What Will Be Your Legacy as a Leader?

Courage plus Commitment: The fuel that will allow you to confront your biases and transform your organization

Courage is the great enabling virtue that allows one to realize other virtues like love, hope, and faith" - Dr. Cornel West

The calls for diversity, equity, fairness, and justice grow louder each day -- not for mere progress, but substantive change. However, the most urgent call is for leadership. Purposed leaders, who possess the heart to move into a new direction, will leave legacies. Managers who are satisfied with improvements and superficial accomplishments will be sad examples of the changing same. 

Transformation calls for you to build a vision for your organization that does not rest on yesterday's victories but is, instead, looking to be prepared for tomorrow's opportunities. Yes, transformation is complicated, messy, inconvenient, and beset with challenges. But tomorrow will be won by companies who move beyond being polite, tolerant, and well trained to become transformed anti-racist.  

Many organizations will manage their way through this period in our history. They will cross their t's and dot their i's, adhering to the rules of racial progress in their current state, they will make moves that will appear -- to the outside world -- as though they're making a difference. Industry awards for diversity are likely. But in the end, they will leave nothing changed. 

"Commitment is what transforms promise into reality" - Abraham Lincoln

Change requires authentic leaders committed to transparent personal growth. And that journey begins with your willingness to confront the biases that exist within you and your organization. Companies led by courageous leaders will be transformed. They will do the hard work of self-examination. They will uncover their blind spots; they will accept that they have room for improvement. They will lead in pursuit of actual change. They won't settle for a better mousetrap; they will eliminate mice. They will build a legacy; they won't settle for accomplishments. Legacies are about significance and serving the future. Accomplishments are external recognitions consumed in the moment. There's nothing wrong with being accomplished. Here's the thing, diligently working to build a legacy may yield accomplishment. Pursuing accomplishments will almost certainly yield vanity, rarely leaving behind anything of substance.  

The good news for you as a leader is that it's on you to choose the path. You don't have to worry if someone else will get this done. Today's actions will determine your firm's future value and its position in the marketplace. The accountability is unique to you and your leadership team. The hard work of self-examination is on you. The determination of the readiness of your team is on you. Are you ready to manage for improvement or lead for transformation? Is your leadership team equipped for this journey? Driving a new product launch is one thing; your top lieutenant is ready, willing, and able. Leading a transformed culture is another. It’s on you. Ready to lead?

Start With You

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many white Americans respectfully and humbly profess to not having experienced racism. The truth is all Americans have experienced racism. Consistently being in a homogeneous environment means that you're experiencing racism. You may not be carrying the burden of isolation, lack of access, inequitable opportunities, or poverty that stems from systemic racism, but you are experiencing it. You're simply on the other side of the coin. Understand that it also means that you lack the depth of experiencing the full of humanity along with the creativity, experiences, and shared aspirations of like-minded individuals simply because their skin tone is different. Racism ultimately damages everyone. Racism will destroy your organization.  

Self-awareness is a crucial attribute for great leaders. Be self-aware enough to say, what signal am I sending? What system and customs am I upholding? What relationships are not benefiting me? What perspective am I missing? Where have I fallen short?  

Share your journey. Don't just engage in listening to zoom-enabled spoken-word blues of Black employees sharing their racial trauma stories. Besides, Americans have loved Blues music since Bessie Smith released "Downhearted Blues" in 1923. It sold over 700,000 copies, a gold record, but collectively, we still stand mired in the blues of race. Create genuine community through dialog. Dialog builds intimacy; intimacy creates connections. Have the courage to know that admitting your imperfections and sharing them will carry you through this. Articulate how you are changing, how you are going to stand up. Boldly commit to transformation. Leadership is marked by the courage to be vulnerable. Connections form through shared experiences, not monologues. Dare to be self-aware, share, be authentic, be in it, and not an outside benefactor.

Reading White Fragility, Caste, and Stamped from the Beginning is excellent! Keep going! Reaching out to local social justice organizations for support is fantastic! Keep going! Looking to bring more Blacks and people of color into the senior ranks is great! Keep going. Partnering with more Black businesses is terrific! Keep going! However, those things won't sustain without commitment to personal and organizational transformation. Many of those actions will yield achievements accumulated in the process of crisis management. It's akin to quick weight loss versus a lifestyle change. (The truth is, you've done that before.)  

Ask, "why have I been comfortable with 'we have come a long way'?" Dig into why have you tolerated meaningless "progress"? Your company has touted valuing diversity for some time now, but has not actually changed; why? Why have you stood behind the veil of qualifications when fit and comfort has determined the path to advancement in my organization? The 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, was as visible as the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Why didn't I jump into action then? The answers are not meant to surface self-vilification or guilt. But the answers will lead to internal biases that need to be addressed, deep-seated fears of change that need to be confronted, gaps of ignorance that need to be filled with knowledge. Don't back away from the hard work of self-examination and personal growth. Have the courage to commit to becoming more self-aware to be a better leader. It's critical for this transformation. Not addressing these "why's" will ensure gilded, well-behaved inertia. 

You Know How to Lead

Your organization has faced challenges before. Examples of courageous, values-based leadership are in your memory. You have the power to do things differently and to demand that the leaders within your company do things differently. Your executives are paying attention to your signals. They know that when something is of the utmost importance to the CEO, it happens, and there is a commitment companywide to making it happen. When an organization wants to accomplish something, the leader is all in. Again, this is your problem to fix. As a leader, you have to own it and let your people know that you mean it.

You have the power to do things differently and to demand that the leaders within your company do things differently.

Think about the last significant initiative you were fully behind. Maybe an acquisition or entry into a new market. In these cases, you ensure that your leaders are clear on the mission. You empower your best and brightest, and they know what success looks like, how it will be measured. Everyone knows where accountabilities lie if it falls short. You move people from different areas in the organization and recruit top talent to build the strongest team. You resource and staff it to succeed. You make yourself available to discuss progress and setbacks, provide direction to sustain or get things back on track. Why? Because it matters to you as the leader, so it matters to everyone.

History's success also guides you. In 1982, seven people in Chicago died after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol. In a move that cost parent company Johnson & Johnson a reported $100 million at the time, CEO James E. Burke decided to pull 31 million products from all shelves, the company set up toll-free numbers manned by company employees, they sent 450,000 telex messages to doctors' offices, hospitals and trade groups, and it stopped all Tylenol advertising. Even though many, including the FBI and FDA, reportedly thought the recall was an overreaction, Burke said it was the right thing to do for the public, which Johnson & Johnson was committed to serving, and for the company based on their values. Today, Burke is studied in business schools as an example of corporate leadership and crisis management at its best and is admired for his decisiveness and corporate self-sacrifice. 

What are your priorities as a CEO, and are those priorities crystal clear to your executive team's leaders? Fifty years from now, what do you want people to say about you, your leadership, and your company at this moment in our history? Are you Burke, or are you an also-ran?

The Future Is Multicultural

Getting this right is good for business. You have to get this right for three significant people:

1. Your future employees
2. Your future customers
3. The future leader of your company.

In 2042, when today's newborns graduate college, our country will have a population that is majority non-white. There are four billion-and-growing future employees, customers, and leaders in Asia, and 40% of Africa's 1.2 billion people are under 15. They are your future employees, customers, and leaders as well. As a leader, you are compelled to meet today's goals and build the future company. What stories do you want your company's future leader, your successor, to tell about what you did during this time? Put yourself in their shoes as a CEO. That future leader is choosing from a very different talent pool, servicing a very diverse customer. Envision them writing a letter to you and saying, "Here's what I need you to do today to address racism's current climate and structures. You must do this. If left undone, our organization can not survive in 2042." What would be their request, and what would be your response? 

Quick question: When you envisioned that leader, was he white? Or did you have a vision of someone who reflects our world's approaching realities?

Without courage and commitment, you will be akin to a dinosaur stuck in a tar pit. You may be the biggest, but if you can not adapt, you will become extinct. You, as a leader, will be a cautionary tale of incrementalism.

It's on you. You can transform things. You can choose to lead forward instead of managing through. What will be your legacy?

Mark Dawson has more than 30 years of experience leading large scale enterprise initiatives as a senior executive for Fortune 500 companies. As the Founder and Managing Partner of Benton & Muse Consulting, he advises leaders on transforming their organizations. He speaks about leadership, innovation, inclusion, and integrity. Learn more at bentonmuse.com.