In boardrooms, offices, factories, churches, government departments, and small enterprises across our continent, leaders are often celebrated for one thing: success.
We applaud revenue growth, admire market expansion, praise visible achievements, and reward short-term results.
Yet history repeatedly teaches us a sobering lesson.
Not all “successful” leaders leave behind something worth celebrating.
Many reach impressive heights only to leave broken cultures, demoralised teams, weakened institutions, and ethical ruins in their wake.
Their records may look impressive on paper, but painful in reality.
This reality forces every leader to confront a profound question: Are you building success, or are you building significance?
Success and significance: Understanding the difference
- Out & about: Warner Music Group squashing the impossible
- Ex-ChiTown chamber secretary fails to stop trial
- Parly caucus on PWDs mooted
- Directors call for workplace shift post Covid restrictions
Keep Reading
Success is largely concerned with what a leader achieves during their tenure.
It is measured in figures, milestones, awards, and rankings.
Significance, on the other hand, is about what remains after the leader has gone.
It is measured in lives transformed, values preserved, institutions strengthened, and people empowered.
Success asks how far one has gone. Significance asks how many have been carried along.
A leader may double profits and still destroy trust, while another may record modest growth yet leave behind capable people, strong systems, and resilient values. In the long run, it is significance, not success, that endures.
The pressure of short-term results
Many leaders today operate under intense pressure.
They face demanding targets, tight deadlines, shareholder expectations, political cycles, donor requirements, and unstable economic conditions.
Under such circumstances, it becomes tempting to focus narrowly on immediate wins.
Leaders may cut corners to meet targets, silence dissent to maintain control, promote loyalty over competence, ignore ethics for expediency, or exhaust their teams in pursuit of quick results.
These approaches often produce fast outcomes, but they mortgage the future.
Organisations built on shortcuts eventually collapse under their own weight. Sustainable legacy requires patience, courage, and moral clarity.
Why leaders drift from legacy
Most leaders do not deliberately set out to damage the institutions they serve.
Instead, many gradually drift into unhealthy patterns. Insecurity plays a major role.
Leaders who doubt themselves often seek validation through visible results and public recognition.
They fear being replaced, questioned, or outperformed, so they prioritise short-term performance over long-term stability. Ego is another powerful driver.
When leadership becomes centred on personal image, applause, and influence, institutional well-being becomes secondary.
A lack of mentorship also contributes to this drift. Many leaders were never taught to think beyond their term of office.
They inherited survival mindsets instead of stewardship mindsets, managing for today while neglecting tomorrow.
Leadership as stewardship, not ownership
One of the most important mindset shifts a leader can make is to understand that leadership is stewardship, not ownership.
Whether one is a chief executive, board chairperson, school principal, pastor, manager, or founder, leadership is a temporary assignment.
Institutions are inherited from previous generations and entrusted to the present for safekeeping and development.
They must eventually be handed over to future leaders in better condition than they were received.
The role of a leader is not to extract value, but to multiply it.
Stewardship asks whether decisions will still make sense years later, whether successors will appreciate existing systems, and whether people are being prepared to lead independently.
Ownership mentality says, “It is mine.” Stewardship mentality says, “It is entrusted to me.” True legacy grows in the soil of stewardship.
From personal achievement to collective growth
In the early stages of leadership, many individuals focus mainly on personal achievement.
They concentrate on promotion, reputation, influence, networks, and recognition.
With maturity, however, effective leaders begin to shift their focus towards collective growth.
They prioritise institutional resilience, leadership depth, shared values, and continuity.
They come to understand that their greatest achievement is not what they personally accomplish, but who they develop.
Organisations rarely collapse because buildings fall. They collapse because people fail.
Investing in people is therefore the most secure investment a leader can make.
The silent indicators of significance
Significance is rarely announced or publicised. It is observed quietly in everyday organisational life.
It is reflected in environments where people speak openly without fear, where mistakes are corrected rather than punished, where young leaders are trusted with responsibility, where ethical standards are upheld even when no one is watching, and where systems function smoothly without constant supervision.
These are not coincidences. They are the visible outcomes of intentional leadership.
The day every leader must face
Every leader, regardless of status or success, will eventually leave office. Retirement will come. Contracts will expire.
Boards will be reconstituted. Health may fail. When that day arrives, titles and privileges will matter far less than three enduring questions.
Are people stronger because you led them? Is the institution healthier because you served it?
Did you add value beyond your term? The answers to these questions define one’s true legacy.
Shifting from success to significance
Moving from success to significance requires deliberate effort. Leaders must intentionally invest in the development of others through training, mentoring, coaching, and exposure.
They must build systems that promote independence rather than dependence, ensuring that progress does not stall in their absence. They must protect organisational values with consistency and courage, recognising that results fade but values endure.
Above all, they must cultivate the habit of thinking beyond their own tenure and asking regularly what kind of inheritance they are leaving behind.
The bricks of legacy
Every leadership decision is like laying a brick. Some bricks build monuments that stand for generations.
Others construct ruins that crumble with time.
Leaders lay these bricks daily in meetings, emails, promotions, reprimands, silences, and acts of courage.
The question is not whether one is building. Every leader is building something.
The real question is what kind of structure will remain when their name is no longer on the door.
In Part Two of this series, we will explore how everyday leadership decisions shape organisational culture long after leaders have departed, and why culture remains the most enduring carrier of leadership legacy.
*Clever Matigimu is a business consultant, author and trainer. He offers MS Excel training (in form of Best Practice Spreadsheet Modeling divided into three levels) as well as leadership skills development. He is a seasoned business executive whose career spans over 35 years, most of which were in the C-suite (CFO, CEO level), in financial services, industry and commerce. He has sat and still sits on a wide variety of boards as a non-executive director and chaired several boards and committees
These weekly articles are coordinated by Lovemore Kadenge, an independent consultant, managing consultant of Zawale Consultants (Private) Limited, past president of the Zimbabwe Economics Society and past president of the Chartered Governance & Accountancy Institute in Zimbabwe . Email – [email protected] or mobile No. +263 772 382 852
