Leaving a Legacy

One of the best legacies you can leave is through the people you work with, live with, and lead. The mark you leave on them will live long after you. That’s why leadership matters. It’s a position of influence.

Great leadership inevitably brings a strong legacy. We earn it by captivating the minds and hearts of people we work with to achieve a vision of the future and by knitting the collective wisdom of those people into a purpose beyond what they would imagine or achieve on their own. When work or volunteerism goes beyond the ordinary and becomes a mission in life, you are moving toward a legacy.

A legacy is what’s left behind when you are gone, and it comes from a place deep within. If you want to leave a legacy, set your mind on a higher purpose, be ambitious for the right reasons, pour your heart and life into people, attribute success to those around you, take responsibility for what goes wrong, balance personal humility with professional will, and never limit your company’s potential. In an incredibly counterintuitive way, you’ll leave a legacy — a personal mark, not just a name — by serving people, and a great cause, without regard to your role in the process. After all, the best way to live your life is to invest it in something that will outlast it.

The key to leading is not how you start — important as that may be — but how you finish. Finish strong.

On Leadership….

When you leave a leadership post, the new leader will likely have different abilities and a different style of leadership. Every leader deserves the right to lead in his or her way. There is no “one way” of leading, so don’t think your way is necessarily the best way. Great leaders pass on the ability to lead, not the way to lead. All leaders will succeed or fail based on their own abilities. That’s the bottom line to leading. So be patient and give the new leader some time to settle into the leadership role. Sure, new leaders will make some mistakes. So did you. That’s one important way we learn.

Here are a few Business & Life Tips to think about…..

Business Tips:

• Want to really impress someone today? Write a handwritten note to a client, colleague, or prospect. No one does it. You’ll stand out.
• A good customer is worth twenty-five “lookers.” A great customer is worth a hundred. Take care of your key customers.
• Building a business isn’t worth losing a family. The casualties out there are evidence enough, so make the right choices.

Life Tips:

• A great use of time this season is to give it away to those in need. Time is precious, as is the gift of it.
• Patience is a virtue worth developing. It forces us to relax within a normally hectic schedule.
• It’s a good time to count our blessings and to consider those less fortunate than ourselves. Giving is great therapy for the soul.

Tags: Advice, Business Tips, Determination, Drive, Leadership Excellence, Life Tips, Personal Development, The Mind of a Leader, Values, Vision