I suppose it is natural to think more and more about our legacy as we age. We all want to ‘matter.’ It is equally natural to care more about our leadership legacy as we advance in our career. For most, there is a natural transition from ‘success’ to ‘significance.’
When we start our careers we are self-reliant. We are given a job to do and judged on how well we do it (we will assume that we were trained well and given the necessary tools to succeed). The better we do the job the more opportunity there is to be promoted.
At the point we are promoted and given responsibility for others, there is a shift away from our self-reliance to reliance on others to get a job done. It can be a very subtle shift at first (i.e., we move to a team lead), or a more dramatic shift depending on the supervisory requirements. With greater advancement comes an even larger shift away from our self-reliance to reliance on others to perform. If you advance far enough the reliance becomes almost totally a reliance on others.
Our observation is that this can be a very uncomfortable shift for many people. “Before I was promoted I knew exactly what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Now, I have to pay attention to how someone else is doing it. It was a lot easier when I just had to do it myself.” In some ways this becomes the fundamental question behind, “Do I want to become a leader?” How we embrace this ‘shift’ can be a determinant in how well we do as a leader.
For us, another fundamental question in becoming a leader is, “Do I want to serve?” From this perspective, leadership is a journey away from the “I” focus to a “them” focus. It is the foundation of having the success of others be more important than our own success. At this point many people stop us and say, “Wait just a minute. Are you saying not to focus on my own success?! Are you nuts?” We know, it sounds counter-intuitive. The reason we say this is because your success IS dependent on the ability of others and if you aren’t focused on their success then you will struggle to be successful (depending on the number of people).
So what does all of this have to do with legacy? Everything. The genesis for building your legacy is the development of the mindset about developing others. This doesn’t mean that you don’t continue to develop yourself, building your expertise, credibility, trustworthiness, and integrity; nor being concerned about your success. It means that as we progress in our leadership careers, and have responsibility for more people, our greatest success comes from what we do with others. It also makes us a much better leader because people are more motivated to work for us knowing that we are invested in helping them get what they want (their success). And a funny thing happens when we help others to get what they want. We get what we want. It is also our greatest contribution to our organization.
We’re going to take a quick detour, but we’ll come back to this theme.
One of our services is succession planning work. Often, this is viewed as work you do when you are planning for the exodus of the CEO, or another top ranking official. Often, the top ranking official sees their succession as all about them. The opposite is true. It is all about the organization. That is why if it is an organization that has a board, the board is in charge of the succession planning. Perhaps in another newsletter we’ll talk more about the nuts and bolts of succession planning, but for now…back to leadership legacy.
The very best organizations we have worked with have a ‘culture of succession.’ They do a terrific job of developing leaders throughout the organization. It helps insure the sustainability of leadership excellence, and often becomes a defining component in the ability for the organization to excel in their marketplace.
So, we begin our careers and it’s all about ‘us.’ And then we figure out that our ‘legacy’ is all about ‘them.’ What will be your leadership legacy?