067. Life after leadership: Sam Worthington, former President and CEO @ InterAction

Summary

What is life after leadership like?

What happens to you as a person when you leave a high-powered, highly visible role in civil society?

What happens with your sense of identity? Does this also perhaps touch on ego as well?

What offers new meaning and purpose, when we live our life-after-leadership?

In this NGO Soul+Strategy podcast episode, I interview Sam Worthington, former President and CEO at InterAction, who stepped down from a position with much positional as well as symbolic power just about a year ago. 

 

Sam’s Bio:

• Executive coach, board member and advocate
• Former President and CEO of InterAction – 16 years
• Former President and CEO of Plan International USA
• Executive Director at Delphi International

 

We discuss: 

• In the months before you leave your leadership job, expect that the extent to which your colleagues still want you to make decisions on important things will rapidly decline
• In Sam’s case, the sense of loss that was involved was not about loss of power (since he’d experienced positional power  for a few decades),  but was about loss  of the comradery that former colleagues and peers used to provide
• You can partially fill this void by offering (informal) coaching to new incoming CEOs for instance.
• Life after leadership does mean you can move more from doing to being; you can be more present now
• Sometimes leaders, once they retire, still are called to speak in global gatherings based on their reputation, their personal brand
• Our knowledge which we can still contribute now is the synthesized wisdom of decades of experience
• Sam is writing a book to look back on everything he learned, his views on the sector, and what gives him hope -- follow him on LinkedIn to stay tuned!

 

Quotes:

• “The transition is about having been the village chief before; now, I am no longer in the village”

• “My public persona never was my identity”

 

Resources:

Sam’s LinkedIn Profile

Book David Brooks, From Strength to Strength

Essay by David Brooks in The Atlantic: The New Old Age (gated)

 

YouTube video of this podcast

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