Tweet This
After the first part of a recent workshop, one of the senior leaders approached me and offered this confession: “Based on what I learned today, I have been a horrible leader for ten years. I have wasted so much time leading from a transactional standpoint. Checking the boxes on my to-do list and moving things forward. I never thought about my ability to impact the business by truly appreciating the individual – including myself as an individual!”
I wasn’t shocked by his words. When people like me do our jobs, it forces leaders to confront their mindsets about our topics. In my case, we were talking about individuality and influence. But confronting a mindset is one thing – changing it is another. We all have fallen victim to the “Monday Morning Effect” from workshops – jazzed by the possibilities that are forgotten when the stress of every day work returns. Would this person be a victim? Did he feel – not just understand – the significance of what he was saying? I pushed him to think a little more.
“So if you retire today what legacy would you leave behind?”
He thought for a moment and then said, “One of disappointment, for focusing on what I am responsible for and being so insensitive around who I am responsible for as a leader.”
What did this leader then tell me what he had been responsible for? The transaction. He had an execution mindset around success alone, not the legacy mindset around significance.
Legacy is about the reinvention of growth, and this leader like all the leaders in the room – and thus their companies – had forgotten about how leadership plays a role in making sure that what we do goes beyond the next sale or deal. Legacy is not defined by how much you sell. That may determine your success but legacy is about significance and goes beyond the bottom line. Legacy is also not measured by how much you undo the legacy of the people who came before you, as is the current state of our political affairs with the repeated efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act.
Legacy is how you impact others in the workplace, marketplace, and community long-term.
Leaders must think of their legacies as something more holistic – something that influences beyond selfish gain and what side of the aisle you are on. But like that leader I spoke to, they often don’t. Leaders instead think linearly about the transaction and too many will walk away with the same feeling of disappointment – that their legacies are insignificant even to themselves.
But what do we expect when we spend more time judging the people around us instead of finding and understanding the value that lies within each individual that can help us make better decisions? That we can help people move up and become more than just what their job title says they are? This is what helps build brands that last lifetimes. Remember, Sam Walton not only wanted to shake the janitor’s hands at every store he visited, but the janitor wanted to shake his. (A story that continues to have relevance as captured by a recent story from The New York Times about the paths of two janitors from two different companies a generation apart.)
Simply put, we don’t talk about legacy enough – we don’t have legacy-driven mindsets. We focus on advancing our own agendas. Instead of listening to others and seeing them as individuals we try to control them. But what everyone is learning is that employees and consumers have much more influence on organizations and their leaders than they think. If they fail to serve the unique needs and differences of individuals, they will fail to unleash individual capacity and the outcomes associated with it as the ultimate legacy building foundation.
Simply put, significance comes most to those who are surrounded by people who want their success to continue. People who build their success as an individual by stripping others of their individuality will never create significance. People who define their success as simply being more successful than their parents, the previous generation, their friends and neighbors, or the competition are climbing a ladder that leads to more “stuff” and selfishness, not significance with others.
Yes, if you are a billionaire, you can end your life generously to try and overcome the way you treated others in the past. I always return to the story of Andrew Carnegie who used his success in railroads and other businesses to become one of the biggest philanthropists of all time. A lot of significant things came from that philanthropy, from Carnegie-Mellon University to libraries. Unfortunately, Carnegie built his success as a brutal boss who famously mistreated his people. Is that the legacy you want? Most of us don’t have billions to build new legacies. The best we can do is change our mindset now and ask: What is my purpose? What am I here for? Only then will we change our mindsets authentically and personally.
Success is great, but the way we measure it too often fails to consider its significance to others and ourselves. Professor Robert M. Wachter of the University of California at San Francisco echoed this idea in a New York Times editorial “How Measurement Fails Us”: “Our businesslike efforts to measure and improve quality are now blocking the altruism, indeed the love that motivates people to enter the helping professions. While we are figuring out how to get better, we need to tread more lightly in assessing the work of the professionals who practice in our most human and sacred fields.” Wachter was talking about doctors and lawyers, but we can’t limit this to healthcare and the law, because we are all human—or at least need to be a little more so.
The good news is leaders define this significance and their legacies. Legacy is about how well you seize the opportunity in front of you now. That leader I spoke to understood this. He told me that he realized he could change his mindset and start seizing and seeing the opportunities to impact individuals and allow them (and himself) to influence more. That is the legacy he wants to leave behind and we all should: To create the defining moments in the “every day” and make what we do more significant for everyone.
