The video features a panel of senior executives (Speakers A–E) sharing how participation in the LX Council has helped them both professionally and personally. They describe the council as a listening and learning environment where CEOs and other leaders can bounce ideas off peers from diverse industries, gaining alternative perspectives and practical problem‑solving approaches. The council also serves as a sounding board for personal, career, and family‑business challenges, offering insights into the softer, emotional side of running a family firm—often facilitated by female business leaders. Members report mental stimulation from each meeting, prompting them to reflect on and apply new concepts back in their own companies. Concrete examples include avoiding costly missteps on a potential spin‑off thanks to council feedback, and gaining clarity on strategic decisions. Overall, the council is portrayed as a valuable forum for idea validation, time‑saving, and holistic leadership development.
Chapters
Being in Council, you know, you have to really listen and you have to be willing to learn. And, you know, as a CEO, I don't have a lot of people to bounce, you know, ideas off of. You know, we're still a fairly small company. We're growing pretty quick, but having 10 people, you know, with different levels of expertise and different size and scope of businesses completely different from mine and learning how they do their their troubleshooting, their resources, how they apply their thought process to problems has been invaluable to me.
One of the main benefits I got from the council was the opportunity to discuss ideas, problems, issues, or information with a peer group of executives.
One of the things I found very beneficial about council is being in what started out not to be a family business but has subsequently become a family business is there's a soft side of running a family business that a lot of us Type A males don't like to talk about. And in both groups I've been in, we've got female heads of businesses in there who are very much in touch with the soft soft side and feminine side, if you will, of managing a family business, and that input has helped me tremendously.
I can't think of a meeting that I didn't get something out of it, that I didn't have a note to myself about, "Oh wow, I better think about that." And while I didn't always like to do the presentations myself, I always ended up with something that I did need help with, and it was good to have the perspective of people who were going through the same thing I was.
Part of the value of being involved was every meeting was some mental stimulation. You go away and go back to your own business and say, hmm, what did I hear? How can I apply some of these things?
But it wasn't just business issues, it was also personal issues and career issues. So it just gave you the opportunity to discuss things that very often in your own organization you can't discuss.
When you're in a position of authority, sometimes at the top, you don't know who to talk to about it. People don't have those— your friends don't have the same level usually of responsibility that you do, or at least mine don't. So they're and you can't really talk about it to the people under you, so it's always been really helpful for me to have that sounding board of people.
So for me, I think being able to bounce ideas, thoughts on my fellow council members has brought a clarity to what I try to do. For instance, one time I was looking at starting up another little spin-off of what we do And it actually would take quite a bit of buy-in from COOs, you know, the type of people that would be in council, business owners, whatever. And I thought I had kind of a home run, and I had spent a little bit of time on it, and I brought it up to the council, and they said, you know, I don't think I'd bite on this, and pretty well saved me a whole bunch of time and energy, you know, because I value their opinion.
With the council, you know, you get a hugely different focus and interest level that just gives you a very good sound grounding in alternative ways of thinking about things, and that was very good.
