Perhaps the ultimate test of a leader is not what you are able to do in the here and now, but instead what continues to grow long after you’re gone.
—Tom Rath and Barry Conchie(1)
Every administrator, leader, or manager who works in a healthcare organization will leave a leadership legacy. Galford and Maruca(2) suggest, “It won’t be a record of how you behaved or a report card of your company’s performance (although that is how it might be summed up by the press).” Instead, your leadership legacy will be revealed in how your colleagues, employees, and others think and behave because of the time they spent working with you. It will also be found in the works you created, the patients you helped to serve, and the improvements you made that stand the test of time.
Most of us never deliberately attempt to learn much about the full scope and scale of our influence at work. Many leaders strive to do their best and leave their legacy to luck or chance. However, the time to start thinking about your leadership legacy is now, not shortly before you change jobs or retire, and certainly not at the end of your life. If you start now, you will greatly increase the odds of leaving the leadership legacy that you want, rather than one that happens organically. With clear legacy intentions, you will move through every day, week, month, and year throughout your career purposely, with the end in mind. You will know in specifics the long-term impact you’d like to have through your leadership and continually assess the changes you need to make to achieve your intended legacy. MindTools(3) suggests, “This enables you to work toward your legacy throughout your life, rather than considering it only in retrospect.”
Some leaders don’t like to think about the end. It’s hard for some of us to imagine a world without us in it. Some are so overcome by day-to-day tasks that they can’t see the forest for the trees. Some procrastinate because they believe that there is plenty of time later to worry about leaving a legacy, even when they know that tomorrow is not promised to us. Becoming a legacy thinker now, regardless of your age, health, or where you are in your career progression, can make you a happier and better leader throughout your career, and even change the trajectory of your professional life. If you’re a leader who tries to take on too much, for instance, legacy thinking will reveal to you where your influence is having a lasting effect, and where it is not. Kouzes and Posner(4) say, “Thinking about leadership in the context of your legacy helps you establish—and reestablish—your priorities.” Legacy thinking also locates you in the history of your healthcare organization. It can help you recognize when you are wasting time in a job and identify the right time to make a move. As well, it can help you put succession planning into perspective and enable you eventually to let go and seed the success of your successor.
Perhaps the most important benefit of legacy thinking is that it can help you bring purpose to your work and place the actions you take today in a wider context. MindTools says, “Chances are, the knowledge that you’re building something to last will make you more focused, motivated, empowered, and satisfied.” Legacy thinking focuses your eyes on the prize. Galford and Maruca explain, “You will gain a better understanding of yourself in your role as leader, and you will better understand how the big-picture view of your role is fueled by your actions on a daily basis.” Legacy thinking can help you become a more positive role model and encourage others to consider their own legacies. It can make you more decisive, more patient under trying circumstances, and more caring about the people you lead. It can help you to identify gaps in your knowledge and skills that you will need to fill to achieve your legacy. It can help you to stay focused despite myriad distractions and your own shortcomings and weaknesses. And, it can help you gain self-knowledge and become more generative, that is, more able to plant seeds for future generations. Wade-Benzoni(5) explains, “Thinking about your legacy is a great way to ensure that you are taking into account the long-term perspective of your organization and resisting the temptation to make myopic decisions that are overly focused on short-term gain.”
We are all familiar with a mission statement that defines the purpose or goal of a business or organization. A clearly written mission statement can be a powerful tool to guide our thoughts and behaviors. Similarly, a leadership legacy statement can become a powerful tool to guide what you think and do as a healthcare leader. It can capture and articulate an intentional legacy that you design, and provide you with specific, customized targets and benchmarks so you can track your progress. Keep in mind, however, that writing a legacy statement is much more than a description of actions and accomplishments. Instead, a good one focuses on a leader’s values, behaviors, and approaches to leading others, as well as what they will leave behind that outlives them.
A leadership legacy statement is neither a to-do list nor a report card template upon which you will be judged when you retire or pass.
A well-crafted leadership legacy statement can describe your concept of your healthcare organization 20 or 30, or even 50 years from now. It can record your authentic aspirations, strivings, and passions. However, a leadership legacy statement is neither a to-do list nor a report card template upon which you will be judged when you retire or pass. It is a living, breathing document that will establish your self-imposed standards and goals, with the hope that you will take them seriously and act on them.
The culminating feature of this article is my leadership legacy statement template, a tool I developed for my legacy workshops. This easy-to-use template, coupled with the sample legacy statement that I have written and provided for you, will help you write your own leadership legacy statement. My template will help you to encapsulate your legacy intentions quickly and relatively easily. However, let’s be sure that you have a legacy mindset before you begin to work with it.
Seven Ways to Develop a Legacy Mindset
Legacy thinking is not a substitute or synonym for a leader’s organizational vision, mission, and strategy. Galford and Maruca say, “Legacy thinking is grounded in the individual.” Legacy thinking provides leaders with a lens through which to see what they do in the big picture. It provides them with an honest look at their own strengths and limitations, desires, and aversions. Viewing leadership through a legacy lens helps leaders decide how best to allocate their time and attention. It also enables them to see if they are living the professional life they want to lead.
You will answer specific questions later in this article about the lasting impact you want to have on your healthcare organization and the people in it, and the ways you want to be remembered because of your leadership. You will be more effective at answering these questions if first you spend some time thinking broadly about legacies. Here are seven ways to do that.
Commit to starting now. It takes time to build a legacy. MindTools says, “The sooner you begin, the more time you’ll have to craft your legacy, and the longer you’ll have to align your actions with your aims.”
Ask your friends, family, and colleagues to explain how your past behavior has affected them. Other people often can see our strengths more clearly than we can. Look for patterns that identify your strengths. How can you build on them?
Reflect on the difference you want to make. An effective (although admittedly morbid) technique is to draft your own eulogy. MindTools suggests that you write it in a “lighthearted, upbeat style” and describe what you hope your colleagues will say about you after you’re gone. List what you hope your concrete accomplishments will be, but also, the lasting effect you will have had on the people you worked with.
Think about what previous generations have done for you. Wade-Benzoni says, “While you can’t always reciprocate the deeds of prior generations because they are no longer part of the organization, you can pay it forward by behaving similarly to the next generation of organizational actors.” What inspiration can you draw from your predecessors? What lessons did they teach you? How did they improve your healthcare organization? What did they contribute to make both your healthcare organization and you what you are today?
Think about what’s missing. What programs, trainings, services, resources, and facilities are lacking in your healthcare organization? What problems need to be addressed? In what ways would you like to leave your healthcare organization better than you found it?
Consider the burdens and benefits of leadership legacies. Sometimes, a leader’s decision leaves behind a burden that others will have to live with long after they are gone. For example, think about decisions others have made that have left behind a negative environmental impact, debt, hazardous waste, high-cost maintenance, and litigation. Wade-Benzoni says, “Highlighting the burdensome aspects of long-range decisions can help leaders to recognize the negative legacies that such decisions can create.” It can prevent them from making burdensome decisions that will leave them with guilt and shame.
Contemplate your own death. This will not come easily to everyone. Some people find it difficult and even unsettling to come face-to-face with the prospect of their own mortality. However, Wade-Benzoni says, “Reminding people of death motivates them to consider their legacy and causes them to act in ways that benefit future generations, thus improving the overall quality of their long-term decisions.” People fare better in the face of death when they feel that they have been part of something good that will live on after them. Having a positive impact on future generations through your leadership legacy can help you fulfill that need. Think about how you want to be remembered by other people when you’re gone and act on those thoughts. Wade-Benzoni says, “Ultimately, your legacy is all you’ve got…Give the Grim Reaper a run for his money by creating something meaningful that will outlive yourself.”
Your Strengths and Weaknesses for Leaving the Legacy You Intend: A Quiz
Your ability to achieve your intended legacy will depend upon several factors. Although some of them may be at the organizational level and, therefore, beyond your control, a great many of them will depend on your attitudes and beliefs. Take the quiz below. Use your answers to determine whether your attitudes and beliefs support your achieving your intended leadership legacy, even if you haven’t yet figured out precisely what you want that legacy to be. If you are disappointed in what you find in your answers, use this quiz to help you identify the additional work you may need to do before moving forward.
Answer True or False to each statement:
___ 1. I care about what will happen to my healthcare organization after I’m gone.
___ 2. The work I do every day at my healthcare organization matters.
___ 3. I can make important contributions to my healthcare organization.
___ 4. What I do at my healthcare organization can have a lasting impact.
___ 5. I care how I will be remembered at my healthcare organization.
___ 6. I am good at setting goals.
___ 7. I am a visionary thinker.
___ 8. I do not shy away from hard work.
___ 9. I take great satisfaction in achieving my goals.
___ 10. I am not easily derailed from my goals.
___ 11. I am generally a positive person.
___ 12. I have knowledge worth passing on to others.
___ 13. It’s possible to achieve an intended leadership legacy.
___ 14. It’s possible to improve things at my healthcare organization.
___ 15. It’s possible to make a lasting difference in other people’s lives.
___ 16. I care about the impact I have on others.
___ 17. I want to leave the world a better place than I found it.
___ 18. I cherish the leadership legacy of at least one person.
___ 19. One person can make a difference.
___ 20. I can see the big picture.
___ 21. I take myself and my leadership seriously.
___ 22. My leadership means a lot to me.
___ 23. I want my leadership to have mattered.
___ 24. I can determine and shape my leadership legacy.
___ 25. I can achieve the legacy I wish to leave behind.
Your score is based on the number of times you answer “False”:
0–1: Your attitudes are strong for crafting and achieving an intended leadership legacy.
2–4: Overall, you have good attitudes about crafting and achieving your intended legacy. Focus on your few False answers. Work toward shifting your attitudes about them.
5–7: Some of your attitudes may interfere with your ability to craft or achieve an intended legacy. Spend time thinking about your False answers and how you can shift your attitudes about them. Seek help as needed.
8 or more: Your attitudes are likely to interfere with your ability to craft an intended leadership legacy or to achieve it. You will probably benefit from working with a leadership coach or other helping professional to shift your attitudes.
How to Use the Leadership Legacy Statement Template
Writing your legacy statement is not a task to be taken lightly. In fact, you may feel intimidated by it, with good reason. Kouzes and Posner explain, “A heartfelt quest to leave a lasting legacy is a journey from success to significance.” That’s a huge and bold goal. Yet, as lofty as “significance” may sound, leadership legacies usually are much harder to think about in the abstract than in the concrete, and harder to write on a blank page, rather than by answering questions. That is why I created a legacy statement template for you. It provides simple questions to guide your leadership legacy thinking and will help you shape and capture your best ideas. The template also will help you organize your thinking into an outline so you can write your leadership legacy statement easily and relatively quickly. However, before you delve into the questions, here are nine final tips to help you make better use of my template:
Don’t worry about sounding too idealistic. Start with high legacy aspirations, not safe ones. Tredgold(6) explains, “Big goals can inspire us to take action. They can fit well with our aspirations and desires to achieve greatness. We all want to be recognized, and we get recognized for big achievements, not small ones.” Work at the template’s questions until you feel excited and enthusiastic about your answers.
Don’t stress about your precise word choices. You can edit your leadership legacy statement later. Keep in mind as you work that your legacy statement is not a legal document. No one is going to test it in court and you don’t have to share it with anyone if you don’t want to.
Tie your healthcare leadership legacy statement to your lifetime of work. Think backward and forward in time. Kouzes and Posner suggest, “Legacies encompass past, present, and future, and when pondering our legacies, we are forced to consider where we’ve been, where we are now, and were we’re going.” Consider your intended legacy beyond your current job, even if you don’t yet know what or where your next leadership position may be.
Distinguish between your professional and personal legacies. Your character and values should parallel closely in your professional and personal lives. However, the legacy you leave your children will not be identical to the one you leave your employees. Everyone may remember you as a kind and patient person, for instance, but the way you exercise your kindness and patience will be different in different circumstances.
Focus on the time you have left. If you had to leave your healthcare organization right now, you would already have left a legacy. If that is not the legacy you intend, think about how much time you may have left. Your legacy statement can help you make the most of the time you have and spur you to make the changes you will need to make to seal your intended legacy.
Customize the template and your leadership legacy statement to meet your needs. Eliminate questions from the template that don’t suit you and add new ones that are unique to you. The legacy statement example in the sidebar repeats the questions in the template and provides some imagined answers. Sticking to this format makes easy and quick work of the legacy statement writing task, but don’t feel locked into it. Write your statement however you like.
Embrace the process. Writing your leadership legacy statement may require you to stretch in ways you haven’t before. However, if you do it well, both the process and your completed legacy statement will give you the push you need to try something new or to improve or repair an important interpersonal relationship. You can grow a lot by writing a well-crafted leadership legacy statement.
Block out time in your schedule without interruption to answer the template questions. Allow yourself time to think of the big picture and to imagine a future in your healthcare organization without you in it. Schedule time off site if that will help you think more clearly. Write honestly about what you want, not what you think sounds good. When you’re done, put your answers away for at least a couple of days, longer if possible. Then, re-read what you wrote with fresh eyes. Continue to edit your answers until you feel satisfied that you have captured how you want to be remembered and what you want to have accomplished. If you get stuck or are having trouble expressing your thoughts, discuss sticking points with a trusted individual who can help you complete the template.
Ask a trusted person who knows you well for feedback on your leadership legacy statement. MindTools suggests, “They can help you to ‘raise your sights’ if the aspirations on your legacy statement are too modest, or encourage you to rethink objectives that may be out of reach.” The opinion you receive from someone you trust will help you test your intended legacy with minimal risk. You can find out if you are missing something that belongs in your legacy and whether you need to revise, discard, or rewrite your legacy statement before it comes to fruition. Ask for feedback about how closely your leadership legacy statement reflects who you are with questions such as:
Do you believe that my goals are authentic and self-driven? Do they seem to be expectations generated by other people and not by me?
Are my aspirations realistic?
Have I identified real areas for potential growth and accomplishment?
Have I aimed too high? Too low?
Do you connect with what I have written?
Is my legacy statement clear? Are there areas that need further or better explanation?
How can I improve my leadership legacy statement?
What Is Your Leadership Legacy? A Legacy Statement Template
Answer the questions in the template. If you don’t know the answers right away, come back to them later after you’ve had time to think about them. Discuss them with someone you trust if you think that will help. Write what is true for you, not what you think sounds good or what others might like to hear.
See below for a sample leadership legacy statement generated from the questions in the template.
Live Your Leadership Legacy
Write and edit your leadership legacy statement until you are satisfied with it. Then, keep it in a place where you will see it often. MindTools suggests creating a treasure map to keep your aims visible. A treasure map, also known as a vision board, will be a physical representation of your goals. MindTools explains, “It’s a collage of images and text that acts as a reminder of what you want to accomplish, and how you will do it. It intensifies the effects of visualization—a technique which acts on your subconscious mind to motivate and encourage you toward reaching those goals.” Treasure maps work because language, not images, is the medium in which you rationalize. Language leaves you vulnerable to negative self-talk, which can undercut your motivation. Treasure maps, on the other hand, bypass language. You don’t have to talk yourself into believing what you want to achieve because you can see it as though it already exists. That makes it easier and more likely for us to believe that what we seek is possible. MindTools says, “Creating and focusing on a physical image of yourself in your desired state, you can build confidence and belief in your own abilities to achieve what you set out to do.” Place your completed treasure map where you can see it daily—either physically or digitally, or both—and look at it often.
Your leadership legacy statement will not be set in stone. You created it, and you can change it. Therefore, review it periodically to see if it is still current. You may find that what matters to you today may not matter in the same way years from now. New situations and opportunities will arise that can change your thinking. The hard knocks you take in life and the losses you experience may alter your goals. You may be influenced by new people you meet, new challenges you face, and new ways in which you grow. Continue to learn and remain agile and open minded. Commit to revisiting your leadership legacy statement at least annually throughout the remainder of your career to see if it continues to reflect your current legacy intentions. If it doesn’t, solicit feedback and revise your statement so it remains current and accurate and continues to motivate you.
Begin to live your leadership legacy statement immediately. Start by looking for ways to make a difference to the people around you. Strive to align your behavior with your aims and look for discrepancies between the legacy you want and what you do. Consider what may need to change about your leadership style, behavior, and working methods. Also identify the hard and soft skills you may need to improve. Set goals with deadlines for learning those skills and choose the methods you will use to learn them. Start the process of learning or improving at least one needed skill right away.
A leader’s ability to achieve their intended legacy will depend on the people who remain at the healthcare organization after they are gone. Those who live after the leader, in fact, will have the final word on the matter, because it will be in their hearts, minds, and behaviors that a leader’s legacy will endure. Therefore, leaders who wish to leave their intended legacies must not operate in a vacuum. Check in with others, often, to see if you are on course for achieving your intended legacy. Use periodic evaluations to determine if you should maintain the status quo or if you need to make mid-course corrections to achieve your intended legacy.
Unsolicited opinions may provide you with some useful feedback. Asking others what they believe you will be remembered for and why can also be illuminating. A 360-feedback, also known as a multi-rater feedback, multisource feedback, or multisource assessment, can be an excellent and systematic tool for gathering the opinions of others. In addition, schedule annual legacy statement audits. Using this technique, you will ask key people around you to help you judge your progress toward your legacy and give you feedback. MindTools(3) warns, “Even with careful planning, your legacy-building will probably remain fragile, at least initially.” It is easy to get blown off course by everyday demands, short-term crises, inattention, inaction, inertia, or attempting to be something that you’re not. Take a step back if you find that you are not living your legacy. Revisit this article, your leadership legacy statement, and your treasure map if you’ve created one, and try to figure out why you are missing the mark. If you don’t know, seek the help of a leadership coach or other professional to help you reset priorities and get back on track. With purpose and steadfast commitment, as well as the gift of good health and sufficient time, you will be able to achieve your intended legacy.
Working Collaboratively to Achieve Your Intended Leadership Legacy
There are several ways that healthcare leaders can work together to develop, support, and achieve their intended leadership legacies. These include forming legacy learning communities, working with a legacy buddy, honoring and preserving the legacies of other leaders, and sharing legacy intensions with supervisors and direct reports.
Legacy learning communities: The purpose of a legacy learning community is to help leaders become legacy thinkers and to provide them with the education and support they need to shape and achieve their intended legacies. Healthcare leaders and those who develop leaders at healthcare organizations may find that forming a legacy community is very worthwhile. A legacy learning community can help leaders craft and refine their legacy statements, clarify and articulate their legacy goals, and work through obstacles and threats to achieving their intended legacies.
Legacy buddy programs: Two healthcare leaders can pair up to share their leadership legacy statements with one another and meet regularly to discuss legacy progress, challenges, and strategies. Well-matched buddies can become accountability partners and help keep one another on track and focused on their legacy intentions.
Honoring and preserving legacies of other leaders: Attending awards ceremonies and memorial services for past leaders can be personally valuable and meaningful. Healthcare leaders are encouraged to take part in such programs as a community and to embrace them as opportunities to preserve and cherish the legacies of others.
Sharing legacy intentions with bosses and direct reports: Bosses can shape tasks and new initiatives that are beneficial both to the healthcare organization and to the leaders they supervise. Healthcare leaders also may want to share their intended legacies with their direct reports, depending on the situation and the people involved. Personnel who report directly to the leader may be, in fact, the individuals who are in the best position to support the leader’s legacy intentions.
Commit to Leaving a Positive Leadership Legacy
A leader may intend a particular legacy and articulate it clearly through a legacy statement. However, that alone does not guarantee that they will achieve it. Healthcare organizations can greatly influence whether their leaders succeed in achieving their intended legacies, or even, whether they are legacy thinkers. Those that offer top-down support, tools, resources, and communication avenues for legacy thinking will create environments that are conducive for legacy thinking and for working toward, achieving, and preserving leadership legacies. Unfortunately, healthcare organizations can also thwart a leader’s legacy motivations and intentions, even if inadvertently, by stretching their leaders so far that they leave them little time for legacy thinking. They can also limit or discourage legacy thinking if they don’t recognize the contributions of their leaders, both present and past. Healthcare organizations whose leaders are overwhelmed, that have poor communication channels, and where bureaucracy and negativity take center stage are environments where legacy thinking may be particularly challenged.
Of course, a great deal of the responsibility for achieving a leader’s legacy also resides within the leader. Crafting and regularly updating a leadership legacy statement is a good place to begin one’s efforts to shape an intentional legacy and to achieve it. However, the leader’s personal commitment to their legacy and their ability to work through the challenges and obstacles that come their way are also hugely important factors in whether they will succeed in leaving an intended legacy. As you’ve learned in this article, shaping and living your leadership legacy promises many benefits. You’ve learned, too, that crafting a leadership legacy statement is an important step in the process. You may finish reading this article with good intentions to work on your legacy and to write your leadership legacy statement. However, you will need more than that to achieve your legacy. You will also need your absolute, unwavering commitment.
Leaving a positive professional legacy is arguably the most important thing you will ever do as a leader. Caring for others and the environment is what matters most. Keep your eyes on what you are doing and always remember that leaders come and go. Policies and procedures that are meticulously built by leaders today can be swept away by successors in a heartbeat. What you do for your healthcare organization’s culture and people—the recruitment choices you make, the people you develop, the inspiration and encouragement you provide to others, and the values and mindsets you instill in their hearts—that will be what endures.
Make your legacy your priority, because when we are gone, leaving a positive legacy is all we have. It’s also our job. As business philosopher and author Jim Rohn(8) aptly puts it, “All good men and women must take responsibility to create legacies that will take the next generation to a level we could only imagine. What makes good and honorable leaders is having a foundational part of our lives based on the goal of leaving a positive legacy.” You’ve got to concern yourself not only with what you are doing today, tomorrow, and in the coming year, but with what you will leave behind for future generations. Nothing matters more than this.
Your ability to achieve your intended legacy will depend upon the people who will remain at your healthcare organization after you are gone. Those who live after us, in fact, will have the final word on the matter. Your legacy will be in their hearts, minds, and behaviors. Therefore, don’t work on your intended legacies alone, closeted away in your office. Invite others along with you on your journey. Check in with them, often, to let you know if they think you are on course. Consider the ways that you can help develop their careers and help them generate meaningful legacies. Take the focus away from your mortality and put it where it belongs—on the people you will leave behind.
When I’ve worked with leaders on their legacy intentions and strivings, I’ve suggested that they keep in mind a remark attributed to Groucho Marx, who said, “I plan to live forever. So far, so good.” Groucho humorously hit upon a basic and very serious tenet of the human condition. We know we are going to die. Yet, most of us don’t want to or plan to. Quoting my scholarly work, Hills(9) says, “In our youth, we typically push away thoughts of our own passing. That’s relatively easy for most of us when we look in the mirror and see all the time in the world ahead of us. But as we grow older, we revisit our mortality in a new way. We come to terms with it.” That coming to terms powerfully motivates most of us to want to take action to leave something behind for future generations while there’s still time.
We cannot be immortal in the way Groucho suggested. However, we can ensure our immortality by leaving an enduring legacy. Your leadership legacy, captured and articulated in a clear legacy statement that guides your behavior and thoughts, is the best place to begin.
References
Roth T, Conchie B. Strengths-Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow. New York: Gallup Press; 2008.
Galford RM, Maruca RF. Your Leadership Legacy: Why Looking Toward The Future Will Make You a Better Leader Today. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press; 2006.
MindTools Content Team. What is legacy thinking? Beginning with the end in mind. MindTools blog. www.mindtools.com/a3axrm1/what-is-legacy-thinking . Accessed July 13, 2013.
Kouzes JM, Posner BZ. A Leader’s Legacy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; 2006.
Wade-Benzoni K. How to think about building your legacy. Inc. blog, December 15, 2016. https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-to-think-about-building-your-legacy . Accessed July 13, 2023
Tredgold G. Secret to success: aim high, start small, and keep going. Inc. blog, October 10, 2016. www.inc.com/gordon-tredgold/secret-to-success-aim-high-start-small-and-keep-going.html Accessed July 12, 2023
MindTools Content Team. Treasure mapping. MindTools blog. www.mindtools.com/ansbhwc/treasure-mapping . Accessed July 21, 2023.
Rohn J. Rohn: 5 undeniable reasons to leave a legacy. Success blog, July 13, 2016. www.success.com/rohn-5-undeniable-reasons-to-leave-a-legacy/ . Accessed July 21, 2023.
Hills L. Lasting Female Educational Leadership: Leadership Legacies of Women Leaders. New York and London: Spring Dordrecht-Heidelberg, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5019-7