Retire to Service: You Have Much to Offer

Michael H. Shenkman President, Keystone International, Inc., Strategic Development Group

By Michael H. Shenkman, PhD

Am I jealous? People my age are retiring, heading off to their favorite golf courses and luxury cruises, and here I am still at my desk. Am I jealous? Hell, no.

Actually, I have no intention of retiring. I love what I do – I mentor aspiring executives into the life of leading. Mostly, I think the whole idea of “retirement” is bogus, an idea invented during the Great Depression to ease older people out of the workforce and make room for younger workers who needed to support growing families. As a result of this maneuver, many businesses are now losing valuable experience and wisdom.

Many of these friends of mine who are retiring, or considering it, are CEOs. These are men and women who have trekked a long and difficult road in order to learn what it takes to lead in challenging situations. To those people I have a rather strident message: it is immoral to retire.

“How can you consider depriving your community, your industry, even the world, of the kind of perspective you bring, the kind of energy you unleash and the kind of organizational excellence you enable? “ That is my question.

But their answers sometimes disarm me. “I am just tired,” one executive said to me. “Lots of people call me about possibly filling an available CEO position.” Yes, there sure are a lot of them. And fewer young people are busting to get into them according to some recent surveys. “But,” he continues, “ I don’t feel like turning another company around, building another team, dealing with another board. Just the prospect of doing this exhausts me.” I can see his point.

Then, I have my own “but.” “But, that isn’t what your value is,” I say. “You are right, who needs another super-manager to turn the wheels of an organization yet another time? But what you can do is take the organization to a new level of excitement, spirit and accomplishment because you know how to lead.”

Though this executive and others like him may know full well how to turn an ailing company around, what they often do NOT know is how to live the “life of leading” once they have reached the highest levels of organizational recognition. The difference between these executives and young ones is that they are there, at the top. They aren’t striving for it any more. What else is there?

To these executives I say: Think of your work differently. The key is to keep firmly in mind the distinction between leading and managing. Managers are responsible for processes: their efficiency, effectiveness, and incremental improvement. Leaders, however, are responsible for changing people’s lives. While a more significant responsibility, it is also one capable of great joy. What leaders remember most from their work is not how many budgets they met or exceeded, but how so many of their protégés have gone on to leading successfully.

So, what does that mean on a practical level?

First, build your team differently than you once did. Build it so that not only are your people competent, they are people you want to be with, and you want to mentor. There are lots of competent managers out there in every field. Choose ones whom you would like to see lead organizations that have the heart and drive that your organizations do.

Second, make sure you do mentor. Mentoring is the sine qua non of leading. Leaders may be born, but they don’t get a chance to lead if they aren’t recognized and placed into positions in which they can learn what it takes to learn. Managerial skills can be taught in many ways: B-schools, on the job, books and courses and professional seminars. But leaders arise only because mentors take it upon themselves to introduce these prospects to the rigors and joys of leading.

Third, fill your non-business life with learning. Learn new things, things that take advantage of the great patience you have cultivated over all the years of leading. Read more challenging books. Learn or re-learn a musical instrument. Improve your golf game, but also learn yoga and meditation, and so expand your physical and mental horizons (as well as extend your productive physical life).

Finally, concentrate on your physical health. Make healthy activity a mandatory part of your workday. Eat well. Do good and continual physical exercise. Get massages and take walks.

The life of leading at the senior level is thus not one of repeating the grind at a higher level. I call the ethic of leading one of “attentive responsibility.” This ethic entails enjoying what is really occurring around you: the everyday efforts of the people you work with, the excitement of learning once postponed, but now undertaken. It is showing not the competence but the care and concern that make life worth living. Making your family a larger part of your life, however you can, contributes to this ethic.

Michael Shenkman, Ph.D., is founder and president of the Arch of Leadership (www.archofleadership.com), a leader mentoring company. This article was adapted from his new book, The Arch and The Path, the Life of Leading Greatly (Sandia Heights Media, 2005).