the Cressex Estate with RH Amar colleagues invited to celebrate the achievement. Rob Amar, MD, RH Amar said: “Our commitment to donate 10% of RH Amar’s profits to charity each year is an extension and reflection of the values we hold as a business. We have been able to donate £2m to charitable causes over the past 10 years thanks to the hard work of our team and support of our customers and brand partners, and I know that being able to support so many worthwhile causes means as much to them as it does personally to me.“ Henry Allmand, CEO at Heart of Bucks said: “Businesses like RH Amar can play a vital role in supporting their local community and we are extremely grateful for their continued support as one of our Community Investors. Their kind donation will be directed where the need is greatest and will provide essential funding for local organisations committed to making Buckinghamshire a better place to live.” Each year charities are chosen by RH Amar’s Doing Business Better team, which oversees all CSR activity at the company. Colleagues are also invited to personally nominate a charity of their choice to receive a donation from the company. Colleague-nominated charities this year included Aylesbury Food Bank, Spinal Injuries Association and Stokenchurch Dog Rescue. In addition to its 10%-to-charity commitment, RH Amar also offers donation matching to support colleague fundraising and supports local foodbanks through stock donations from its distribution warehouse on the Cressex Estate. The company also offers colleagues a volunteering day to spend helping a charity of their choice. Last year RH Amar was named the UK’s Best Food & Drink Company To Work For by Best Companies, recognition of its excellent workplace engagement.

Hendy Group has signed a high-profile partnership with cricket legend Sir Ian Botham who has become an ambassador for the motoring group’s sports and premium brands. The partnership comes at a busy time for Ian who has a range of public engagements and events lined-up for 2023. There is also the Ashes Series against Australia currently underway in the UK, and plans for a new documentary later this year. As part of his role Ian, will be involved in the expansion of Hendy Group’s sports and premium offering which includes Maserati, Land Rover, Jaguar and Lotus at dealerships across the south coast. Paul Hendy, chief executive of the Hendy Group said that having such a high-profile ambassador would enable the automotive group to reach a wider, national audience. “Ian is one of the most high-profile sports personalities in the country with his incredible career as a cricket player, his tremendous fundraising for charities with his charity walks and of course as a respected commentator and speaker,” said Paul. “He represents resilience, trust, loyalty and success which are values that align with us at the Hendy Group and we are really looking forward to working more closely with Ian as part of his role as Hendy Ambassador.” For Ian, the partnership provides an opportunity to drive a range of cars as part of his speaking and charity work across the country and he said he was really looking forward to joining the Hendy team as an ambassador. “I have known Paul and the Hendy business for many years and during this time we have shared our love of sport and cars. I now look forward to working alongside the Hendy Group as an ambassador for the brand,” said Ian.

It’s often said that people don’t leave companies; they leave bosses. That’s because no one has a greater impact on the day-to-day life of a worker — along with their personal performance, productivity and attitude — than their direct boss. Their boss creates their job description, defines their activities, sets their standards and expectations and reviews their performance. More importantly, the boss creates and instils the vision, purpose and local culture for the work team. In this piece, Geoff Lawrence, Managing Director of Vistage shares his thoughts on how to become a better boss. The CEO may profess high ideals, values and beliefs to the company, but it is the boss who dictates and drives the culture that employees work and live in every day. At the same time, no role has experienced greater change because of the COVID-19 pandemic than the frontline manager, also known as the boss. This is primarily due to the shift from the traditional, Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 workplace to the hybrid workplace. Once capable of managing employers in the office, bosses are still adjusting to how they best digitally connect and engage with remote employees. This requires greater clarity around tasks, deliverables and accountability. Bosses will need to maximise in-office days for collaboration, innovation, problem-solving and team-building events, or risk losing the focus of their team. A newly empowered, enlightened and remote workforce will demand more from their bosses than ever before. In any scenario, employees still require job structure, task identification, deliverable schedules, goals and metrics, but they also need their bosses to simultaneously serve as a leader, coach and manager: ● Leader : Leaders engage and connect their team to the organisation’s goals. They set the vision and direction for the workgroup, aligning the efforts of individuals and teams to broader objectives. They embrace culture at the team level and provide a consistent connection to the company’s culture. They also recognise and reward behaviours that exemplify culture and performance expectations. ● Coach : Coaches empower individuals to improve and teams to excel. They motivate and inspire workers to realise their goals and become the best they can be. They work with people to develop their skills, enhance their capabilities and realise their potential. Along with helping people set goals, they hold them accountable for the activities and results needed to achieve those goals. ● Manager : Managers are responsible for individual and team performance. They must clearly define roles, activities and responsibilities; set standards and expectations; and evaluate, critique and grade performance. Performance management is no longer about counting numbers or tracking attendance, but about ensuring the quality of deliverables. Employee development — inclusive of leadership development — is one of the top 10 investments for small and medium sized businesses in 2022, according to Vistage research. Specifically, 78% of CEOs are directing resources towards programmes that develop the “bosses” in their organisation — that is, managers of people and other leaders. These are wise investments. Why? Because bosses have the greatest direct impact on the employee experience, which in turn impacts business performance. Building better bosses, then, builds stronger, high performing organisations It’s hard to overstate the importance of a boss. A boss dictates the employee experience. A boss contributes to the performance of an organisation. A boss reinforces a CEO’s strategy, culture and performance expectations. However, a boss doesn’t instinctively know how to fulfil these duties; they must be guided. This is especially true in the new, digital workplace. As CEOs look to develop their bosses, they should anticipate a steep and rocky learning curve. Bosses will make mistakes as they learn how to adapt to the new workplace and while some will adapt naturally, others will follow at a slower pace. To accelerate this process, CEOs should create opportunities for bosses to share what’s working and what’s not working. Thus, investing in the training and development of bosses — and helping them become better leaders, coaches and managers — is essential for CEOs. Those who do this first will be the fastest to realise productivity gains.

Managing a team of people comes with a new level of responsibilities. But have you ever considered the vast difference between being a manager and a leader? Harvard Business Review reports that 30 is the average age of a first-time manager while 40 is the age where people first embark on leadership training. This is a decade of lost years of building leadership skills – this can lead to ingraining bad habits and not practising to improve your style. Being a manager doesn’t automatically make you a leader. The main difference between a manager and a leader is that managers delegate tasks to those who work for them whereas leaders have people follow them and believe in what they’re setting out for the company. The best part of the last year has demonstrated that leaders need to be prepared and agile to respond to protect their business and employees. Here, the team from Impact International highlight four ways that managers can transform themselves into leaders. Respect goes two ways Firstly, and most importantly, be respectable. Respect should be earned, not expected – no employee is going to consider a manager their leader if they don’t respect them. There are a number of things you should consider in order to gain your employees’ respect. After all, if they respect you, they’re likely to work harder for you, cooperate more with others, be more creative, resilient, and likely to take direction. These include: Leading by example. Be prepared to pick up tasks big and small, for example making your own cup of coffee or printing copies out to hand out to the workforce. Listen to your team. Open the floor for others to speak and allow them to voice their opinions on how to improve things. Holding steady team meetings opens up a dialogue of feedback and ideas. Follow through on deadlines and agreements. If you can’t meet your own deadlines, why should your team? If you offer to help someone on a particular project, honour that promise. Accept responsibility if things don’t work out. Communication is key Never underestimate the power of communication. Managers with poor communication skills often alienate their workers, leaving the team confused and with little faith that things are being run properly. Take time to communicate your ideas, expectations, strategies, and everything in between, making everyone else feel involved in what’s going on. You can do this by thinking of any strategy the same as telling a story to someone who knows nothing about it. You can focus on things you don’t know or what you need to understand yourself in order to relay it others. By involving your team and keeping them engaged, this will also allow successful executions and a happy, motivated team – you can’t expect a strategy to work if it isn’t understood and nobody is committed. Shape company culture Leaders should contribute to an active company culture. If workers’ characteristics don’t fit into the culture, this could influence their decision to leave. By defining a culture early on and recruiting those who fit into the talent pool, employees will feel comfortable which will have a positive effect on their performance. Harvard Business carried out research to find out which qualities are most important in leaders. 700 workers were asked which qualities they value the most – 70 per cent agreed that creating a culture of engagement is a very important attribute and results in lower turnover rates, more productivity, and more profitability. This reiterates what was mentioned in the first section – leaders must lead by example. They can determine how valued traits are within the business, for example, communication, integrity, and commitment. Employees who work in an engaging culture with their leader will have positive opinions about the company and will be strong advocates. Leadership training programs Go over and beyond for your team and consider enrolling on leadership training programs. which are designed to guide leaders through key issues and how to effectively adopt forward-thinking strategies. Organisations are constantly evolving in the modern world, therefore so does the nature of leading. Building on agile and reactive skills can help you become a capable and inspiring leader. Leaders certainly have a big responsibility to inspire and encourage their workers – so it is important to do it properly.

What do successful family businesses have in common? The answer is: effective leadership. Without highly effective leaders at every level, the organisations we all recognise as the most innovative, pioneering and financially profitable would not be where they are today. So, how do leaders become more effective? Like most things in life, becoming a highly effective leader takes time and effort. Business leader, leadership coach, Vistage Speaker (and 4 times winner of the Speak-Out Performer of the Year award), Brad Waldron, believes it’s all about cultivating the right habits. Drawing inspiration from Franklin Covey’s ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, Waldron refines and reframes this concept for leadership. Brad believes if you can master these seven habits, you’ll create a better work culture and happier employees, and increase your productivity. ‘Each habit is a beautiful instrument that, when played well, makes wonderful music’ he explains, ‘but when all seven are played together, they make an orchestra’. And here they are: Brad Waldron’s 7 habits of highly effective leaders: 1. Be proactive ‘There’s one habit that acts as the conductor, and that’s being proactive’. As Brad explains, this habit is the cornerstone habit of highly effective leadership. It’s the acknowledgment that you are in charge, and while you may not always be able to control the wider context, you always have a choice. ‘You have a choice over your feelings, your actions, your responses, and how you interpret what goes on in life’, he says, putting it most succinctly with this analogy: ‘I can’t control the weather, but I can control what I wear’. 2. Make a choice ‘Habit two says make your choice. Begin with the end in mind’. In order to create something, you need vision; it needs to firstly exist in your mind before you can practically create it. If you want to go somewhere, you need to know how to get there, but what’s the point in looking at a map if you don’t know your final destination? This habit is all about making choices about what you want to achieve. When you have a clear picture of what the end goal is, you can make decisions that will help you get there. 3. Live your choice ‘Live your choices, live your priorities, live the things that matter the most’. Brad goes on to explain that this habit is all about prioritising the things that are most important – the things that will help you realise your vision: ‘Decide what’s most important to you and focus on those things – don’t get distracted by noise’. Living your choice is effectively the birth child of habits one and two: you’ve acknowledged that you’re in charge, you’ve mentally created ‘the end’, and you begin to make it a reality day by day with the choices and actions you take. ‘Putting these first three habits together is what we call a private victory’, Brad says, ‘it’s just for you, so it’s a little bit selfish – but it’s a good kind of selfish. It’s like the principle of first aid: I can’t help you unless I am safe.’ 4. Help others: the mindset of abundance ‘Now that I am contributing, and I have a strong sense of my independence, I am choosing to help others be great as well’. This habit is all about cultivating the mindset of abundance, as Brad illuminates: ‘This is a mental habit which is called ‘think win:win’. It’s about saying: how do I use my courage and consideration to help people achieve their goals and help them contribute to the bigger picture?’ “Instead of saying: “this is what I want”, we start to ask: “what do you need?” first’.” Brad goes on to explain what it takes to cultivate this habit: ‘It’s a mindful habit. We need to first think like this in order to behave in this way. Instead of saying: “this is what I want”, we start to ask: “what do you need?” first’. 5. Keep communicating ‘I live in a castle, and you live in a castle. In order for us to develop a great relationship, we have to lower our drawbridges in order to let each into our worlds.’ Brad believes that real, empathic communication is one of the most important aspects of effective leadership. He explains that there are five levels of listening: ‘The fifth level is empathic listening – when we really hear what the other person is saying, and don’t decide what we think they mean before they’ve finished speaking’. “In this way, we seek first to understand, then to be understood.” While most of us prioritise being heard or understood, Waldron espouses seeking to understand others first. This habit can be cultivated by asking and acknowledging what another person is thinking or feeling before examining your own feelings or thoughts in a particular situation. In this way, we seek first to understand, then to be understood. 6. Synergy ‘Synergy is when we apply habits 1-5 in a group setting’, Brad explains. ‘Synergy means: collectively we can achieve more when working towards the same goal than if we were independently facing the same goal. That’s why famous sports teams are consistently famous – their synergy levels are beyond other teams’ synergy levels.’ However, synergy requires diversity and differences within a team – if everyone has the same strengths and weaknesses, adopting this habit is very difficult. Brad goes on to explain that diversity is the key to synergy. ‘You have to value the differences. Whether it be gender, race, education, skills, experiences – diversity is the gift which builds creative synergy. There are things which can get in the way of achieving synergy: your own personal biases and judgements, your ego, or your need for control’. 7. Sharpen the saw Sharpening the saw is about self care. As Brad says: ‘Your life is a saw, you have to keep it sharp if you want to keep cutting’. If you have adopted habit one, and believe that you have the control and the power to make choices, you need to make sure your personal health and wellbeing allow you to keep doing what you’re doing. Brad believes there are four key areas to focus on. ‘The first is your physical self: how you manage stress, nutrition and exercise. The second is looking after yourself socially and emotionally: your friends, time, service – all these things affect behaviours and longevity’, says Brad. ‘The third’, explains Brad, ‘is your brain, your vitality, your mentality’. The fourth and final endowment is to look after yourself spiritually. As Brad says, ‘it’s whatever that means to you – it could be believing in a higher purpose or studying scriptures, or just going for dog walks at sunset’. Becoming a highly effective leader isn’t about possessing specific qualities or talents. Great leaders can be introverts or extroverts, they can be autocratic or democratic, they can be supportive or laissez-faire. Effective leaders do, however, adopt the types of mindset which allow them to visualise and focus on their goals, and get the best from others. This isn’t innate, it’s something which is developed over time by cultivating habits which lead to desired behaviours. As Brad concludes: ‘These are not seven traits, behaviours or qualities, they are habits. A habit is free, a habit is something which you do instinctively and intuitively without thinking. The more you can create habits, the more automated it is, the more likely you are to do it. That is a gift that will always give you a return.’ About the Author - Brad Waldron is a business leader, leadership coach and Vistage speaker. First published on the Vistage website the piece is reproduced with permission.

There have been crises before, some of them larger than others, but it is probably true to say that family business leaders have never previously faced challenges the like of which have been experienced in the past six months or so. The global pandemic has taken its toll in a number of ways and for leaders of family firms there has never been a more important time to lead. Family businesses are the backbone of the UK economy and the mainstay of communities the length and breadth of Britain. Times have changed and leaders have had to learn new skills, adapt and evolve – and more importantly for many, do so on a daily basis, Undoubtedly some have faired better than others, and some sectors been affected more than others too. Firms that have faired well have adapted swiftly, made quick strategic decisions and faced up to difficult conversations and for many, clear lines of communication, sound governance and good leadership have helped, together with clearly defined values, clarity of purpose and commitment from the broader workforce too. Leaders have had to adapt to a changing workforce, staff on furlough and many working from home and the situation has been changing almost daily. Leaders have shone through, communicating with staff in all manner of ways such as weekly video calls, personal emails, smaller team meetings virtually and in more innovative ways too. It may not have been easy at first but people have adapted well, embraced new technology and come together to keep businesses going. In many cases the pandemic has brought teams closer, improved communication and paved the way for better, quicker decisions being made and implemented. We are now seeing more people being encouraged to return to work but are undoubtedly a long way from having everyone back in the office, for reasons such as safe social distancing, unwillingness to travel and a new way of working that enables people to be productive working from home. Current ways of working will also create new challenges which will have to be addressed and leaders will need to manage the balance of people working from home with some in the office, some remaining on furlough for the time being and in some cases redundancies too. These are uncertain times and it is now more than ever that the culture and underlying values of the family business make a difference. Difficult decisions need to be made but there are various ways of making the same decision. Balancing teams is going to be a continuing challenge for some time to come but communication and strong leadership is essential, Leaders also need to recognise the impact of the new ways of working on their staff, some of whom may have been fully employed and working long hours throughout whilst their peers may have been on furlough. Some staff may also be working longer hours than normal to try and go the extra mile to protect their roles but these hours are unlikely to be sustainable in the long run. Being aware of the contribution of individuals and finding appropriate and fair ways of rewarding staff is also likely to be on the agenda. There are lots of challenges for family business leaders at the moment, many associated with simply keeping the business going and managing the day to day operations and it certainly is not easy. Then there is the need to focus on the future and the needs of the business going forward, new requirements as the business evolves and needs new skills and to think about the future challenges and opportunities that may arise, Above all, there is still a need for leaders to find some time for themselves, to take a moment to take stock and find some time out. Not easy but essential for their own long term health and well-being and to enable them to continue to lead the business during the next phase of the pandemic. Over the past six months I have spoken to numerous family business leaders and have never ceased to be impressed by their stealth, grit and determination to succeed, focusing on the long term even in the darkest of moments and making sure that they lead from the front. Family businesses are full of entrepreneurship, passion and drive to succeed, not just for the family but the broader community of stakeholders too. Family business leaders have had to step up and lead from the front, and have clearly done just that. Family businesses have been around for generations and will be here for generations to come. For some the challenges have brought forward the implementation of strategies that were on the agenda for the future, for others investment continues in new machinery, marketing and campaigns to reinforce their brands whilst others are sourcing new markets for their products and services. There is a lot going on and family business leaders undoubtedly have a lot on their plates at the moment but as has been the way for many generations, the ‘keep calm and carry on’ mentality is seeing businesses continue. Leaders are sourcing new skills, communicating and managing change, for some on an unprecedented scale but it is great to see that firms that have an underlying set of values, purpose and clear vision of where they are now, and where they are going, taking all the steps to achieve their ambitions. It is always easy to focus on the negatives, but as champions of the family business sector, we recognise the efforts, blood, sweat and tears that are being poured into the nation’s family firms each and every day and wanted to take a moment to reflect on the journey that many leaders have been on in the past six months. Clearly, businesses are going to have some tough times ahead and leaders more decisions that have to be made, some of them difficult, but family business leaders have risen to the challenge, are taking decisions for the long term to protect their businesses and continue to be the engine room of local and regional economies and the heartbeat of the nation.

How your leaders (and line managers) communicate and behave has a huge impact on the shape of your family business company culture. For family-owned businesses in particular, there is such a close connection between the owners and the business that sometimes it can be difficult to take a step back and look at what it might be like for their employees to work there. However, if there’s any misalignment between the culture you communicate and the culture your employees experience via their leaders then you have a problem. Your leaders need to ‘walk the talk’. For example, if your culture clearly states that an excellent customer experience is central to all that you do but the leader of the customer service department is more focused on measuring the number of calls handled per day than customer experience, you have a disconnect which will impact on the engagement of your employees. Beverley Mitchell, the founder of Beverley Mitchell Consulting Ltd has identified 12 ways for managers to positively impact employee engagement in your family business. Provide Clear Direction & Purpose 1. Ensure that every member of your team knows how their individual role links to and impacts on the overall success of team and the business as a whole. 2. Set clear expectations for each member of your team; explain what great performance looks like not just in terms of what needs to be achieved but the behaviours used to achieve it. Understand What Motivates Your Team 1. Get to know your team as individuals; learn what motivates them, how they like to be recognised and what their aspirations are. 2. Create opportunities for team members to put forward ideas and share their opinions and ensure that you provide feedback on those. Provide Regular Feedback & Recognition 1. Provide timely recognition to team members when they demonstrate great performance. 2. Provide your team members with timely, constructive and motivating feedback. 3. Have frequent conversations, both informal and formal, with your team members. Provide Opportunities For Development 1. Be open to allowing your team members to take on new responsibilities and support them to learn new skills. 2. Look for ways to align responsibilities within the team to the strengths and talents of the individuals. Create The Right Environment 1. Treat your team members with respect 2. Promote an environment of openness and honesty within your team 3. Provide opportunities for team members to meet socially About the Author - Beverley Mitchell has been working in or alongside family businesses for most of her career and has personally experienced the high levels of engagement and commitment that a strong family business culture can inspire. She set up Beverley Mitchell Consulting Ltd (BMC) in early 2015 to help family businesses to leverage their unique culture to drive engagement across every level and in every area of their business. Beverley’s approach is one of partnership and collaboration and she uses her personal, intuitive and pragmatic style to create tailored solutions which drive both business growth and staff engagement and retention.

“Management’s business is building organizations that work,” says Harvard Business School’s Joan Magretta, and conversational capacity is a foundational competence for building teams and organizations that work well – even when the pressure is on. But what is conversational capacity? Conversational capacity is the ability to engage in constructive, learning-focused dialogue about difficult subjects, in challenging circumstances, and across tough boundaries. It’s a vital competence for both personal and collective performance: Personal performance : A person with high conversational capacity makes every conversation or meeting smarter because they’re in the room. A person with low conversational capacity – even if they have high intelligence and good intentions – often has the opposite effect. Collective performance : A team with high conversational capacity can perform well, remaining on track even when dealing with their most troublesome issues. The performance of a team with low capacity, by contrast, can be derailed by a trivial disagreement. In this sense, conversational capacity isn’t just another aspect of effective teamwork – it defines it. A team that can’t communicate about its most pressing issues isn’t really a team at all. It’s just a group of people who can’t engage with each other effectively when it counts. The Sweet Spot You can measure the conversational capacity of an individual or a team by their ability to converse in the “sweet spot” under pressure. The sweet spot is that place in a conversation or meeting where candor and courage are balanced with curiosity and humility. This is a good place to work. Candor and courage are high, so people are honest, open, forthright, and direct. But at the same time, they’re curious and humble, so they’re open-minded, intellectually vulnerable, and eager to learn. When we’re in the sweet spot, we have the ability to raise our hands and speak up, and the ability to listen and learn from others, even in circumstances that don’t make it easy. A Pivotal Competence It directly affects the quality of every relationship, activity, or process that depends on effective communication and collaboration for its effectiveness. This includes such pivotal activities as running meetings, making decisions, orchestrating change, boosting engagement, providing and receiving feedback, dealing with conflict, and implementing strategy. So, just as we rate a truck’s capacity for carrying a load, or a factory’s capacity for production, we should also pay attention to a team’s conversational capacity. If the challenges facing a team are bigger than the team’s conversational capacity, that team is, by definition, dysfunctional. Not On Our Dashboards Despite its game-changing importance, conversational capacity is largely overlooked. It’s absent from most management dashboards, and it’s lacking from many team, organizational, or leadership development plans. There are two primary reasons for this oversight: Up to now, we lacked a clear label for it. Without actionable frameworks for the concept, we’re left to describe conversational capacity by the symptoms of its absence; lack of trust, dysfunctional teamwork, poor engagement, interpersonal conflict, organizational defensiveness, or low psychological safety. We lacked a rigorous approach to building it. It’s A Discipline Conversational capacity is a fast-effect, high-impact discipline that borrows from research in cognitive neuroscience, human factors, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, cognitive behavioural therapy, leadership studies, and management science. You Can Build It The good news is that you can build this discipline. Even better, you can turn your workplace into a practice space by using every meeting, decision, problem, change, conflict, or difficult person – into opportunities for practice. By investing in this ongoing practice, with every passing week you and your team will learn to work with increasing agility and focus, and perform brilliantly in circumstances that incapacitate less disciplined teams. Three Domains Of Practice To build your conversational capacity there are three domains of practice: awareness (the emotional domain), mindset (the cognitive domain), and skillset (the behavioral domain). Cultivating self-awareness, which the psychologist Tasha Eurich calls “the meta-skill of the twenty-first century,” is the first step. Learning to maintain a candid and curious stance requires a clear understanding of how our emotional programming works against it. We’ve all inherited two powerful defensive tendencies that throw us off balance in difficult moments – one renders us less candid and courageous, the other less curious and humble. To be more effective when it counts we must learn to recognize these defensive reactions and then build our capacity to act more intentionally despite them. Increasing our awareness is just the start. We must also adopt a mindset that subordinates our primal emotional reactions to the goal of learning. But a mindset is only as useful as our ability to put it into action, so the discipline includes a skill set – specific, well-defined behaviours – for conversing in a balanced way under pressure. The discipline isn’t just a set of good ideas, but actionable ideas – ideas you can put to work. Each of the three domains includes a core competence as well as a range of practices to help you cultivate that competence. What Is Your Conversational Capacity? As the world changes with growing speed and complexity, people and teams need to ramp up their ability to engage in balanced, learning-focused dialogue as they make their biggest decisions and tackle their toughest challenges. Building your conversational capacity can help you do this. It can improve not just how you communicate, but how you influence, collaborate, manage, and lead. Given the challenges facing you and your team or organization, to connect the concept to your context, here are a few questions to consider and discuss: How would you rate your personal conversational capacity? How would you rate the collective conversational capacity of your team? Your organization? What are the symptoms that suggest conversational capacity may be lacking? What can you do to start building it? About the Author - Known for his impactful work and his engaging delivery, Craig Weber is a sought after speaker, author, and consultant. His pioneering ideas about conversational capacity and adaptive learning are outlined in his bestselling book, Conversational Capacity: The Key To Building Successful Teams That Perform When The Pressure Is On (McGraw-Hill, 2013), his new book Influence in Action: How to Build Your Conversational Capacity, Do Meaningful Work, and Make a Powerful Difference (McGraw-Hill, 2019), and his popular Conversational Capacity eCourse. He is on a mission to help people build more healthy, engaged, and adaptive organizations. Find out more here

Many businesses have moved online as a necessity over the past couple of years but all have to address the challenge presented of ‘How to Reach & Engage with Baby Boomers Through to Gen Z.’ Funny memes, sharp tweets, and humorous greeting cards that take aesthetics to the next level are becoming a powerful messaging method for brands to connect with millennials. They aim to inspire, educate, entertain, and of course, convert the audiences into returning consumers. Millennials are the largest group of people that brands are targeting. However, baby boomers, Gen X, and Gen Z also have a say in the tactics and channels businesses are adopting to convey their messages. Gabriella Peace, Marketing Communications Manager UK Greetings , offers her insight on the different messaging methods that appeal to each generation and why, to help your business connect with your audiences and communicate your core values. Baby Boomers – More In Tune With Technology Than You Think The baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are the people who lived through a decade of revolutions, and some of them were even catalysts in the emergence and popularisation of the 1960s counterculture. Their rich background only means one thing: baby boomers are quick to adapt, forward-thinking, and change-makers. That’s why, when they saw through yet another revolution – the digital one – they were in harmony with the current events and are now thriving amongst the pool of digital tools. There is one tool that baby boomers particularly favour – Google. The search engine is a gateway to diverse information, which is exactly what excites them. If Baby boomers come across your website, they are more likely to stay there for longer if they see value in what you’re saying to them. In fact, 66% of the baby boomers who took part in research by Immersion Active reported that they make online purchases regularly via web devices. With 87% of those aged 55–64 and 65% of those aged 65+ owning a smartphone in 2020 in the UK, it’s no surprise that one of the baby boomers’ preferred messaging methods is text. It’s personal, relatable, and engaging, so make sure you offer texting as an option to accommodate the older demographic. What shaped the lives of the baby boomers is TV, and that will never go out of fashion for them. Not only that but the older generation have grown up waiting on the mail to deliver them long-distance love letters and news from family afar, so direct mail is also a top preference for them. Apart from direct mail, baby boomers have a soft spot for greeting cards as they bring about a nostalgic sentiment. Generation X – Your Most Diverse Audience The children of the baby boomers, Generation Xers are born between 1965 and 1980 and are often referred to as the proverbial middle child of history because of their small size and influence compared to their predecessors and successors. They are called Gen X precisely because they refuse to be defined. In fact, the times they grew up in were also quite diverse; an amalgamation between nostalgia upon the 1960s and with eyes set on the technological advancements taking place. Gen X’s profiling is also evident in the way they consume messages: the opposite of selectively. They like to stay on top of their game and have an all-sensory experience. But the best thing about them is that they are likely to remain loyal to a brand as long as it shows transparency and authenticity. What better way to increase brand loyalty and provide a tailored experience than with email marketing? Emails and newsletters offer an outlet to include coupons and discount vouchers, birthday goodies, and personalised messages. Generation Xers have a strong disbelief in the social system turned them into the biggest money-savers when it came to school, retirement, and business funds. That is why coupons have a special place in their hearts. Apart from email marketing, Gen Xers are in favour of direct mail. The snail mail brings nostalgia to the forefront as they reminisce over their sweet childhood memories. Nothing beats a handwritten greeting card sent directly to them as they favour the emotive sentiment! Millennials – Favour Creative Brand Communication ‘Millennials’ has become a buzzword today and a top target generation for marketers. Born between 1981 and 1996, millennials, who are also referred to as Generation Y, are the socially conscious and eco-aware connoisseurs that pinpoint the shift from closed-mindedness to a ‘dream wild’ mantra. They are also ingrained in the technological world where their opinions thrive, and that informs their preferences towards user-engaging platforms in the likes of Instagram and online forums such as Reddit. With such a strong social consciousness, millennials like to take everything with a pinch of salt and will go the extra mile to do their research before making a purchase. According to HubSpot, millennials are 44% more likely to trust experts. These experts are often YouTube vloggers, bloggers, or social media influencers. So, make sure you up your influencer marketing game. Gen Y’s are looking for brand experiences and creative ways of communication, which primarily rely on visuals, animations, and videos. It’s the story behind the brand that matters and not so much the final product. According to a study conducted by Event Brite, 66% of the participating millennials reported that they were more fulfilled with spending money on live experiences than on possessions. The reason for that is FOMO (fear of missing out). The same study showed that about 73% of respondents are driven by FOMO when deciding to spend on experiences, as well as by the fact that most of them are on a tight budget and would rather create memories from experiences. In terms of values, brand authenticity and transparency are of high importance. They’re looking for “a targeted experience that will grab their attention right from the start” and will put quality over quantity at the forefront. What is especially trending amongst millennials is nostalgia – a continuation of the previous Generation X. Vinyl, polaroid cameras, and fashion trends dictate millennials’ consumer preferences. It’s no surprise that greeting cards are just as popular as ever with Gen Y’s as millennials tend to send messages of support and short sentiment. According to Gabriella, “Greeting cards are all about connecting people, and even advancements in technology have not been able to replace the tradition of sending and receiving greeting cards.” Generation Z The newest addition to the generational framework is Generation Z, or also known as iGen or zoomers. Born between 1997 and 2015, they are renowned for their huge TikTok presence and knack for technologies, especially social media. With such a constant flow of information at their fingertips, their attention span is the shortest of all the generations, precisely about eight seconds compared to twelve seconds for millennials. What this means is that short-form captivating video content is preferred, hence the popularity of the TikTok platform. If millennials have set the league for using influencer marketing, Gen Zers are taking it to the next level. As digital natives, they live across a multitude of platforms and don’t shy away from sharing personal facts and opinions. To reach Gen Zers, brands need to not only be tech-savvy but also offer an overreaching digital experience that is a crossover between e-commerce, in-store, and social media. In terms of the mode of communication, personal, genuine, and relatable are the top keywords. Gen Z tend to favour an authentic sentiment when it comes to greeting cards. Instagram DMs from brands have never been more powerful, especially if they aim to spark a conversation with the consumer. So, talk to your Gen Z audience online and reap the benefits of their brand commitment. Businesses tend to adopt universal branding and marketing strategies for connecting with their audiences. “While there is an array of messaging methods that appeal to the generations, greeting cards still remain one of the most preferred methods when connecting with loved ones and friends. As a greeting card supplier of both every day and seasonal cards, we’re seeing the demand for our products increasing more and more,” commented Gabriella. “Although we’ve embraced digitalisation as a society, the traditional methods of communication never get out of fashion.”