Legacy leadership: new frontiers for senior leaders

Leadership practice and indeed leadership development take place over stages and ages of life, learning and leading. As the context for leadership shifts over time, so does the content of leadership development evolve. Stages of development and ages of life have an influence on career transitions and complexity of leadership expectations.?At the same time, the adoption of life-long learning principles in the workplace has placed a focus on development for senior leaders and generated interest in legacy leadership as a model relevant to them.

Leadership has long been a development must for those in designated leadership positions and talent in a leadership pipeline. ?However, development and support for mature age workers and those in senior leadership positions was often hard to find or over looked. Some of this was due to diminished expectations of “dinosaurs past their prime” and the “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” syndrome. Some of this neglect was also related to incumbents with a focus on retirement who had begun transitioning into a post work lifestyle.

This has begun to change for two main reasons.

1.??????Many senior leaders in the workforce today are those who led and contributed to the greatest growth, we have seen over the past 30 years, in corporate performance across industries, market sectors and geographies – share markets and superannuation funds attest to this. The reality is that no one wants to lose this experience, wisdom and critically the internal and external relationships built over years by this cohort. There is also a pressing need to find new roles for senior leaders to free up opportunities for promotion as incentives for the retention of young talent.

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2.??????Many senior leaders are fit and healthy and love what they do, but have no desire to work in the same way and to the extent as they did in the past. They might have no desire to retire, but there are other things they increasingly want to do with their life as well. They are looking for new pathways to manage the contribution they make, instead of the career managed expectations of the past. The “up or out” talent management mindsets are being replaced by exploring different ways to add value to the business in new and different ways on the team.

The adaptive response of workplaces through the pandemic has shown how dramatic changes can be embraced, with hybrid models of work and virtual modes of connection being widely adopted. What was once thought not possible, or not likely, quickly became established practice as the transformation ushered in by the pandemic surpassed what generations of transformational programs and consultants failed to achieve. In a similar way, the role of senior leaders needs new models and mindsets to facilitate their continued engagement, especially those with a keen interest in ensuring that lessons from the past are not forgotten and that sustainability for the future is not neglected. ?

When we talk about legacy many managers don’t fully appreciate that legacy is something they can consciously attend to and role model in their ways of working before they move on. As they approach the final years of their career, they can build in their legacy by adjusting their priorities and aligning them more closely with cultural and strategic imperatives. They can do this by spending less time doing things that should/ could be done by others and spending more time on those that are critical for long term sustainability. In the way they work and the example they set they can embody a living legacy in how they bring a deeper purpose and values commitment to life.

A legacy is not simply a gift senior leaders leave, as they themselves leave. It is rather something they can leave in the hearts and minds of the colleagues they work with and the customers and communities they serve. With re-imagination and flexible pathways forged, legacy leadership can be an important stage of leadership and one that gives leaders of this age the opportunity to still make a meaningful contribution to the future. The good news is that in the final stages of their working life, this may be their greatest leadership contribution yet.????