Your Legacy is Now
Life is not a search for meaning from others, it’s about the creation of meaning for yourself.
For over 30 years Alan Weiss has consulted, coached, and advised everyone from Fortune 500 executives, state governors, non-profit directors, and entrepreneurs to athletes, entertainers, and beauty pageant contestants. That’s quite an assortment of people, and they run into the thousands. Most of them have had what we euphemistically call “means,” and some of them have had a lot more than that. Others have been aspiring and with more ends in sight than means on hand.
Alan Weiss states:
I’ve dealt with esteem (low), narcissism (high), family problems, leadership dysfunctions, insecurities, addictions, and ethical quandaries. And I’ve talked about them through the coronavirus crisis. But don’t get the wrong idea. About 95% of these people have been well-meaning, honest (to the best of their knowledge), and interested in becoming a better person and better professional. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be talking to me.
I found the equivalent of the “runner’s wall” in their journeys, where they must break through the pain and the obstacles and then can keep going with renewed energy and spirit. But runners know how far they must go after the breakthrough, be it another half lap or another five miles. There is a finish line.
I’ve found that people in all positions, even after the “breakthrough,” don’t know where they are in the race, let alone where the finish line is.
They do not know what meaning is for them. They may have money in the bank, good relationships, the admiration of others, and the love of their dogs. But they have no metrics for “What now?” They believe that at the end of life there is a tallying, some metaphysical accountant who totals up their contributions, deducts their bad acts, and creates the (hopefully positive) difference.
That difference, they believe, is their “legacy.”
But the thought that legacy arrives at the end of life is as ridiculous as someone who decides to sell a business and tries to increase its valuation the day prior. Legacy is now. Legacy is daily. Every day we create the next page in our lives, but the question becomes who is writing it and what’s being written. Is someone else creating our legacy? Or are we, ourselves, simply writing the same page repeatedly?
Or do we leave it blank?
Our organic, living legacy is marred and squeezed by huge normative pressures. There is a “threshold” point, at which one’s beliefs and values are overridden by immense peer pressure. Our metrics are forced to change.
In an age of social media, biased press, and bullying, we’ve come to a point where our legacy, ironically, is almost out of our hands.
Yet our “meaning”—our creation of meaning and not a search for some illusive alchemy—creates worth and impact for us and all those with whom we interact.
Phil Parlock
Compounding the stupidity, the results will likely be plotted against an expected curve, with people being shifted from box to box to provide a “cleaner,” more even distribution.
Cheryl McLaughlin
Alan, that’s oh, so good!
Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg
Alan’s off the grid…
Alan creates the grid!
Ron Ratliff
Alan,
But it is BECAUSE you’re “in Grid 10” that makes your posts so relevant!
I never can remember where I end up on those personality assessments anyway…I think it means that I’m just stubborn.
All the best,
Ron
Pat O'Mallon
… and at the end of the day nothing about me changes even though I now know that I am an R2 D2 EIEIO ….
Mark Cioni
So, let’s see…leveraging the 9-box method…hmmm…
Wait! I know! Put an “X” in the center square!
Gaby
And let’s not forget you are a Pisces, Alan, that’s very important too…
Peter McLean
The first to get three employees in a straight line wins!
Alan Weiss
This is all good stuff! We could create a Magic 8 Ball for assessments. You shake it and a saying comes up: “Have you aligned with corporate objectives today?”
Ilya Bogorad
I was visiting a government agency yesterday and noticed that each office and cubicle has the inhabitant’s Kolbe index prominently displayed on the outside, at the eye level of the visitor.
I asked what they did with it, if anything, and the most I got was “well, we think we can create better teams” ….
Alan Weiss
High Pisces, moon rising on cusp of a low D.
Peter McLean
Or you could put stickers with behavioural competencies on a Rubik’s Cube. Twist and turn to see which ones are important this month! (I have an example of this kind of “twisted genius”, applied to marketing, sitting on my desk.)
Seriously, there is at least one mega multinational (world-renowned) in my home town that has based its entire employee development/OD around becoming a “Blue” culture, because a certain OD tool says it’s bad to be “Red”. (Surprise! Surprise! They are Australian and miners, so 90% of them are “Red”.) A good friend of mine was grateful to be released from an annual 7 figure consulting contract with them (with loads of discretionary time), after years of fighting this kind of simplistic thinking from their HR and Senior Exec.
(I do know a number of HR people who are smarter than that lot, though.)
Alan Weiss
There was a gas company here that put everyone’s behavioral “profile” on their coffee cups, so you could tell what they were like!
And a pharma company in California demanded that everyone work on their leadership score according to survey instruments. If you were, say, a 6.7 our of 7, you had to work toward a 6.9.