News & Insights

One of the more difficult aspects of leadership, particularly for CEOs and Board Chairs, is not the pressure while you are in role, but what happens when you leave it.

I have observed, time and again, that once a senior leader’s term ends, the institution moves on with striking efficiency. Warm platitudes are offered. Achievements are noted. Contributions are applauded. And then, almost immediately, the leader disappears from the organisation’s consciousness.

This can feel jarring.

After years of responsibility, difficult decisions, and personal investment, the sudden absence of relevance can feel less like a transition and more like erasure.

Yet this phenomenon is neither accidental nor ungrateful. In many ways, it is essential.

Institutions are designed to endure beyond individuals. For that to work, authority must be transferred cleanly. Lingering influence, even well-intentioned, creates shadow leadership and constrains the freedom of successors to lead in their own way.

For this reason, organisational memory often draws a sharp line at the point of transition. Public praise becomes a form of closure: recognition paired with release.

To remember leaders too vividly is to risk nostalgia, comparison, or deference, all of which undermine renewal.

From the organisation’s perspective, forgetting is not a failure of gratitude; it is a mechanism of survival.

There is an uncomfortable irony here. The more secure, thoughtful, and system- focused a leader is, the easier they are to forget.

Leaders who build strong governance, embed good culture, and leave behind capable successors do not leave drama in their wake. The organisation continues to function. Things work. Crises do not linger.

And because nothing visibly breaks, the leader’s influence fades quietly into the background.

By contrast, leaders associated with turmoil, rescue, or disruption are often remembered far longer, even when their impact is questionable.

Competence, it turns out, is rarely memorable.

If leadership does not guarantee remembrance, recognition, or lasting visibility, why do people continue to put themselves through its pressures?

The honest answer is that leadership offers very little in the way of reliable external reward. Its true value lies elsewhere.

Leadership is stewardship. It is the willingness to carry responsibility for a time, knowing that the work is temporary and the credit fleeting. Its impact persists not in names or narratives, but in systems, decisions, and cultures that outlast the individual.

More personally, leadership shapes the leader. It sharpens judgment, deepens perspective, and exposes people to complexity that cannot be learned second-hand. Even when institutions forget, leaders do not return unchanged.

Still, it would be misleading to pretend there is no emotional cost.

Many leaders give more than is strictly required. They care deeply about institutions or organisations that cannot love them back. When their relevance ends, the loss can feel personal, even when it is understood intellectually.

This is a quiet grief in leadership, rarely discussed and often minimised.

Acknowledging it does not weaken leadership; it humanises it.

Perhaps the real question is not “Why do this if I’ll be forgotten?” but rather:

“Would I still choose to lead if no one ever thanked me again?”

For those who answer yes, leadership becomes less about legacy and more about service. Less about being remembered and more about leaving things stronger, fairer, and more resilient than they were before.

That is not a glamorous reward.

But it may be the only one leadership reliably offers.

By Neal Lucas, Managing Director