Leaders leave a legacy, intended or not, designed or not. Your legacy isn’t what you wish or insist it is. Your legacy is how others live and work because of the behavior they saw you exhibit. You control the legacy you leave behind based on what you cultivate in the culture you design.
The foundation of a leadership legacy is talent. The talent keeps the business moving forward, the talent is your key differentiator, the talent is the cause that affects the life of your culture, vision, and mission.
Doing these things well will build a sustainable culture and leadership legacy.
Change your mind about payroll
When payroll is viewed as an expense, especially one that you are always looking to cut, you start to treat talent like a commodity rather than an asset.
Recruiters should be valued like the sales team
Treat your recruiters better than you treat your sales team. The recruiters are the ones who decide which applicants make it through the gates to be interviewed. They are the first impression potential talent has about your company.
Your recruiters are salespeople. Their job is to sell your organization’s open positions to the absolute best talent out there. Transform your thinking about recruiters. View them as top sales executives because they are selling. Switching your thinking this way will improve the quality of applicants being interviewed.
Invest as much in talent development as you do in R&D
Products and services come and go. The market will change or a competitor will come out with a few more features or benefits. They may do the exact same thing only cheaper. Talent is your key differentiator. The talent serves the customer when there are issues. They sell additional products or services to the customer. Your employees market your business to the world and they fulfill contractual obligations with your customers. The best most unique product without the talent to power it will not do you any good.
Promote leaders from within
If you want the mission, vision, and values that you have cultivated into your culture to continue on for years to come you have to promote leaders from within. However, you cannot do this if you aren’t investing time, effort, and resources into developing your talent.
Empowering talent at all levels
When you empower your talent two things to happen. They make mistakes and they learn from them. Each level of talent should have a box that they are allowed to play in. The box gives them boundaries on the types of decisions they are empowered to make. These boxes also give them the authority needed to satisfy your customers. Think Home Depot and Zappos.com, these two companies do talent empowerment very well. Whereas Comcast and McDonalds do it very poorly.
The only way to ensure your culture, vision, and values live on with each new generation of talent that walks in your door is to cultivate an environment that is focused on talent. Leaving a lasting leadership legacy requires as much focus on culture as it does on your own style and accolades.
Last updated on September 14th, 2020 at 06:17 am
