For better or worse, Doug had devoted his life to his profession. Doug had a family. Yet when Doug was being honest with himself, he’d admit that he hadn’t cared much for his family. Oh, he’d provided everything his family needed. And he loved and appreciated his family. But as far as giving his family his time and attention, well, he hadn’t done so. His wife had poured herself into their family, while Doug had instead poured himself into his career. As his career wound down, Doug decided to do better with his family. Yet Doug also realized that while he might not yet have much of a legacy with his family, maybe he had nonetheless left a significant legacy through his career.

Careers

A career isn’t just a long-term job. A career is instead a field to which one devotes oneself, more in the nature of a ministry or mission than simply employment or a vocation. You can and do make a difference in a career, especially one to which you give your attention, creativity, and energy. Thus, of course one can make a legacy through a career. Family is the first place one naturally thinks of a legacy. After all, children carry on the family name, look, and lineage. We pass our estates to our family members, not generally to our employers or co-workers. Yet one can still make a rich legacy through a career, even if a legacy of a different sort. Be legacy minded in your career, and you may notice how much more effectively, creatively, and generously you work.

Workplace

The first place you leave a legacy in a career to which you devote yourself is your workplace. Every workplace has a culture and spirit. The culture of your workplace arises out of the attitudes, commitments, and contributions of each of its members over time. Some of us, though, leave a greater workplace imprint than others. Those imprints can be either positive or negative. It only requires one negligent chef to spoil the soup. But with an inspired outlook and consistent application of your best energies, you can make your workplace a special locus of care, courage, and inspiration. You’ll notice the legacy’s presence some months after someone of that bonus ilk retires from your workplace. Someone will comment that they sure miss Jack or sure miss Jenny around the workplace, referring to the positive attitude, ambition, joy, hopeful spirit, and abundant energy that the retired figure shared, or their technical mastery, attention to detail, relationship skills, or other personality, talents, disciplines, and characteristics. Their absence, though, begins rather than ends their legacy. The very fact that you notice their absence reminds you of the marks and commitments they left behind. Notice and refine your own contributions to your workplace so that you, too, leave a legacy.

Invention

Your invention, innovation, and reform are also ways to leave a career legacy. Sectors and fields depend on invention and innovation. Science, medicine, engineering, technology, and even education, literature, design, and other creative fields continue to evolve, led by individuals who see things that others have not seen. You don’t have to be a genius to invent and innovate. Some of the greater inventors are plodders and tinkerers who just won’t let go of a problem until they have figured it out. If you see an issue with which your field, profession, or sector struggles, give it your attention. You won’t be the first, and you may not be the last, but you may make a breakthrough that leaves a legacy. And if you handle the breakthrough right, years and even decades later you may still see your innovation or reform in ever wider use. Indeed, your innovations may far outlast you, leaving you a long, rich, and broad career legacy.

Protection

Inventing something of utility and value can certainly foster a career legacy. Inventors like Franklin, Edison, Bell, Morse, and Ford are some of the great American heroes, with fabulous legacies to follow. You may, though, need or want to protect your invention in order to see it gain wider use and burnish your legacy. Patent law can protect inventions that have utility. Inventors who patent their inventions can control and monetize the invention’s use through licensing. That control and monetization can be critical to your promotion of the invention and the invention’s ever wider use. You may need a patent to attract the funding and technical resources to create and refine prototypes, to demonstrate the invention’s utility. Invention alone isn’t generally enough to make your mark. Many inventions go undeveloped for lack of a thoughtful plan to perfect, exploit, and promote them. If you are a natural inventor in your field, look at what inventions you might patent, protect, and promote, to build and fuel your career legacy. 

Innovation

Innovators also build rich career legacies. Innovators like Jobs, Cook, Page, Ellison, and Musk, like the above inventors, are some of our great American heroes. Innovators may not invent anything specific having great utility. They instead combine already existing things in new ways and for new uses, toward a larger vision. Innovators reinvent more so than invent. And in doing so, they can create great benefits for society. Those public benefits alone would leave them huge legacies. But by capitalizing on their innovations, they can also amass fortunes out of which to leave other legacies. The rich financial fruits of well-managed innovations have funded some of the world’s largest private foundations. If innovation is your gift, manage it well for both its public and private legacy. You don’t have to be a titan of technology or magnate of manufacturing to leave a legacy around your innovation. For every one Steve Jobs, ten thousand other innovators make their own quiet contributions. Leave your own legacy of innovation, in whatever soil you sow.

Creativity

Short of outright invention, pure creativity is another way to foster a career legacy. Creative individuals, like inventors and innovators, are some of our great American heroes, including painters like Pollock and Basquiat, writers like Hemingway and Faulkner, playwrights like Williams and Wilder, and songwriters like Dylan and Simon. Creative opportunities are everywhere, from art to zen gardening. And while your creative gifts can stand alone as your legacy, you may also protect, monetize, and promote your creative expression through trademark and copyright laws. As in the case of patents protecting utilitarian inventions, trademarks and copyrights enable you to control, license, and financially benefit from your creative works. The income you derive from your creative works may fund your philanthropy, while the creative works themselves and their licensable trademarks and copyrights are also legacy assets to control and bequeath. See and pursue your creativity as a legacy opportunity. 

Leadership

Leadership in your career is another way to enhance your career legacy. Some of us aren’t inventors, innovators, or creative but nonetheless have the skill, personality, and judgment to lead. And leadership within fields and sectors can make huge differences to those fields and sectors. Leadership can rescue a field or sector from a crisis, improve the field’s public trust, and gain the field new opportunities, protections, solutions, and resources. Your leadership may be on the governing board or as a member or officer of a licensing body, industry council, trade or professional association, standards or rules committee, or the like. Your leadership can encourage others in your field to respect and rely on you, opening doors for your greater participation and influence. You can also learn a lot very quickly from leadership positions, about every challenge and opportunity your field faces. Seek and accept leadership positions in your field to build your career legacy.

Publication

Writing and publishing in your career field is another way to enhance your career legacy. You don’t have to be a literary genius to write for your field. For industry newsletters, you only need to share some insight. Trade and professional journals may require higher technical standards and stronger scholarly writing skills. But even there, if you are skilled and knowledgeable in your field, then you are likely capable of contributing valuable insights, especially with an accomplished co-author. Building your reputation within your field through publications can open other doors to leadership, invention, and innovation, further enhancing your career legacy.

Teaching

Teaching within your career field is another way to enhance your career legacy. Nearly every field has some form of instructional program, whether on the job, in internships and apprenticeships, in vocational programs, or in college, university, graduate, and professional programs. You may find attractive full-time teaching opportunities in your career field. Moving from practice within your field to teaching within your field can significantly expand your career network and opportunities, especially as your students graduate from your program, gain jobs, and take on their own positions of productivity, innovation, leadership, and influence. Alternatively, you may find adjunct teaching positions that enable you to continue your full-time practice and employment within your career field, while also participating in your field’s academic and training arena. Teaching itself can leave a rich legacy of empowered and equipped graduates, each owing your instruction a small or larger debt. Pursue teaching to enhance your legacy.

Networks

Don’t miss the opportunity to expand your network within your career field, as another way to enhance your career legacy. Individuals working in the trades, business, academia, and professions all depend to some degree on their network. Network contacts can be a rich source of referrals, when referrals can build your practice and enhance your legacy. Your practice is slowly shrinking? Connect with others in your field who have excess work or simply don’t want to do what you’ll do. You can also build your legacy by sharing referrals, especially with leaders in your field. Send clients, patients, projects, or other work to a leader in your field, and you may get to participate in the project that you referred, while learning from the field leader. Networks can also publicize your expertise and enhance your reputation, bringing you other opportunities to expand your influence and enhance your legacy. Make an effort to expand your network within your field and in adjacent fields. You’ll soon see the returns in your practice and should eventually enjoy an enhanced legacy.

Giving

Careers also provide opportunities to make donations to causes and charities associated with the field and career. Many professional and trade associations have honor rolls, legacy clubs, and societies whose members give annually and generously to belong. The donated funds may go to field or sector research, support for disabled members or widows of members, disadvantaged students seeking entry into the field, and other charitable interests. Or the donated funds may go to social events for members, improved event facilities, research libraries, public relations, or field or sector advocacy. Your financial participation may broaden and deepen your career legacy, and raise your reputation, while expanding your network and influence. If you volunteer your administrative service or public advocacy around the same causes and charities, you may further enhance your career legacy.

Engagement

Engagement is the key to growing your legacy throughout your career. You may still do well if you treat your career as simply a job through which you earn an income to support your family. Your family is your legacy. Provide for your family consistently and generously through your career. But if you want your career to contribute to your legacy, then engage your career with all your seriousness, steadiness, creativity, and energy. If you’re going to work, then you may as well do so with your full engagement. That doesn’t mean to ignore your family or have an unhealthy work-life balance. It does mean seeing your career as more than a necessary burden or, worse, a necessary evil. Instead, see your career as a legacy opportunity, and you may pursue one or more of the above career moves to enhance your legacy. Doing so may make you better at your job, more successful in your career, and leaving a larger legacy.

Reflection

What legacy do you sense your career may be leaving you? What might you do to enhance that legacy and, in so doing, be better at your career, while benefitting others more in your career work? Are you positively influencing the spirit and culture of your workplace? Do you have inventions you should pursue and patent? Should you be copyrighting and trademarking your creative works? Do you have leadership positions in your field that you should pursue? Should you be writing and publishing more on matters of significance in your career field? Do you have teaching opportunities you could pursue? Are you growing your network contacts to enhance your effectiveness and influence in your career field? How else could you be engaging your career field more fruitfully to enhance your career knowledge, skills, judgment, network, and legacy?

Key Points

• Your career can be its own source for your legacy.

• You can leave a workplace legacy of courage and compassion.

• Your inventions can be their own legacy, monetized with patents.

• Your business innovations can generate their own legacy. 

• Your creative works, trademarked and copyrighted, are also a legacy.

• Leadership positions within your field can also build a legacy.

• Writing and publishing in your field can also advance your legacy.

• Teaching in your career field can enhance your knowledge and legacy.

• Growing your career network can also promote your legacy.

• Donate to career-related causes and volunteer service for your legacy.

• Enhance your career legacy with greater field engagement.

Read Chapter 8.