Leadership Longevity: Three Necessary Shifts
Photo by Joey Kyber on Unsplash
A significant portion of my leader development efforts focus on coaching. Over the years, I have noticed that my clients, both men and women, tend to fall into two age categories: 28-35 and 45-55.
At a younger age, both men and women tend to feel stuck due to a lack of fit in their current vocation. Aspirations and new beginnings have become stale. Decent salaries, unlimited vacation time, and hybrid work environments are not sufficient substitutes for making your best contribution toward something you really care about.
At the older end, men feel stuck because they have been successful in terms of money and influence, sometimes at the cost of character and relationships, but the true meaning is missing. Women often remerge at this stage of life and lack confidence in their ability to match the demands of a leadership role and succeed. Men need a strong reset. Women need confidence.
One of my current clients expressed her desire to remain vital and viable as a leader and is wondering how that can remain true in her current setting. She got me thinking about the idea of leadership longevity. What is truly necessary for a leader to lead long, to remain vital (fully alive) and viable (useful)? I asked my client what she thought were some key ingredients. She gave four very insightful answers:
Endurance, perseverance, and resilience. (All of these are character traits forged over time)
Endurance is simply the where with all to take the next step.
Perseverance is durability linked to a clear goal.
Resilience is the bounce-back factor, the ability to get back up and stay in the game when knocked down.
A clear vision and calling for what you do.
Vision is the mental picture of a desirable future—what could be.
Calling is the language of invitation. What is pulling you forward? What is God inviting you into?
Friendships. This is about peer community. Working shoulder to shoulder with those who respect you and care about you.
Belief. This is the need for something to believe in and someone who believes in you.
Merriam-Webster defines “longevity” as usefulness over time. To be “useful” means to remain valuable and productive for a particular purpose. Therefore, I would add the idea of “meaning” to “useful” to complete the idea of longevity. For leaders to lead long, they must remain useful to someone or something. But I also believe there has to be a growing sense of personal meaning tied to their useful efforts—the ongoing ability to positively influence and make a difference.
Along with the qualities above that my client so well articulated, there are three shifts every leader must make if they are to experience leadership longevity.
Shift One: From leading to to leading through.
Rising and seasoned leaders are used to leading directly—being directly in charge.
But a day is coming when you will stop rising. You will hit a leadership peak.
You must make the move from visionary leader to visionary steward. You shift from boss to mentor.
You begin to lead through others as an expression of their development and a picture of leadership succession.
Shift Two: From customization of you to customization of the role.
As a young leader, you should confirm who you are to the role you have been given and the mission and DNA of the organization. This is the path of learning and maturity. It goes against current cultural norms of only becoming your best self. Best-self thinking at an early age can become very selfish and limit your ability to contribute well to something bigger than you.
As an older leader, you should conform the role to who you are. You don’t do this at the expense of the organizational mission or DNA; you do it to make your best contribution to the organization from a place of growing self-awareness and valid contribution.
Shift Three: From success to significance.
To my memory, Bub Buford first postulated this shift in his book Half Time in 1995. The subtitle is Moving from Success to Significance. Buford had been very successful in cable television, yet his own experience, and the experience of many of his friends, was an ache about what really mattered—and what the second half of life would look like.
Early in life, equating success with wealth, favor, and status is easy. Significance, on the other hand, points to the quality of being truly important and meaningful. The move toward significance carries the tone of calling and legacy. Legacy is less about what you will leave behind and more about what you pass along.
All of these are challenging shifts. They require the posture of a humble learner, which may be the key to it all. If we can maintain a desire to be humble learners, we will have plenty of leadership platforms of influence. I believe that this means you have to live for someone greater than yourself and contribute to something bigger than yourself. Ultimately, it is the God of the universe who gives us life, purpose, calling, and a sense of mission. Lead well! Lead long!
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