Write your professional obituary
I am a bit morbid, no doubt about it. I often think about friends and family members, and what I would say at their funerals. I may be a little weird, but there is nothing more powerful in our lives than death, and thinking about the people we love and work with and what will eventually happen to all of them is strangely a fantastic way to understand how much they mean to you. The best leaders aren't fully understood or appreciated until they die.
Our association just experienced a death. One of our longest serving members, a past board president, passed away with family and friends around him, after a long fight. This person, through the sheer force of his will, made it to our national symposium in June, and it was one of the most bittersweet and most amazing experiences I've witnessed; the depth of commitment and care this individual showed to our association was given back to him tenfold during our three-day event, and I was personally moved by the positive affect he'd had on the lives of his colleagues.
This leads me naturally to think of, guess who, YOU! What is your obituary going to read, as an association leader? What about those of your best friends in your profession--what will be said about them when they are gone?
It wouldn't be fair to ask you to think of this without writing my own. Here is what I hope they'll say about me (and I have yet to earn all of this so I can't go just yet):
"He was an individual who dedicated his life to a cause that was greater than making widgets or selling products. He was hard-headed and passionate, which made him a royal pain to be around sometimes, especially when he was wrong. But when he got it right, he was dead on. He cared more about the people around the association and within it than he did about any one project, program, policy, or procedure. And he helped cultivate a strong sense of community through challenge, rapport, passion, and creativity. He touched thousands of lives and had a positive impact on most of them. He was relentlessly focused on the big picture. He contradicted himself all the time and was proud of it, as he felt that nothing was ever set in stone and everything was a work in progress. He didn't always play by the rules, but he never expected anyone else to either."
Your turn?
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Comments
Hey Brian,
It's not morbid at all if you view it as a wake, or maybe a summation for retirement rather than death!
I found myself engaging in this exercise several times, once I'd been in associations for a decade, then two and I decided to become a full-time consultant. Self-promotion always feels narcissistic/awkward to me, but I still think in terms of a 'personal brand' while I'm alive and I couched a # of career decisions in terms of a self-mythology. I want(ed) a career path that would allow me (or someone) to tell a story at the end that I'd like to have told. Although now, every time I try to write one today I keep fixating on specific accomplishments rather than general qualities. That may be why I finally left direct staff work in associations? :O)
Posted by: Kevin Whorton | July 7, 2010 8:07 AM
Another way to think about this is to consider what people say about you when you're not in the room. It's a bit less final or big-picture than an obituary or career recap, but it gets to roughly the same point: What do you want people to say about you when they talk honestly about the effect you've had on their lives?
Posted by: Joe Rominiecki | July 7, 2010 9:30 AM
Dan Pink just had an item in his enews looking for individuals to send him their "sentence." It was in Dan's book Drive? . . . you distill your life and your purpose to a single sentence.
Here is the video . . . http://vimeo.com/13142315
Posted by: Karen Yoho | July 7, 2010 4:31 PM