Your Leadership Legacy

Each of us can think of some unique or important events in our lifetime that altered the direction of our becoming a leader.

Leadership is the tread that flows through all of my executive and business coaching; helping clients learn how to become effective leaders in their business, community and personal lives.  Helping clients move from the competitor/warrior stage to the leader/statesman stage is important and rewarding.

In my simple way of thinking, each life is broken up into certain "segments" or "stages."  For example, the first twenty years being the time when we are preparing for the launch of our life's work, the exploration years (20 to 40), the mid-life adjustment period (40 to 60) and the reflective/resolution years (60 to 80+).  Erick H. Erikson defines this last life segment as the "generativity" years where we are primarily concerned with establishing and guiding the next generation.

During this last life stage, people seem drawn to return to their youth and reflect on those fond memories to gain a better understanding of why and how their life journey followed its unique path.  This generativity process reminds me of the T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) famous quote: "We shall not cease from exploration and at the end of our exploring, will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

An exercise that visits the defining moments that have most influenced your leadership development can help you pass on to future generations how you learned to lead.  Defining the important milestones you experienced to make you the leader you are is the place to start.  Include both the highs and lows of the decisions you made because we learn more from our failures than from our successes.  Describe the contributions that you made and the recognitions and awards you received that classify as defining moments.  Be sure to list defining moments in the form of setbacks and disappointments, too.

For each defining moment, try to identify how you were feeling and thinking at the time...since it will help you become clear as to the importance of the experience.  Finally, plot your highs and lows chronologically on a timeline to get a feel for how your leadership skills developed on the job of life.   Expect this reflective exercise to raise old emotions and thoughts that you haven't visited for awhile. 

By spending a couple of hours on this exercise, you will not only reach clarity on your leadership development process but it will lead you to become more clear about where you want to be next.   When you are finished share what you have done with your best friend, spouse and children...so they can pass along your life lessons to your grandchildren after you are gone.