As a leader, leaving a great legacy is arguably the most
powerful thing you can do in your career and life because it enables you
to have influence well into the future — even after you are out of the
picture.
These strategies, based on more than a decade of research, can help you keep legacy-building in mind — and leverage those thoughts to maximise your effect on the world.
• Think about what the previous generation did for you: recall your predecessors and how their actions affected you. What resources did they leave behind for you and your contemporaries? How did they change the organisation to provide you with opportunities? How did they shape your organisation’s culture? You can pay it forward by behaving similarly to the next generation of organisational actors.
• Focus on the burdens rather than the benefits: people are more concerned with avoiding leaving a negative legacy than with creating a positive one. Highlighting the burdensome aspects of long-range decisions can help leaders to recognise the negative legacies that these sorts of decisions can create.
• Consider the responsibility that comes with your power: recent research on intergenerational decisions involving longer time frames shows that power can lead decision makers to be more concerned with the interests of others in the future. The result is that they are more generous to future generations, which naturally helps them to build a positive legacy.
• Remember that you will die some day: research shows that reminding people of death motivates them to consider their legacies and causes them to act in ways that benefit future generations, thus improving the overall quality of their long-term decisions.
Adapted from How to Think About Building Your Legacy, at HBR.org
Harvard Business Review
These strategies, based on more than a decade of research, can help you keep legacy-building in mind — and leverage those thoughts to maximise your effect on the world.
• Think about what the previous generation did for you: recall your predecessors and how their actions affected you. What resources did they leave behind for you and your contemporaries? How did they change the organisation to provide you with opportunities? How did they shape your organisation’s culture? You can pay it forward by behaving similarly to the next generation of organisational actors.
• Focus on the burdens rather than the benefits: people are more concerned with avoiding leaving a negative legacy than with creating a positive one. Highlighting the burdensome aspects of long-range decisions can help leaders to recognise the negative legacies that these sorts of decisions can create.
• Consider the responsibility that comes with your power: recent research on intergenerational decisions involving longer time frames shows that power can lead decision makers to be more concerned with the interests of others in the future. The result is that they are more generous to future generations, which naturally helps them to build a positive legacy.
• Remember that you will die some day: research shows that reminding people of death motivates them to consider their legacies and causes them to act in ways that benefit future generations, thus improving the overall quality of their long-term decisions.
Adapted from How to Think About Building Your Legacy, at HBR.org
Harvard Business Review
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