The legacy arc
Project one live decision across today, one year and ten years, and make each a scene: who is there, and what do they see you do? Vividly imagining specific future moments tends to make people weigh long-term outcomes more heavily.
Conscious LeaderInner Game
Building a Conscious Legacy
from short-term grinding→to long-term purpose
The Goal
Align intrinsic values with daily leadership behaviors.
Ideal For
Leadership offsites, executive coaching and defining long-term purpose.
The Shift
From short-term grinding to long-term purpose.
The Science
People judge a leader’s values by the repeated alignment of words and deeds, which tends to predict trust. Goals that express your own values tend to get more sustained effort, and vividly imagining specific future moments tends to make people weigh long-term outcomes more heavily.
Building a Conscious Legacy, step by step
- Bring a value and a decision (pre-work)The value you most want your leadership to stand for, one real decision in the next month where it could do some work, and, if you can, a colleague’s answer to “When things get tight, what do you see me do?”
- Find the gapWrite the leader you intend to be and the leader people experience under pressure. Compare in pairs, and name one person you’ll ask for the outside view.
- Project the decisionPicture the decision at four horizons: today, one year, ten years, and the story a colleague tells years from now. At each one, does the choice expand the value or dilute it?
- ShareRead your scenes to a partner, who asks where it lands hardest.
- The value-aligned move“If [the pressure cue from your gap], then I will [a visible move], starting [day]”: something another person can see, this week, tied to the real decision.
The techniques, and why they work
Expand or dilute
Filter the choice through the value you want to be known for. Goals that express your own values tend to get more sustained effort.
A move people can see
Commit to one visible behavior and ask someone what they see you do when things get tight. People judge a leader’s values by the repeated alignment of words and deeds, which tends to predict trust.
Selected research
- Simons, T., Leroy, H., Collewaert, V., & Masschelein, S. (2015). How leader alignment of words and deeds affects followers: A meta-analysis of behavioral integrity research. Journal of Business Ethics, 132(4), 831–844.
- Rung, J. M., & Madden, G. J. (2018). Experimental reductions of delay discounting and impulsive choice: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(9), 1349–1381.
- Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 482–497.
- Zaval, L., Markowitz, E. M., & Weber, E. U. (2015). How will I be remembered? Conserving the environment for the sake of one’s legacy. Psychological Science, 26(2), 231–236.
- Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.
From the research
The thinking behind this lab, published in full: