Success, significance and succession
Whether you are actively pursuing leadership, purposely put on a leadership development journey or have landed into a role by just good fortune of knowing the right people, a good moment of reflection would be, what does this journey look like for me and those who I intend to serve? I would like to suggest to look at your leadership journey through the lenses of success, significance and succession.
Success. At the beginning of most leadership journey's there is a major emphasis placed on the notion of success. Our egos are encouraged to drive sales, build high performing teams, appear in periodicals, win awards and all other social proofing labels that work for many individuals.
In a perfect world many desire leadership where success is less about what an individual achieves but how best they have been able to serve who they lead. Even with the best coaching and therapy in the world, this is a challenge, as to maintain such positions, without force, requires a degree of self-led political manoeuvring to stay relevant. Metrics are good but many leaders, especially the more senior you get, recognise they are under the spotlight and there is an all too ready set of people waiting to become the next best thing.
Success is definitely personal and often is a struggle with ego, but without a doubt for many leaders, that sense of self-awareness and the limitations of what they can do, has helped them to become successful.
Significance. John Maxwell, the writer and long time leadership development coach, has written often about the importance of significance. What reach and influence do we want to leave beyond our own success.
My own take on this is that long after we have got a good job, with the various perks, made our families financially secure and tapped into a wealth of knowledge and connections in our network, the next stage of the leadership journey is significance. Or what I often call legacy.
A coaching maxim I use with my clients is what impact will you leave on those whom you lead and serve? This sense of value, behaviour, practice, decision making and problem-solving that leaves a mark for others to emulate and more importantly build on.
Many leaders are so focused on the success metrics in the short term that they often ignore the importance of this narrative.
What do I want my legacy to be?
Watching the shift in energy and focus of leaders who get this is quite sobering and empowering.
Succession. The third rung in the journey of a leader is succession.
Who are those people who I need to identify leadership potential in?
Those individuals who can serve a similar or new set of stakeholders for the organisation?
One of the most underrated spaces of leadership development I have seen is around succession development. Too often it is shrouded by this image of old cronies ready to die and pass on some magical Yoda type wisdom to someone who they want to do things in their image. The bare truth of succession is that it can happen at any part of the journey. From prefects in schools handing the baton on to the next generation of pupil leaders to community activists stepping out the way for a more energised, better equipped leadership.
Succession is about taking notes on the journey. Understanding what made for success in the current leadership tenure, appreciating the centring of others to be significant and then being able to see something similar in a future potential leader and coach them accordingly. Not as a carbon copy but rather as an original. That work, without a doubt, is one of the hardest parts of leadership development. Not only in letting go, but you as a leader having to coach another to greatness.
These three steps of the leadership journey for me, are starting to form an integral way of how my coaching practice is developing.
Like any good plan, you start with the end in mind and work your way backwards. To be open enough and vulnerable enough to recognise that these plans may change due to an understanding of self or because of situations outside of your control. To come at leadership with a hunger and curiosity to make yourself better in the service of others.
