Leaders who define their personal legacy -and act in alignment with that legacy- transform their leadership and ultimately their organizations. They move from making decisions based in fear to making confident choices that align to their personal and organizational legacies.
In the absence of personal legacy, leaders who pour themselves into organizational legacy too often wrap their own identities up in the organization. Rather than living their personal legacy with or through an organization, they become the organization. This conflation of organization and identity is at the root of executive burnout.
Ultimately, people living full lives aligned to personal legacy find a continuous source of energy to build and sustain organizations and pursue personal fulfillment simultaneously. Because we want this for every leader and every organization, I prioritize personal legacy first. Then, we help leaders with defined personal legacies discover how to live those out through organizations. Then, we help leadership teams define organizational legacy together.
We invite you to start the journey toward a new cycle of long-term fulfillment personally and through the impact and footprint of the organizations you work with today.
I think the common refrain I had was that I know more than I think I know and I can do more than I think I can do. Shawna really helped me to see what was already inside of me and helped me to conquer a lot of my self doubt. She was direct, transparent and encouraging. She also really understood who I was and the kind of leader that I wanted to be and really pushed me to live that out loud and unashamed. As a result of my work with her, I started to look for and apply for C-suite jobs and landed the role of Executive Director at a Charter School in Brooklyn.
She doesn't hold up the mirror, she gets in the boat with you. There was never a moment that I didn't believe we weren't on the same team or in the same family. She deeply cares. My favorite moments were when Shawna would come to a session and say "I was thinking about you on X day" or "I was reading this and thought of you" - they were my favorite because they spoke to her investment in me and my vision.
Shawna's work with me provided me a wider range of leadership skills, which enabled me to develop leaders on our campus faster. Her tangential impact on our school was significant because of her working directly with me. The most impactful skill I learned was how to trust my instinct and question those instincts with logical questions so you can feel good about trusting them.
And because she leads through probing that keeps the cognitive load on me (the coaches), the thinking steps quickly became transferable outside of our time together. She helped my vision for my team and a path towards executing that vision become increasingly strong. She was most definitely a safe space and I greatly looked forward to our time together. She both could empathize and challenge me, which was so refreshing quite honestly. She exceeded any expectations I had for her and our work together. My time with her to date is one of the most influential development opportunities in my entire career.