[Mid-Career Series] Leading for Legacy (Re-Release EP 105)
After tenure, it can feel like everyone is depending on you, from students to your junior colleagues, your co-authors, and even your family.
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In this episode, I explore what it really means to lead for legacy at this stage in your academic career. Leadership isn’t about taking on more work or moving into administration. It’s about how you show up for others while also taking care of yourself. I’ll share how to lead in a way that sustains both you and the people who look to you for guidance.
Then, I break down why it is okay to focus your energy on your academic mission and cementing your legacy, even if that means saying no to people who helped you reach tenure. From prioritizing your wellbeing to reshaping your career to be what you want, I challenge you to shift your mindset on leadership.
Listen in to learn how to lead for legacy without burning out, and how to model a new kind of success in academia.
Rethinking What It Means to Lead
When I talk about leadership, I’m not talking about holding an administrative title. I’m talking about the kind of leadership that happens when students, colleagues, and collaborators turn to you for direction, insight, and encouragement. At this point in your career, you’re shaping the next generation of scholars through your example. The problem is that we’ve often been shown only one version of success in academia: constant work, no rest, always producing. I want to challenge that. You can be an effective and respected leader while creating space for yourself. Authentic leadership means showing others a different, more sustainable way forward.
You Can’t Lead If You’re Depleted
Many academics feel obligated to give back after tenure by supporting other projects and initiatives. That impulse is valid. But here’s the truth: you can’t effectively help anyone if you’re running on empty. The energy, wisdom, and creativity that make you a great mentor depend on your own well-being. Leading for legacy means investing in yourself, including your mind, your body, and your rest, so you can continue to lead with clarity and purpose. You’ve spent years developing your expertise. Now, it’s time to honor the person behind the scholarship and care for the one resource your leadership depends on — you.
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“I think a lot of people who get to post-tenure year or mid-career feel like, Well, I’ve made it to this level in my career and so I have an obligation to give back to other people. I think there’s nothing wrong with that and I think that’s true. However, you cannot give back to other people, you cannot be the leader that those other people need you to be, if you’re depleted, if you’re exhausted, and if you are not also really pouring into yourself.”
“If you are just running to the point of burnout all the time, that’s not effective leadership. That’s not going to lead you to a legacy. It’s not going to lead you to leaving the kind of mark that you want to make on the world.”
We’re receiving applications for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and start your application process here.
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- Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Apply here!
- Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing,and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
- If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It’s a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.
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