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I
11
I
have studied leadership all my life and will
continue until I die. What concerns me is
the broad-based misunderstanding of what
leadership is. I worry about our society until I
meet another person who gets it and is trying to
make a difference in his or her realm of living,
and then I have hope!
I aspire to leverage all of the experience I have
had for the benefit of others. I would hate to
have gone through all of that stuff and made
all of those mistakes and not be able to help
others do better than I did. Unfortunately, the
real learning often comes in the pain and loss. I
would like to help others not have to go through
as much of that as I did.
Someone once asked me what I would like my
legacy to be, and my very quick answer was that
I don’t want a legacy. A legacy would be about
me. I don’t want anything that shallow. I want
to be able to discern where God is on the move
so that I can be part of it. I don’t want this ego-
centric accomplishment agenda. I think that
one of the most important tests of any endeavor
on Earth is its impact on human potential. To
the extent that I can help someone become
more infatuated with his or her potential, I feel
like I am in real agency with God here on Earth
to do the most that can be done.
This was an evolution. In the early ‘90s in an
estate planning meeting, I was told that if I
died right then,
this
amount would go to the
government. I would rather see what that money
is going to do, so I decided that every year I
would have the accountants tell me the most I
can give away that would be tax advantaged, and
I would give that away. I’m having fun seeing
it do something. So it started from a selfish
motive: I want to see something from all of this.
As I got into that I experienced things that got
started that wouldn’t have otherwise begun and
I realized I was a part of that blessing. I began to
involve senior management of our company in
how we can pay back those who really deserve
it. Our company has the smartest customers in
the whole world because we have the struggling
customers who are trying to make ends meet.
We are inspired to discover everything that
we can do to help them get ahead in life. It’s a
matter of paying back, and true giving involves
confusion about who is really giving and who
is really receiving. We have been profoundly
blessed by giving to people who couldn’t pay us
back. We see the impact that comes from that
motive.
But there are a lot of people who need our help.
Of the hundreds of thousands of persons I have
met in my lifetime, I am convinced that I have
met none who is as blessed as I. But how can I
be a good steward of that? It’s all a gift and with
any success there is a lot of luck, a lot of other
persons who have contributed to that success.
Being a steward of success involves sharing
it where it can be most cathartic and helping
others have a better life.
More than a Legacy
CAL TurNEr, Jr.