THEY say first impressions last. But when it comes to work, what you leave behind matters more because the quality of your work and how you relate with others will say more about who you really are. And when you leave the company, your legacy will be what people talk about you long after you have gone. Your legacy is your impact, not only to your team but to your entire industry.
Not everyone is like Hidilyn Diaz or Maria Ressa, individuals who have made their mark not only in their own respective fields but also for the entire country and for making us proud to be Filipinos. But I also believe that you can make a difference in your own way and in your own spheres of influence. Every person is unique and it follows that the people around you, and the way you interact with them are also unique to you. How you use that influence to improve their work and lives is your legacy. And when your influence extends beyond the office walls, you know you have influenced your team beyond work.
You can start building your legacy now by looking at the people you work with in your team. As a people manager, your role is to ensure your team has the right tools and are equipped properly to handle the workload. But even after providing that, your team should also be able to come to you for personal issues that might affect their work and the rest of the team. Balancing how much you need to push or pull depends largely on how well you know them.
After more than a year when I resigned from my previous employer, a few of my team members still ask me for professional advice and how they will navigate their new roles in their new work. I feel humbled because I did not realize they still see me that way even though I am no longer their manager. One even asked me to be the godfather to his newborn baby boy. These incidents tell me that they see me as not just an authority at work but a positive influence on their personal life.
Not all legacies are personal because these arise from your own set of values and principles. Some look at work as just work and they deliberately limit their legacy to work-related accomplishments and steer clear from anything personal. Some focus on leaving a legacy of improved workflows and processes.
A while back, I worked with a training coordinator who wanted to improve the way she was managing a training program. She wanted to ensure everything was done properly and correctly. She did not want to miss anything, so she created a checklist of what needed to be done. This made it easier for her to manage her programs and in one department meeting, she presented her checklist which was then adopted by the entire team in all their training programs. That was her legacy to the team. And I heard that even now, they still use that checklist.
Any new process or process improvement initiative can be your legacy to the team. You can look at your current processes and see how you can improve them or look at best practices from other teams or organizations which can be adopted by your team.
Even within the organization, there are awards and recognitions for exemplary work like being employee or group of the year, or any other individual or group achievement. Your personal achievements as a people manager are always connected to the team you lead so in a sense, your achievement is also the achievement of the team. My previous mentors were right in telling me that as the people manager, my achievements are also the achievements of my team.
Part of that legacy is also the way you influence the culture of your team and even your organization. Leaders who can profoundly influence the organizational culture with their ways of working, their skills and specialization, and even the way they relate to the different people in the organization, are leaders who intentionally want to leave a positive legacy. Leaders need to understand that their position naturally puts them in a position to either be a positive influence or the cause of people leaving the organization.
One of the significant legacies you can leave behind is an industry-wide recognition of your accomplishments. One indicator of this is when industry groups acknowledge and consider you as a thought leader. This means that professionals in your field go to you for your opinion and recommendations regarding issues they encounter. You have reached a certain level of authority and competence such that you are regarded as an expert. Even more so when you are requested specifically by professional regulating bodies as one of their evaluators. This can be achieved by being consistent in your professional principles and uncompromising standards of excellence.
Your legacy as a leader is defined by how many people you have influenced to continue on with the success of your organization. It is measured by how long your achievements have been continued on by those after you, and how many times it has been further improved. The test of your legacy is how many people have benefitted from it.
Think through the past five or 10 years of your career, what do you think will be your legacy?
Image courtesy of Christina@wocintechchat.com on Unsplash