A Leader’s Lasting Value Is Measured by Succession
What do you want people to say at your funeral? That may seem like an odd question, but it may be the most important thing you can ask yourself as a leader. Most people never consider it. And that’s not good, because if they don’t, their lives and leadership can take a direction different from that of their greatest potential impact. If you want your leadership to really have meaning, you need to take into account the Law of Legacy. Why? Because a leader’s lasting value is measured by succession.
STRIVING FOR MEANING
Eleanor Roosevelt commented, “Life is like a parachute jump; you’ve got to get it right the first time.” I’ve always been conscious of the fact that our time here on earth is limited and we need to make the most of it. Life is not a dress rehearsal. My father impressed that upon me when I was a teenager. As a result, I’ve always had drive and desired to be the best I could be at whatever I did. But I have to admit, my goals and desires have changed quite a bit over the years, and that has affected the direction of my leadership.
Clare Boothe Luce, the writer, politician, and ambassador, popularized the idea of the “life sentence”—a statement summarizing the goal and purpose of one’s life. When I started in my career in the late 1960s, my life sentence could have been expressed as, “I want to be a great pastor.” Several years later as I worked and realized my shortcomings as a speaker, my sentence changed to be, “I want to be a great communicator.” For more than a decade, improving my speaking skills became a major focus. However, when I reached my early thirties, I realized that if all I ever did was speak, my impact would always be limited. There are only so many days in a year and so many people who will come to an event to hear you. I wanted to reach more people than that. That’s when I decided, “I want to be a great writer.”
It took me three years to write my first book; it’s a small volume of only 128 pages. Each chapter is only three or four pages long. Someone at a conference once complimented me, saying how smart she thought it was to create a book with such short chapters. Smart had nothing to do with it. I just didn’t have very much to say! I’ve written many books since then, and I’m grateful that my writing has afforded me the opportunity to communicate with more people. But when I reached my forties, my focus changed again. That’s when I decided, “I want to become a great leader.” I wanted to build and lead organizations that could make a difference.
CHANGE IN PERSPECTIVE
My life sentence is, “I want to add value to leaders who will multiply value to others.”
I’ve discovered that at each stage of my life, I’ve grown and my world has gotten bigger. As a result, my “life sentence” has changed. When I was in my late fifties, I thought about all of the previous statements I had embraced, and I realized that they all had a common denominator: adding value to others. That was really my desire. I wanted to be an effective pas-tor, communicator, writer, and leader so that I could help people. Now that I’ve turned sixty, I have finally settled on the life sentence that I believe will serve me the rest of my days. When they hold my funeral, I hope I will have lived a life that prompts people to know why I was here and they won’t have to guess at it. My life sentence is, “I want to add value to leaders who will multiply value to others.”
Why is it so important to pay attention to your “life sentence”? Because your life sentence not only sets the direction for your life but it also deter-mines the legacy you will leave. It took me a long time to figure that out. My hope is that you can learn the lesson more quickly than I did. Success doesn’t count for much if you leave nothing behind. The best way to do that is through a leadership legacy.
Most people simply accept their lives—they don’t lead them.
DEVELOPING YOUR LEADERSHIP LEGACY
If you desire to make an impact as a leader on a future generation, then I suggest that you become highly intentional about your legacy. I believe that every person leaves some kind of legacy. For some it’s positive. For others it’s negative. But here’s what I know: we have a choice about what legacy we will leave, and we must work and be intentional to leave the legacy we want. Here’s how:
1. KNOW THE LEGACY YOU WANT TO LEAVE
Most people simply accept their lives—they don’t lead them. I believe that people need to be proactive about how they live, and I believe that is especially true for leaders. Grenville Kleiser, in his classic personal development book, Training for Power and Leadership, wrote,
Your life is like a book. The title page is your name, the preface your introduction to the world. The pages are a daily record of your efforts, trials, pleasures, discouragements, and achievements. Day by day your thoughts and acts are being inscribed in your book of life. Hour by hour, the record is being made that must stand for all time. Once the word finis must be written, let it then be said of your book that it is a record of noble purpose, generous service, and work welldone.1
Someday people will summarize your life in a single sentence. My advice: pick it now!
2. LIVE THE LEGACY YOU WANT TO LEAVE
I believe that to have any credibility as a leader, you must live what you say you believe. (I’ve touched on that in the Law of Solid Ground and the Law of the Picture.) Because my legacy involves adding value by influencing leaders, I have focused most of my attention on leaders, and I have become highly intentional in my efforts to lead them.
I believe there are seven major areas of influence in society: religion, economics, government, family, media, education, and sports. In the early years of my career, I had influence in just one of those seven areas. I am constantly striving to reach and gain credibility in more of the others. I try to do that by building bridges, relating to people on a heart-to-heart level, and seeking to give more than I receive.
Someday people will summarize your life in a single sentence.My advice: pick it now!
If you want to create a legacy, you need to live it first. You must become what you desire to see in others.
3. CHOOSE WHO WILL CARRY ON YOUR LEGACY
I don’t know what you want to accomplish in life, but I can tell you this: a legacy lives on in people, not things. Max Depree, author of Leadership Is an Art, declared, “Succession is one of the key responsibilities of Leadership.” Yet the Law of Legacy is something that few leaders seem to practice. Too often leaders put their energy into organizations, buildings, systems, or other lifeless objects. But only people live on after we are gone. Every-thing else is temporary.
There is often a natural progression to how leaders develop in the area of legacy, starting with the desire to achieve:
Achievement comes when they do big things by themselves.
Success comes when they empower followers to do big things for them.
Significance comes when they develop leaders to do great things with them.
Legacy comes when they put leaders in position to do great things without them.
It’s like my friend Chris Musgrove says, “Success is not measured by what you’re leaving to, but by what you are leaving behind.”
Truett Cathy, the founder of the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain, says, “Somebody told me, ‘Truett, the determination of how good a fellow you are is the conduct of your grandchildren.’ I said, ‘Oh, don’t tell me that. I thought I did pretty good on my three children; now I’ve got to see how my twelve grandchildren turn out.’”2 Why would someone say you need to look at a person’s grandchildren? Because it’s a good indication of how the people to whom you have chosen to invest your legacy will carry on without you. For that reason, you must choose wisely.
A legacy is created only when a person puts his organization into the position to do great things without him.
4. MAKE SURE YOU PASS THE BATON
Tom Mullins, an excellent leader and former coach who sits on EQUIP’s board, tells me that the most important part of a relay race is the place that’s called the exchange zone. That’s where the runners must pass the baton to their teammates. You can have the fastest runners in the world—each one a record setter—but if they blow the exchange, they lose the race. The same is true when it comes to the Law of Legacy. No matter how well you lead or how good your successor is, if you don’t make sure you pass the baton, you will not leave the legacy you desire.
Tom knows this so well that for the last several years, he has been working on his succession plan. He began grooming his son, Todd, who is also an excellent leader, to take the baton and lead in his place. As time has gone by, Todd has taken on more and more responsibility. Tom tells me that his greatest joy now comes from seeing Todd and other leaders step up and do an even better job of leading than he did.
Just about anybody can make an organization look good for a moment—by launching a flashy new program or product, drawing crowds to a big event, or slashing the budget to boost the bottom line. But leaders who leave a legacy take a different approach. They take the long view. Author, educator, and theologian Elton Trueblood wrote, “We have made at least a start in discovering the meaning in human life when we plant shade trees under which we know full well we will never sit.” The best leaders lead today with tomorrow in mind by making sure they invest in leaders who will carry their legacy forward. Why? Because a leader’s lasting value is measured by succession. That is the Law of Legacy.
“We have made at least a start in discovering the meaning in human life when we plant shade trees under which we know full well we will never sit.”
—ELTON TRUEBLOOD
A LEGACY OF SUCCESSION
In the fall of 1997 on a trip to India with some colleagues, we decided to visit the headquarters of a great leader of the twentieth century: Mother Teresa. Her headquarters, which the local people call the Mother House, is a plain concrete block building located in Kolkata. As I stood outside the doors, I thought that no one could tell by looking at it that this modest place had been the home base of such an effective leader.
We walked through a foyer and into a central patio that was open to the sky. Our intention was to visit Mother Teresa’s tomb, which is located in the facility’s dining room. But when we got there, we found out that the room was in use and we would not be allowed to go in until the ceremony was over.
We could see a group of about forty to fifty nuns seated, all dressed in the familiar habit that Mother Teresa had worn.
“What’s going on in there?” I asked a nun passing by.
She smiled. “Today we are taking forty-five new members into our order,” she said and then hurried away into another part of the building.
Since we were already running late and soon had to catch a plane, we couldn’t stay. We looked around briefly and then left. As I walked out of the compound, through an alley, and among the throngs of people, I thought, Mother Teresa would have been proud. She was gone, but her legacy was continuing. She had made an impact on the world, and she had developed leaders who were carrying on her vision. And all appearances indicate that they will continue influencing people for generations to come. Mother Teresa’s life is a vivid example of the Law of Legacy.
FEW LEADERS PASS IT ON
Last year when I was watching the Academy Awards ceremony on television, something struck me. One segment of the program showed brief images of the people in the movie industry who had died the previous year—from writers and directors to actors and technicians. Many images were greeted with polite applause while a few received tremendous ovations. Undoubtedly, those individuals were at the top of their profession. Some were perhaps the best at their craft who ever lived. But after a few seconds on screen and a bit of applause, they were forgotten. Every-one in the audience was focused on the next set of nominees for the Oscar.
Life is fleeting. When all is said and done, your ability as a leader will not be judged by what you achieved personally. You can make a blockbuster film, but it will be forgotten in a few generations. You can write a prize-winning novel, but it will be forgotten in a few centuries. You can create a masterpiece of art, but in a millennium or two, no one will remember that you created it.
“A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives.”
—JACKIE ROBINSON
No, our ability as leaders will not be measured by the buildings we built, the institutions we established, or what our team accomplished during our tenure. You and I will be judged by how well the people we invested in carried on after we are gone. As baseball great Jackie Robinson observed, “A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives.” In the end, we will be judged according to the Law of Legacy. A leader’s lasting value is measured by succession. May you and I live and lead according to that standard.
Applying
THE LAW OF LEGACY
To Your Life
1. What do you want your legacy to be? If you are early in your Leadership journey, I wouldn’t expect you to have the definitive answer to that question yet. However, I still think there is value in your considering what you want your life to stand for.
Take some time to consider the big picture concerning why you lead. This will not be a quick process. The idea of legacy is closely related to a person’s sense of purpose in life. Why are you here? What gifts and skills do you possess that relate to your highest potential as a human being? What unique opportunities do you possess based on your personal circumstances and what’s happening in the world around you? Who might you be able to impact and what might you be able to accomplish as a leader in your lifetime?
2. Based on your ideas you developed concerning the legacy you want to leave, what must you change in the way you conduct yourself so that you live that legacy? Write them out. Your list may include behavioral changes, character development, education, working methods, relationship building style, and so on. Only by changing the way you live will you be able to create the legacy you want to leave.
3. In whom will you invest to carry on your legacy? Ideally, you should pick people with greater potential than your own who will be able to “stand on your shoulders” and do more than you did. Begin investing in them today.