EW 035 – How To Build A Values Driven Organization That Gets Outstanding Results – Winning with Tracy Folkes Hanson, CEO of CSAE, the Canadian Society of Association Executives

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.486)
Tracy, welcome to the show.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (00:03.917)
Thanks, Gordon. It's great to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:05.932)
Well, we're lucky to have you here because you, you know, as a leader in many different roles throughout your life, but now, you know, when you're at the CSAE doing your thing, influencing so many association leaders with all the good programming you run there, your wonderful touch behind the scenes, I've seen you in action at a conference, working your magic with all the different things that you do, all those threads that kind of run through you as the senior leader and how lucky they are.

to have you there. I'm gonna guess though that some people listening maybe haven't met you before. So if you had to describe yourself, how would you describe yourself in the organization that you work for?

Tracy Folkes Hanson (00:40.603)
jeez, Gord, I always describe myself as an aspiring do-gooder. So that's a little snippet into me. So I am currently the president and CEO of CSAE, which is the Association for Canadian Associations. So when we talk about that, if you think that every industry, every profession, every trade has some kind of an association, the docs have one and the plumbers have one, well, the people that run those associations, have one as well.

that's CSAE. So our mandate is to really impart the knowledge and the resources and you know create spaces for community building for association leaders and professionals across the country.

Gordon Sheppard (01:24.11)
Well, and it's lucky that you do what you do, because I've actually worked directly consulting-wise with some of the association leaders who participate in CSAE. And I learned about one of the things that you guys have going is an accreditation. It's called the CAE program. Tell us about what that is and why it's important.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (01:38.817)
So the CAE is a designation, it's certified association executive. It's pretty rigorous program. We've just morphed from the traditional program, which was a five level course that students or those pursuing their designation would take two, three, four or more years to get through the five levels. We've just recently introduced the newer version of that

program and it's done now in five courses and those courses take as long as they take but each course now has a micro credential when you finish the five and you do your capstone then you're awarded your CAE. In the former program you would do the five levels consecutively and at the end you would write a 48-hour exam. So they're comparable the content is based on core competencies for association executives and

really is the pinnacle or the gold star in terms of being able to run an association or being an association professional. So once they're finished, we refer to our CAEs lovingly and there are a lot of them. it is that unique value proposition offered through CSAE. You can't get it anywhere else in Canada. There are versions with other association of associations around the world, but the CAE

Canada can only be got through through hard work and determination as a member at CSAE.

Gordon Sheppard (03:14.476)
And I've spoken with leaders that have done it. I've spoken with leaders that are enormously proud of it and promote it to their staff. You know the capacity building that you're doing. I'm gonna say, if we call it mini MBA, MBA equivalent or whatever it is, like this is a rigorous program that's getting put into action. And when we think about the impact of associations across Canada, like you said, there's so many. But you can imagine some of them, the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of members, having their leaders come through your program to get better at.

know, association leadership overall. What a great gift that you're providing that platform. What a great gift that you're agile and moving into modern times with the micro credentialing and things that we need to do. You're not stuck back in those old decades and saying, no, no, this is way we do it all the time. No, we're gonna move with the times and make it as good as it can be now. it's funny enough, we could just talk about that all day long. The nice thing is when we bring senior leaders on the show, you know, I always say, I start off with one main question, which is if you had to describe your biggest win and the work that you do in these last couple of years,

Tracy Folkes Hanson (03:56.121)
right?

Tracy Folkes Hanson (04:01.945)
That's only good.

Gordon Sheppard (04:13.057)
What would that wind be and how would you describe it?

Tracy Folkes Hanson (04:16.003)
So I've thought about it lot, Gord, from the perspective of...

Is it modifying programming? Is it hanging on through the great disruptor of certainly my lifetime? Is it based on programming or strategy or any of those things? And when it comes right down to it, my biggest win is really leading through the values that I have set with and for the organization and that I happen to subscribe to myself. And I was at an event last week, we were talking about

how do you build a culture, know, one of curiosity and one of creativity and innovation and how do you let that happen? And really you do it by building the foundation or setting the foundation and the foundation in my case and in the case of CSE today, yesterday, today and going into tomorrow is really the bedrock of our core values. And they are,

impenetrable. We do not trade off on our values ever.

Gordon Sheppard (05:24.653)
You must sleep well at night. You know what I mean? When you've got that type of foundational approach, because what it allows you to do is you know what to say yes to and you know what to say no to. When leaders lead from this place of values, I'm going to have to just dig in here a bit practically for a second and can you tell me what the values are if you had to sort of say what they were?

Tracy Folkes Hanson (05:43.768)
Yeah, so they are, you know what, I'm gonna miss one as I'm talking, but I'll pick it up at some point in time. So they're really rooted in creativity and innovation, trust and integrity, leadership, teamwork and collaboration, and inclusivity and diversity. So I didn't actually miss one, there are five, and they usually roll off pretty well. When individually, if you parse them apart,

standalone on their own, when you pull them together it really creates that solid foundation. you know we created them together as a team at CSAE. We involved the board, we involved, we included volunteers and when we set them we didn't just set them and walk away from them. We use them often to set up conversations around strategic

direction or strategy. We use them when we're developing internally our annual plans and we use them for the team on a fairly regular basis. So if we're having a monthly team huddle or we're in a team retreat, talk about the values and we'll talk about them in ways that are not just what do these mean to you? That's an important conversation. That's data almost as you're building the team or strengthening the culture of the team. The other thing that we do is how do you see it in action?

Where do you see the values come to play? So it could be that we see a member who's being really collaborative and working on something. It could be, you know, an internal initiative that really digs and dials into inclusivity and diversity. So that's really how you make them come to life. It's not just saying these are the values. The other piece that I should mention, or I'd be remiss if I didn't, is when we created them, they're not just words.

There are definitions that we've created for ourselves that support each of those core values. Now if you ask me for the definitions, I won't give them verbatim, but I can certainly tell you what they all mean.

Gordon Sheppard (07:57.972)
I think we've got the full intent and we can see the authenticity that you've come to it with and thank you for describing that process of the organic development of them. That's not you walking in as the leader going, here's the values, we're all gonna follow. That's saying, let's do this together and the persistence and you know the over communication that it takes as a leader to sort of run a thorough situation. So you're talking about how many different moments can we implement these and you describe just a few of the settings that you're bringing that to bear.

every way you go along, it must make the organization stronger. It must also be a beacon of light for other association leaders to see that the association they're a part of is the beacon. You know, sort of gold standard on the value side for practicing those things. And those knows that you come up with, nope, we're not gonna do that. Based on these values, we'll just ring loudly and give everybody that peace of mind as you have that going on over and over. Good, wow, that's just a, yeah.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (08:52.143)
and

And look, as leaders, is incumbent upon us to listen. If inclusivity is one of your values, then you have to build them in a structure that is inclusive. And if you set it as your foundation, then you have to say, you know, this is this, this is what we believe in. This is how we show up. And this is how we show up for each other. This is how we show up for members. This is how we show up as an organization. And to some extent, I mean, we hear often at the expression of

you know lead by example and at CSAE that is you know, we're set up to do that as the association for associations. I always somewhat tongue-in-cheek joke that you know my members do the exact same job that I do they run an association. So we're a little bit different in that we're fishbowl-ish because we run an association and everybody else does as well. It is that it is that continuum of sharing and evolving and and growing.

and yet growing from that very solid place of our core values. So it's deeply rooted.

Gordon Sheppard (10:02.188)
deeply rooted, the foundation is what allows that sort of, know, continued growth to occur and then that continuity of feeling, how nice when you're onboarding a new person into your organization, how nice even if you're offboarding somebody, you know what I mean? There's all these things that would go into play there where these things would be significant, love it. So we know what the win is. In one sentence, the win is I'm gonna say something like, you lead from a values-based position. Is that about right? How would you describe it in a sentence? Yeah, so leading from.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (10:27.917)
think that's fair. Yeah. And I'll quote you on that later.

Gordon Sheppard (10:31.604)
Yeah, there you go. So leading from a values-based place, and we can hear all the hard work that it takes to get in there. So now what I jump into is what I call the anatomy of a win, to have a little bit more thorough conversation about it, where we explore the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations and results behind being a values-based leader in a values-based organization. So what's the strategy? So when we think about strategy, funny enough, values are part of strategy, vision, mission, depending on what you're...

you put in play goals these things these are strategic what's the strategic highlight for taking this approach

Tracy Folkes Hanson (10:58.819)
Sure.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (11:03.457)
So I think the first and foremost is to let it grow organically and to let it grow as something that comes from everybody. It is.

I would find it challenging to be able to buy into something or to feel like I belonged if I didn't contribute. Now, that being said, we've onboarded new people since those values were put in place when I joined the organization eight years ago. And we, you know, we, like you said, we use them for just about everything. We use them even when we're talking, even when we're interviewing people or just having meetings with people about what

So the strategy really around being

leading through values or leaning on our values to lead is really about recognizing what they are, recognizing what they mean, and then developing the longer term strategy for the organization, developing that mission and that vision. And your mission may change, your vision probably shouldn't because it's

much further out there and much more aspirational. The value propositions change every once in a while, although I would argue having spent the first half of my career in communications and branding that Mr. Christie has been making good cookies for a really long time. Those things may change strategically when you set your values.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (12:37.773)
They shouldn't, they should weather every storm. They should be a part of every celebration. And they should be that, I think you use the word beacon. I think they end up being that bedrock, if you will. I know I keep using foundation and bedrock. So.

When we're developing strategy around values, it is making sure that we are incorporating them into not only the strategic direction or the strategic plan for the organization. We leverage them into the team culture. We leverage them into the organizational culture. Even with the board, you know, it's when we're building board tools, when we're building policies or procedures or all of those things, it's about having that as a bit of a filter and

a lens for how we go forward. A big part of, know, we're a member-based member-driven organization, so we want our members to influence the agenda at CSAE. having, you know, having a solid set of values allows us to, you know, move forward and guide in the way that we want to. Innovation and creativity. What's the next best thing? Everybody's talking

about AI. It's not the next best thing. It's been around for a really long time. Technology changes every 20 minutes. I'm not a tech person, but we're open to exploration and being curious and looking at those innovative pieces. that's where that's making a difference on the inclusivity side, introducing policies, introducing employee policies that do just that. For example,

We have a policy at CSAE where our...

Tracy Folkes Hanson (14:33.695)
statutory holidays are set by the government for every organization and we allow through an employee policy our team members to change out five of those stat holidays for other times that are of greater personal significance. that is a way that we lean on the values or leverage the values and looked at what's really important

important to our team as we start to develop certain things. So that would be an example of some of the strategies that are employed in it. And it's not just in terms of the strategic direction of the organization, although I suppose all of those examples could bubble up into that. But it is sort of an overarching philosophy which drives the strategy or the strategies for the organization, for members, for volunteers, for the team, etc.

et

Gordon Sheppard (15:34.475)
Well said. I love that you've given us sort of, we've got this overarching look at things, which can often get up in the clouds, but you put that into a concrete thing. Wait a second, we're gonna allow, because we have values that connect to our people, we're gonna allow them to then use that to actually get something done. So now we've got a really good feel of all those different uses of the values and how important that's been as you've been going forward. Anytime we have a strategy, we always need a work plan. There's a moment in time when the values maybe weren't there.

I'm going to guess, I don't know what year that would have been, and then you start the process of what you described, which is organically developing. What year did the values kind of kick off to kind of get put in place?

Tracy Folkes Hanson (16:15.456)
I joined CSE in the summer of 2017, so I'm eight years old. And we really started, I really started looking at what was foundational to the organization. So we really started, they started to emerge and take shape fairly early in 2018. And.

Because we wanted the process to be inclusive, we started actually with the team. And then we went to the board and then we took it to a leaders forum, which had an abundance of volunteers and people that were intrinsically involved in the organization. And when we started with the team, and then we brought the board in, it wasn't to rewrite them. We were very specific about.

not asking for permission, I'm not asking this to be rewritten, I'm asking if there are any flags here as a different set of eyes. this work for you? When you swallow it, how does it feel? What's the gut check on it? Does it work? And that's the way we brought that whole process through the multiple levels of the organization. And so I...

leveraging my memory, I'm only eight years old. it was the fall of 2018, we had a conference in Ottawa, and we had what we used to refer to as the leaders forums. They've since changed, the great disruptor changed a lot of things. And it was there that they really sort of became concrete for all of the organization, for all of us.

Gordon Sheppard (17:56.748)
Yeah, so you're eight years old, we're 2018, there's a new leader, there's a new way to go at things. So there's an initiative there, you take that initiative, let's take a look, let's break these down, let's work with our team. I love the pathway that you've described that other leaders can listen to this podcast and go, wait a second, oh, I have the permission for our staff to form them, I don't need permission from the board, isn't that interesting as a way to sort of self empower and sort of really the people on the ground doing the work.

Create that formation, it creates that buy-in. You understand that obviously from previous leadership scenarios that we could talk on and on about why that's important, but now you've gotten them to stick over that period of time. give yourself eight years and you can get really cool values foundationally in place. And it does take time. It's not an instant thing. So thank you for describing again the beginning of the process to get us to where we are now, because we've heard so much about how good it is now. Whenever we have a win, we've got strategy work plan, we've got people involved, people and their attitudes. How would you describe yourself in 2018?

You said you're just getting born. How would you describe yourself and your attitude at the beginning of this process? And how has your attitude been an influence on getting these values to stick?

Tracy Folkes Hanson (18:59.545)
Wow, that's a great question. I was really excited coming into the organization. I'd known about the organization for a long time. I was brought in as a bit of a change agent. The board was making some changes. The organization itself was changing. The reality is a lot of people don't like the word change or, you know, we hear change and we're...

Yikes. And I was raised in a household where change is something that you embrace. you know, because through change come opportunities. And so I really I was really excited to get to CSAE to get on the inside and just really take some time to learn the team, to learn the people and then and then to learn the membership and who the volunteers are, including the board and.

So that it was just a really exciting time. The fact that we didn't have some of that information, we didn't have any member research or any member data.

when I got there and hadn't for quite some time. And that's not a criticism, that is just people do things differently and we all bring different strengths to the table. Mine happens to be, I really believe in culture and the development of solid culture and because I think that culture is what, I think it's that essence of how people come together and how they show up for each other helps you go forward. And that for me personally leans on my core

values as well, which are very aligned with the values that we were able to set up for the organization. So I remember those early days of excitement and so much to learn and, you know, drinking from the fire hose and trying to get all of those pieces together. I'm grateful for the foundation that I was raised with because throughout my career, has been, you know, a bit of a, it is, it is not a bit of, it has been a large part of, you know, how I

Tracy Folkes Hanson (21:03.661)
guide myself and how I show up and how I am in the world and how I want to be in the world.

I work on that all the time. You'll note that when I said who I am or how I describe myself, I always say an aspiring do-gooder. I try to leave the world a better place every day than the day before. So that being said, where I'm at now is, you know, the values really helped us get through the lockdown times and the, you know, was common ground that we could share. We would meet on Zoom often as everybody else in the world did.

we would pull out the values and we would talk about, we would do some of those exercises that I mentioned earlier. What does it mean for you? Is it showing up? Is it not showing up? Where are we challenged with it? Because that's, know, everything can't be great 100 % of the time. And so...

You know, we transitioned through that. We find ourselves again now on the post pandemic and post pandemic economy with a lot of momentum on our side with the changes that have been made going forward. And so I am...

equally excited today as I was back in 2017-2018 that we are, we have such a solid base from which to grow and improve from. The other thing that I was raised with and that we really do believe at CSAE, used to be part of the strategic direction, used to be part of the strategic plan at CSAE. And then we just, in a review of the strat plan earlier this year, we realized that we didn't need it to

Tracy Folkes Hanson (22:51.179)
strategic pillar. It is one of continuous improvement. People don't like the word change, but we are always evolving. We are always changing. We should always be trying new things, willing to not always get it right, and willing to learn when we don't. And so that's sort of the era that we're in right now with a lot of momentum coming from our membership and our partners and the association sector on a whole, which is

key to the fabric of Canadian society. So it's still, I still come to work with an abundance of enthusiasm 97 % of the time.

Gordon Sheppard (23:33.327)
97, I love it. And thank you for Canadian society. Cause we can hear that value set, the leaders that are coming on the podcast, I'm hearing that often. Nick Nanos was on, he talks about doing objective research to help hold the democracy together. Like, I mean, it's pretty amazing to think about leaders having that perspective in their pockets and bringing that to the table. So it's bigger than, bigger than me, bigger than the organization, bigger than what we're all doing. Right? And I love that. So you're a key person and we can hear.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (23:56.249)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Gordon Sheppard (24:00.819)
your attitude in spades there as we go forward. I just need to get a brief maybe look at the team. Because new guy walks into a situation and the team's not always, you know what I mean? There's a little get to know each other here. So how would you describe, I'm just gonna work with the team part just as one other piece of the puzzle for people, but how would you describe their attitude initially and then how has it evolved?

Tracy Folkes Hanson (24:23.673)
You know what, whenever you interview somebody, I don't know about you, I'm sure the audience will relate to this, whenever you interview somebody they always ask, well what's the culture? And when they ask me that, I always say ask the other people that interview you because they, you know, I know what I see it as. And I'm not so...

I'm not so naive as to not check in with the team, regardless of level. we're relatively, we're a well-sized organization, but we are not massive by any shakes. It's a smaller team. And so when we bring someone new in, I usually, in the interview process, I'm usually the last person who gets to meet the people that are coming in. And I talk about the values and the culture of the organization.

And then when someone joins us when they're new, there's so much for them to learn. So I give them that piece of information. I think it really lives or becomes evident when they start to meet and develop their relationships with all of the other members of the team.

who are there to be, who are always hugely welcoming and supportive and eager to welcome someone into the fold and just always be there. I can't tell you how many times I hear, just call me if you need me. I'll do, you know, I can tell you anything. And that could come from the manager of education who works largely on the CAE program to, you know, a new coordinator who's coming on the event.

So there is, you see it at play with individuals that way and so I see it when someone new comes in and they embrace that new person. I see it when someone goes off to have, to start a family. I see it when people sadly sometimes leave us and they're...

Tracy Folkes Hanson (26:30.157)
think a lot of it is because we talk about the values and we leverage them. It's not like a chalkboard with the stick and the pointer and this is it. We talk about it in a way that it just becomes organic to part of the conversation. And I see that with the team. And I don't know if any of us actually knowingly recognize that we do it or if it just is a way that

we are and a way that we are, you know, it's the way that we work with each other. It's just such a...

Gordon Sheppard (27:06.836)
Thank you so much for the humility that you have running through what you're grasping for right now. As in, I think I'm hearing, I'm not gonna speak for the team, but this is what I think, you know, this is my impression. And that really speaks to the nature of your leadership style. And we've heard a lot about yourself and then some of these other people that are involved. And obviously it's paying off because we're hearing this big practice. We talked about strategy, work plan, people, operationalizing values. That's operations, the four step.

You've described a few already. You said, wait a second, you we have this holiday thing. We're gonna operationalize our values by allowing people to choose. We're gonna onboard somebody. Last part of the interview is me talking about values. Like these are actual, you know, tangible things. Any other sort of maybe one operational highlight to put these values into play that you might, I mean, if you've already mentioned it, that's great. But if, there one that comes to mind that's different from what we talked about?

Tracy Folkes Hanson (27:56.409)
Yeah, we have a few things. it's really, we talked a little bit about how do you get people to live these? do you do that? Part of it is being together and we're a fully distributed, 100 % virtually operated organization now.

So we don't have the benefit that I had in 2017, 2018, 2019 of being physically together all the time. So we purposely work to make sure that that connectivity is happening with the team so that they can support each other, so that they can collaborate with each other, so that they can, they do know what teamwork looks like, even though, you know, they, you know, someone could be in Montreal and someone could be in Ilderton.

in Ontario, outside of London, which is in fact the case. So a couple of things that we do, and I think we do it quite well because we intentionally work at it. We set up, we use a virtual platform that sort of simulates when you're in it. There are little tables, people sit at different tables, kind of replicates the office. If I need to go and talk to my

marketing manager I just go over to her table and double click on an empty seat and like magic all of a sudden she and I are on the screen like you and I are now so and then we can have a conversation and I can do the same thing if I'm going over to talk to membership it's this great platform we call it the CSAE Cafe and we we do mandate we do require that everybody works out of the cafe on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings from 9 to 11. Now if you've got meetings you go to your meeting.

busy on a phone call and someone knocks on your door and tries to come into your room, you just don't answer and that's fine. There's all sorts of ways for us to communicate, but kind of, you know, people get together on a Monday morning just to sit at a table to say, how was your weekend? What did you do this weekend? People will get together on Friday morning to say, what are you doing? So that's one of the things that we do. The other thing that we did that we started during, 2020, when we were all in lockdown time,

Tracy Folkes Hanson (30:15.237)
everybody was exhausted and you know hands were really tired from clenching onto whatever we could hold on to is we moved to a four and a half day work week with no penalties. You're still paid for the full five days. We have looked at a four day work week and we may move to that at some point right now the four and a half works. A lot of people like to check in on the Friday so having that half day where they're in they they can check in on members they get you know whatever and then lastly another thing that we

did was rather than saying to our members or our constituents or anybody who may need to get in touch with us from a team perspective rather than putting the pressure on to say.

were available between nine and five or eight and four or whatever, whatever the old in-person hours used to be. It's not realistic when you're operating virtually. So giving people the flexibility to monitor their own schedules and, you know, and to work from home in a way that, that works for them and their life. Um, we, we changed our language and we said to our members, we'll respond to you within 48 hours. That doesn't include the weekend, 48 business.

hours, we'll get back to you. So it took away that pressure of I have to be seated from 9 to 5 but I'm working from home and it would be really great to throw a little laundry in. Or you know, my little is getting off the bus at 3.30 and I'd really like to meet the bus, bring them home, give them a snack, set them up with whatever it is they're going to do for the next 40 minutes while I finish out my work day. So we've created an environment and a culture that allows for that flexibility that everybody's

searching for that work-life balance. Do we get it right all the time? Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (31:59.403)
And that's reflecting your values, right? Going back to the values, which is a fantastic thing. And I'll bet you the folks in their four and a half days are more productive than they were in five. Those Friday afternoons after two can drag on. You're also being realistic in your continuous improvement that I'm hearing by adapting to current culture. Post-COVID is a big hit for all of us and to go to this remote thing.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (32:13.369)
Thank you.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (32:18.681)
You got it.

Gordon Sheppard (32:21.778)
Nice thing for your members saves you on whatever it is operating costs, but in the meantime, you have to develop a remote workforce and that's got its own thing, but the values are allowing the remote workforce to thrive. This is great. We could talk for hours. This is so good. I just going to get down to the last step here, which is results, qualitative and quantitative. You know, we talked about the strategy, the work plan, people, operations, there's results. How would you describe the results that come from these, you know, the win, which is to practice these values. And so,

Tracy Folkes Hanson (32:33.273)
Exactly. I could.

Gordon Sheppard (32:51.59)
Quantitative, I'm going to say things like, I don't know you're actually measuring, but I'm going to say, is it more productive? Do you see links there? And then qualitative, there might be some as well. Any highlights in the results that you see from practicing these values?

Tracy Folkes Hanson (33:02.201)
I think from a quantitative perspective we see people really dedicated to the organization, really committed to the organization because they can commit to something that they believe in and it's not just the values that they believe in, they believe in what the organization stands for and what the organization does. So there's that piece. I think on the qualitative side, the qualifiers are things like

this is going to sound really small and not at all evidence or scientifically based. When we're together in the team and we say, okay, so we're going to start, we don't tell them what we're going to start with. I'll just say, so, you know, what's your favorite value? And any member of the team can pull out one of their favorite values or

How have you seen, I mentioned it earlier, how have you seen the values in play? And they pull out an example of, I was on a committee, I was on the whatever committee that we have lots of them, but I was with my committee working on this and the collaboration on the committee was just like nothing I've ever seen. Those are anecdotal for sure. Because we don't actually measure, I shouldn't say that because we do measure through employee engagement surveys

and then follow up.

interviews and stuff. We also have a pretty open, if I do say so myself, it's a pretty open door or open video policy. Thanks to technology, you can call someone pretty readily or whatever. And so I see a lot of that in action. And I think those are the pieces that make me most proud. The other thing that I will say is we haven't had a lot of turnover. We've had change. I say this, last year we had

Tracy Folkes Hanson (34:58.107)
four of the original team, the almost original team that I worked with leave. They left after eight years, seven years, six years, and five years respectively. And all of them went somewhere, all of them went to the next level. So someone's running an association, someone who was a specialist is now a manager, you know, that kind of thing. And so,

Well, I never want anyone to go.

I would never stand in their way. would always be supportive. If I don't have the position for them, then I'll help them go wherever they want to go. That says something to me that they hung in for a very long time, particularly when we see a lot of, know, employment gigs can often be very transactional now versus my parents' generation. I won't use myself, I'll use them. As an example, so when you see that and you watch

people grow and you watch them take with them those that the pieces that really made a difference for them at the organization or the folks that are still with us or the new folks that are coming in who can really embrace it then you know that there's something there that

Gordon Sheppard (36:14.961)
I can hear it. can hear the continuity from how you were raised on through to what you're doing at your work on through to sending people out in the world. you know, that are, again, we talked about that Canadian Canada world proposition, humanity proposition. Again, we could go on and on about all the layers that are in here. This has been outstanding. think any leader that, you know, wants sort of, again, a masterclass in why values are important. When they listen to this, they're going to get it. If you had a couple sentences.

And you were speaking to a leader about the importance of values. Give me a couple sentences just to close us out here as we get to the end that you would like to pass along to other leaders about why.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (37:00.383)
Let the values be developed by the people, not just by yourself. Let it become an organic process. And then when you land on them, lean into them, lean on them, and make sure that they are instilled in everything that you do.

I think that's fundamental. People can't buy in. They don't feel like they belong unless there's something. And when new people come in, if they're strong enough, then those new people buy into them because it informs how you're bringing people in. So as a leader, I would say a lot of it is follow your gut. Let it happen. And it doesn't have to happen from you.

It can happen from the people that you're there to support and lead. I think that's leadership.

Gordon Sheppard (37:54.986)
Tracy, how lucky to have you here. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Tracy Folkes Hanson (37:59.533)
Thank you so much. This has been a great deal of fun. I'm really glad that we got to do it. I so appreciate your time and letting me, you know, have more than one sentence, because that would be almost impossible as you've already gathered. Thanks, Gord.

Gordon Sheppard (38:18.858)
Hang on. Stop. Oops.