Book summary (from the book website)

Your legacy is something you’ll worry about later in your career, at the edge of retirement—right? Not according to Robert Galford and Regina Maruca. In Your Leadership Legacy, these authors argue that thinking about your legacy now makes you a better leader today.

"After reading Your Leadership Legacy, any leader would wish that they had read it at the start of their career. It’s a book that actually forces you to think how your day-to-day actions are molding your eventual measure as a leader." (Thomas C. Leppert, Chairman and CEO, The Turner Corporation)

Based on stories of top managers and leaders who have shaped successful careers, the book explores the art of “legacy thinking,” helping you to formulate a legacy that will have a positive effect on your work immediately.

The authors provide a disciplined approach to framing one’s legacy, as well as planning and shaping it over time. Starting with the idea that your legacy is defined by how others approach work and life as a result of having worked with you, the book enables you to:

• Assess your current impact on those around you
• Identify ways to strengthen that impact, and
• Pass along the best of oneself in the process

While many leaders “find themselves” and hone their work accordingly only after a major life crisis, Your Leadership Legacy enables all leaders to craft their work and to build their legacy unburdened by such crises, and to experience both personal satisfaction and achievement throughout their working lives.

The book website also features a test on leadership styles.

KnowledgeBoard book review (by Liza, KB content scout)

Think about your leader legacy today to be a better leader in the future. This is the main statement of Robert M. Galford and Regina Fazio Maruca’s book “Your Leadership Legacy”. Thinking about the long-term impact of your actions on the people around you – your colleagues, your boss, your customers – will help you to not end up surprised by the impression you have left behind once you have left a company.

The two authors talked to CEOs, professionals and executives from a wide range of organisations, including Fortuen 100 companies, global nonprofit entities and small design firms. The people they spoke to include recently retired top managers as well as CEOs in midcareer and new leaders, who told them about their good and bad stories on leadership. How they discovered that looking back the most important thing they found was the personal impact they had had on people one-to-one. How they hoped to be remember in their companies for the same things their families remember them for. And how to be successful in your career and have a positive impact on the ones around you can sometimes seem contradictory tasks.

This then also is the first goal of Galford and Maruco’s book: helping leaders bridge the gap between professional performance and how to make a difference on a personal level. The second is to help people prepare for leaving a positive legacy. Which is not successful leadership at a high personal prize but both leadership and legacy at its best.

The book presents lots of case studies of successful leaders thinking about their legacy, as well as stories of the people around them. It shows necessary steps towards a legacy leadership statement and warns of challenges and pitfalls on the way.

An interesting book on leadership with a long-term vision on what successful leading is.

Authors biographies

 Robert M. Galford is a managing partner of the Center for Executive Development in Boston. He divides his time between teaching executive education programs and working closely with senior executives at the world’s leading professional and financial organizations on the issues that lie at the intersection of strategy and organization. He has taught executive programs at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and most recently at Harvard University. Earlier in his career, Rob was executive vice president and chief people officer of Digitas, a marketing services firm based in Boston. He was also vice president of the MAC Group and its successor firm, Gemini Consulting. He is coauthor of The Trusted Advisor and The Trusted Leader.

Regina Fazio Maruca is a writer and editor based in Sandwich, Massachusetts. She specializes in books and articles that focus on leadership, marketing, and organizational issues. Her clients have included Accenture and McKinsey & Company. She is also a principal at the Center of Executive Development in Boston, where she helps develop curricula for executive training programs. A veteran journalist, Regina is a former senior editor at Harvard Business Review and former associate managing editor at the Boston Business Journal and New England Business magazine.

For more information:

• Book brochure (attached)
• Book website
• Test on leadership style