Leadership Legacy

Creating a Legacy

Legacy is all about building robust processes and practices so that when you retire, you leave your team with better empowerment, trusted ownership and more about enabling employees to do great work. The cutting-edge technologies successfully enable the people function to move away from tasks so that their staff can focus on more substantive issues thus their functions becoming strategic and credible who can work as an enabler. 

Many of us attempt to build such legacies for our family and loved ones. What about our present and other colleagues? A wonderful Executive attempts to leave a true workforce legacy post their exit from their organization as well. Even as they leave the organization to a better one or retire, their planning actively stands out and still out in all their legacies they would have created and moved from their teams leaving them perfectly save. This ideally means the future teams may slightly or moderately modify the practices and yet find them to be relevant to their business models and for effective working of the teams. I hear many colleagues roughly at the age group of 45+ years say they are keen to have peaceful retirement life.  As we all know financial planning is one key aspect to retire a full fledged job. Beyond that is filling up the hours positively and productive is yet another area to also not miss. I also indicate during my conversation an effective leader would never allow his successor to call them for any clarity or inquiry, post their exit from the organization – that would be the legacy that they create and leave their teams with!

Being less insecure

These wonderful leaders do not hesitate to either hire their replacement well during their reign nor arrange to train and groom the identified talent to replace themselves. Indeed this is a courageous decision that many are apprehensive nowadays as they fear loss of their identity in big way and hence many stay extremely territorial to their roles. 

Legacy answers the questions. Few things are more cosmically important than leaving a legacy. And, yes, there is an almost Zen-like quality to it. A wonderful leader should be: “How can I continue to make a difference when I'm no longer at this company?". The key is to not wait. The success mantra here is you do it every day by making a difference in someone's life in a way that will ultimately help them to do better quality deliverables and also help them groom others also as an addition. 

Longer Pastures

It is not to be forgotten that leaving a legacy, is about moving far beyond short-term achievement and results and, instead, taking the time near the end of each workday to check: "How meaningful was today to me and to my fellow colleagues? Could this have been anyways better? Did I consult my stakeholders so their consensus is built in? Will this benefit my organization either in terms of cost reduction or revenue augmentation?”

The Leader must firmly believe be it billable roles or otherwise, they can still contribute to the organization. 

Implementation is key

Obviously a legacy leaving leader would also not be uttering only strategic EVPs without a focus or clarity on execution can be established. Talks without action carry no credibility to the leader and they are super agile and cognizant of this fact. These leaders also identify their teams with utmost caution and bring the best of the minds. Naturally I am not a great propagator of shifting teams that we have already associated with earlier and moving teams into another camp. This in my view does not reflect anything great about the leader as they come across as “plug and play” models which involves lesser time to groom the teams or lack of trust on themselves to even moderate risks!

Today is better than tomorrow

Successful workplace legacy also means to start thinking about it much ahead of the curve so that the exit or retirement as the case may be for the leader makes the journey fruitful. Once a solid foundation is laid, these leaders do n ot hesitate to start sharing the expertise, practices and crisis management philosophies with their teams including fellow colleagues to make them successful. 

Mentorship cannot be automated

The best part of effective leadership is it cannot be automated and is highly situational. Also effectiveness does not mean “What worked for me will work for you too, so please do note it down”. They rather stay consultative to the environment and provide various intellectual reasons that is well accepted by larger audience and hence leaving such legacy is all about empowering people to step up to making such decisions and allow them to make mistakes (moderately) and grow. These leaders manage diverse workforce in terms of age, gender, geographies, physical abilities etc at ease as they are completely non judgemental and never discriminate in sharing their wisdom and also cross learn from their teams as well all times. 

Futuristic view

Leadership is a tricky triangle and hence there is nothing right all times nor completely inconsistent. A legacy is all about not only their salary they earned during their tenure but also the risks that were managed and the manner in which their teams sprung up to action during the times of such governance. Yet another measure could be the various audit mechanisms that are always at ease that also act as substantial proof of the legacy. 

The recent Covid days are brilliant examples of leaving a wonderful legacy wherein the co-workers and teams were empowered to create space for them to do their best work every day of course the leaders had tough time in terms of managing them, avoiding moon lighting etc. Legacy is also all about the leaders willingness to passing the baton. It is key here that these actions are not performed as checklist for the leader but enabling others how to drive to an effective decision-making process!