Many leaders begin to consider the overall impact of their leadership when they're about to retire or when they're moving on to a senior-level job in another company. The legacies they've formed at work are the results, and the leader, looking back, is sometimes faced with a host of unsettling could haves, would haves and should haves.
What if you consider your legacy as a call for action to create your legacy rather than discover your results after you've completed your body of work? The alternative that we propose is being intentional about a forward thinking approach to legacy with a long-term impact.
Begin with the End in Mind; Begin with Yourself
If you fast-forward in your mind and visualize yourself, your work and your life in a few years from now, who will you be? What will you be? What will you do? Thinking about your legacy begins to shape who you are. Your legacy is a reflection of how you lived your life, the behaviors, the decisions and the value that you leave behind.
Your legacy is something you create during your life solely to benefit future generations and you may never see it come to fruition. A legacy is a gift you leave behind without expecting anything in return. Consider John F. Kennedy and the space program or Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights. They died before their legacies were fulfilled, but they will be forever revered by many for their efforts.
Legacies don't happen overnight and they don't happen by accident. They are deliberately crafted over years of hard work and dedication...by understanding, choosing, focusing, and living your legacy.
Understand Your Legacy
Business philosopher and author Jim Rohn says that the legacy we leave is part of the ongoing foundations of life. Those who came before leave us the world we live in. Those who will come after will have only what we leave them.
We are stewards of this world, and we have a calling in our lives to leave it better than how we found it, even if it seems like such a small part.
Choose Your Legacy
Legacies come in different shapes and forms, requiring varying levels of effort and commitment. Some choose to leave financial legacies, supporting causes such as funding cancer research. Other legacies are institutional, when somebody starts a nonprofit or builds a business that's a positive force in the community.
In his book "The 21 Irrefutable laws of Leadership", John C. Maxwell believes in another more lasting avenue of legacy. "Too often, leaders put their energy into organizations, buildings, systems or other lifeless objects," says the leadership expert and bestselling author. "But only people live on after we are gone. Everything else is temporary."
Focus Your Legacy
It's your turn to decide what kind of legacy you'll leave for posterity.
- Start by identifying your strengths. Gerontologist and author Ken Dychtwald says that "we are trained to think of our skills and talents as what we do at work but, if you think about them as core strengths instead, we can begin to see how they are more widely applicable. We are not just a functional leader; we're someone who gets things done. You're not just a retail manager; you're someone who can spot the strengths in others and suit them to the task."
- Talk to your colleagues, friends and family members for their insight. Keep a running list and see what strengths come up most frequently. Often, others see our gifts more clearly than we do.
- Consider what topics and activities you're passionate about and that you find interesting. "Think about how you spend your time," Dychtwald says. "Most of us tend to be drawn - either directly or indirectly- to the settings, activities and people that allow us to express our interests."
- Use the findings from your introspection to establish a "life sentence." Writer and politician Clare Booth Luce embraced the idea of "a statement summarizing the goal and purpose of one's life." John Maxwell, leadership expert and author, has grown his own statement from "I want to be a great pastor" to "I want to add value to leaders who will multiply value to others." This statement is important because it "not only sets the direction for your life but it also determines the legacy you will leave" says Maxwell.
Live Your Legacy
Now that you have a plan of action, it's time to implement it. "What must you change in the way you conduct yourself so that you live that legacy?" Maxwell asks. "Your list may include behavioral changes, character development, continuous education, working methods, relationship-building style and other strategies. Only by changing the way you live will you be able to create the legacy you want to leave."
Picture your life and the people in it as a succession of increasingly larger rings reaching out from a center point: you. Now think about how you can impart your legacy upon the people of those rings. Both actions and words leave a legacy.
Great leaders -- whether they lead entire organizations or groups within them -- leave a legacy that transcends them and cements their contribution to the growth and transformation of their organization.
Reflections:
How do you want to be perceived?
What are the actions and behaviors that will support the image you want people to create of you?
What are your intentions for leaving your legacy? Have you started?
Our recommended additional readings:
- "A Leader's Legacy "by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posne
- "A Legacy of 21st Century Leadership" by Les Wallace and James Trinka
- "Your Leadership Legacy: Why Looking Toward the Future Will Make You a Better Leader Today" by Robert Galford and Regina Maruca.
- "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" by John Maxwell
- "With Purpose" by Ken Dychtwald