What Is Your Leadership Legacy? (And Why It Starts Today)

Last updated: August 21, 2026

I've been a leadership keynote speaker and executive coach for over 25 years, but I'd never received an introduction quite like the one Grant Halloran, CEO of Planful, gave me. I'm genuinely humbled that I had an impact on his career this early on, and vicariously on everyone he now leads. That coaching relationship, and what it took for me to still be a trusted advisor twenty-five years later, is also a case study in the barriers most CEOs actually face when they try to execute on a vision: communication, conflicting priorities, perseverance, and the self-leadership underneath all three.

Legacy isn't something you wait for

The dictionary defines legacy as "something that is a result of events in the past." But when I'm working with leaders, leadership teams, or MBA students, I give them a different definition:

Leadership legacy is the actions you take now that impact the future.

The emphasis is on the now. You don't have to wait for the future to build a legacy; you build it with the intentional behaviors you enact today. Intentional action is the entire premise of self-leadership.

Self-leadership and legacy

I define self-leadership (Bryant & Kazan, 2012) as:

The practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling, and actions toward your objectives.

You begin with an intention and end up with an objective. It's close to the first habit in Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: begin with the end in mind.

What if, instead of starting your day anxious or distracted, you reflected on what you actually wanted to achieve before it ended? What if, instead of only thinking about what you wanted, you reflected on who you could positively influence along the way?

Leaders love winning. Legacy requires a different intention.

You don't become a leader in any field without a real focus on winning. But once you're leading others, legacy requires that intention to shift. Your focus has to move toward helping others win too - your employees, your clients, the people counting on you. That shift, from telling your own story to helping others tell theirs, is also one of the power skills that holds up regardless of who you work for.

"You can have anything in life you want, providing you help enough other people get what they want." — Zig Ziglar

Be resourceful, be intentional, be genuinely useful to the people around you. You won't have to wait until your eulogy to feel the difference you're making.

Grant and I met twenty-five years ago, when he was a young, ambitious CEO and I was near the beginning of my career as an executive coach. I had no idea at the time what impact or legacy that work would have. What I did have was a clear intention: focus on helping my clients succeed.

Now, as a mentor to upcoming speakers and coaches, I'm often asked how they can build the kind of recognition I have today. My answer is always the same:

Focus on becoming the best version of you, so you can do your best work.

So: what will your leadership legacy actually be? Not someday. What are you doing about it now?

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a leadership legacy?
A leadership legacy is the lasting impact your actions and decisions have on the people and organizations you lead, built through the intentional behaviors you practice now rather than something you leave behind only at the end of a career.

How do I define my leadership legacy?
Start with the actions you're taking today, not a future milestone. Ask what impact you want to have on the people around you right now, and whether your current behavior actually reflects that intention. Legacy is built in the present tense, not planned for retirement.

What's the difference between a legacy and a leadership legacy?
A general legacy is typically understood as the result of past events, something you look back on. A leadership legacy is forward-facing: it's the intentional impact you're creating right now through how you lead, which then becomes what people remember afterward.

Why does leadership legacy start now instead of later in a career?
Because legacy is a byproduct of consistent, intentional action, not a single achievement at the end. Leaders who wait until they've "made it" to think about legacy have usually already missed years of opportunities to build it deliberately.