Your Leadership Legacy, Why Looking Toward the Future Will Make You a Better Leader Today
by Robert M. Galford and Regina Fazio Maruca
reviewed by Steven G. Lauck

Whether you are C level manager, middle manager, small business manager, project manager or a volunteer manager, you will leave a legacy. Why not plan to leave a positive one. Your Leadership Legacy, Why Looking Toward the Future Will Make You a Better Leader Today, is the book to help you.

Your Leadership Legacy is a well-organized text of Case Studies, Framework, Exercises, and great appropriate quotes. The authors guide you through the exercises, provide examples and techniques to get to your legacy statement. It does require work and may open your eyes to some items that you may not be ready or prepared to face, but the exercises are well worth the effort.

The material is very thought provoking. It will cause you to look at your corporate mortality. Knowing that one day you will walk out the company front door and not be returning, makes you think about the impact you have on the people you work with and those that work for you. As the authors wrote your legacy should be "something that changed the way others think and behave".

I was particularly focused on the questions to Chapter 2. Where are you having impact on others' behavior or view at work? How is someone doing something differently as a result of working with you? These are pretty direct questions that you will not be able to answer on your own. The Multiple Perspectives Exercise is a great way to start. This exercise has you write down what you think your legacies are and to get two people that work for you to write down what they think your legacies are. It could be an eye-opening experience.

Without going through all the steps (read the book), I think the subtitles of each chapter explain the process:

  1. Impact, Duration, Judgment
  2. Getting Multiple Perspectives
  3. Looking at Your Unintended Legacy
  4. Writing a Legacy Statement
  5. Pressure-Testing Your Statement
  6. From Statement to Action, Audits, and Beyond
  7. Challenges, Pitfalls, Trip Wires, and Other Bad Stuff
  8. Your Duty to Enable the Legacy of Others

Make no mistake you are leaving a legacy. It may be what you want to be leaving; it may not. If you are serious about leaving a positive legacy and having an impact on the legacies of those you manage, then use this book as a textbook. Do the exercises, write your legacy statement, and live your statement daily.

Your Leadership Legacy:
Why Looking Toward the Future will Make you a Better Leader Today
by Robert M. Galford and Regina Fazio Maruca
Harvard Business School Publishing
September 2006

Steven G. Lauck, PMP
President, Lauck PM Consultants
Certified Project Management Professional, trainer, mentor and coach, Operational planning (aligning company vision, objectives and employee goals), Technical magazine Quality Editorial Auditor, Business process change agent and reviewer for The CEO Refresher. To have your book reviewed and featured please send a copy to: Steven G. Lauck, PMP, Lauck PM Consultants, 4204 Dutch Hollow Road, Aurora, IN 47001 .

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