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How to Leave a Legacy – Continuous Learning
June 18, 2008
In my last post, How to Leave a Legacy - Planning, I said if you desire to leave a legacy to and through your family and business, you have to engage in planning. And the focus of that post was on the development of character and values in your next generation family members. Now, obviously, this requires that you have some character and values to pass on. I meet with many business owners that hold their children to a much higher standard than they hold themselves. I remember sitting in a meeting with a father and son when about 30 minutes after scolding his son for using tobacco, he said, “pass me that can of dip.” Rest assured, the character flaws in you and me are there and our children will pick up on them.
If we are going to leave a legacy by planning and engaging in the development of our children, it would behoove us to also plan for and engage in our own continuous development.
When we quit learning, we quit growing. There is a principle to developing others that must be understood – “we can only take others as far as we’ve gone.” Model to your children that education and, more importantly, growing in wisdom, is a lifelong process. Invest in your development. The more you invest in your own development, the more you will have to pass on to your children.
How do you continue learning and growing in wisdom? First and foremost, remain teachable. I worked with a seasoned and very successful 70 year old business owner recently who thought he knew everything. In the areas where he was flat wrong, he simply could not, or would not, hear it. Remaining teachable is particularly difficult for seasoned entrepreneurs who understand the business world they live in like nobody else. It’s particularly difficult for business owners with big egos. Remind yourself daily to “check your ego at the door.” Losing your teachability due to a lack of discipline or arrogance will make even the most talented leader ineffective. We must understand that our role as teachers and leaders of the next generation of leadership will be greatly compromised when we become un-teachable and stop learning.
Posted by Jeff Faulkner on June 18, 2008 | Comments (0)
