(Written by Allison Sturm*) Andrew Thorn, PhD, business coach, psychologist, and author of Leading with Your Legacy in Mind: Building Lasting Value in Business and Life discusses the importance of striving to achieve a legacy that emerges from making the most of both life and work.
What is a legacy? According to Thorn, legacy is the quality of who we become. Legacy “encompasses your past, present, and future” and is created everyday. Thorn believes that legacy is often misunderstood.
It is NOT
- Measured as a quantity, such as how many hours you work, what you do, or how much money you are making.
- Your title.
- Created at the peak of your career.
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Legacy is
- Measured by who you are becoming and how you are influencing others to live up to their own legacy.
- An ongoing journey or continuum. You must start working on the image you want to be remembered by now.
Where are you on your leadership arc?
The “leadership arc” represents maturation as a leader. Thorn describes legacy as a journey, proposing 10 “legacy arcs” to move us in the right direction. He urges us to focus on moving from the left side to the right side of each leadership arc.
- Left side: Behaviors and tendencies that make you attractive to your employees, peers, and direct reports, but do not create the legacy you envision for yourself.
- Right side: Behaviors and tendencies that do help you create the legacy you envision for yourself.
For example, consider passion versus purpose. Thorn would tell you that passion is a behavior or tendency that is on the left side of the leadership arc. Passion can lead to obsession, excess, a lack of control, and a distraction from other important facets of life. He recommends moving to the right side of the leadership arc by focusing on purpose instead. Purpose answers the “why” for what we do each day to ensure that what we do aligns with our priorities.
- Example: You are a pharmacy leader leading many exciting initiatives at once. These initiatives have the potential to achieve significant cost savings for the department. On the “back burner,” you have also been working on a personal project that has the potential to redefine clinical practice in the department. You found a grant to fund your project, but the application is due at the end of the month. Each week, co-workers consume your time with the multiple cost-saving initiatives ongoing in your department. Weeks later, you must rush to finish the application for the project that was very important to YOU. In this example, you spent too much time on the “left side” of your leadership arc, which may have pleased your colleagues, but it did little to help you achieve your legacy.
Sound familiar? Thorn advises us to let purpose dictate our energy expenditure versus getting caught up in the moment. It is easy to become “passionate” about projects coming together, but to achieve a meaningful legacy, leaders have to move towards leading with a purpose. Focus on the big picture.
Consider the other 9 arcs that Thorn proposes and ask yourself where you are on each and where you would like to be:
- From change to growth
- From goals to aspirations
- From balance to focus
- From accepting to understanding
- From discussion to dialogue
- From listening to hearing
- From success to significance
- From ambition to meaning
- From growing older to growing whole
Consider
- Which of the leadership arcs do you find yourself stuck on the “left side” of?
- Do you have any experience moving from the “left” to “right side” of these arcs? Was it intentional?
- Do experienced leaders naturally begin to exhibit the behaviors on the “right side” of their leadership arcs?
*Allison Sturm, PharmD
PGY1/PGY2 Health-System Pharmacy Administration Resident
Nationwide Children's Hospital
M.S. Health-System Pharmacy Administration Candidate 2016
The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy
Email: Sturm.42@osu.edu
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