Retired public company CEO Mark Lamberti believes that answering these three questions is key to a fulfilling retirement.
A South African businessman with a penchant for achievement, Mark Lamberti can be considered somewhat of a retirement expert, finding fulfillment from family, philanthropy, an obsession with education, and his doctoral thesis, “Exploring Postretirement Role Identity Emergence in Public Company CEOs.”
As Lamberti navigates what he describes as “the next third of his life,” he continues to observe peers with fast-paced, high-stakes executive positions wrestling with the transition to a fulfilling retirement, with little clarity on how to approach their later years.
“Some retire to the coast, play golf three times a week, and you can’t have an interesting conversation with them in two years time,” he explains. “For years they’ve forged a career of achievement operating with a support infrastructure, with personal and corporate status and reputation related to their role, in complex, challenging daily interface with various stakeholders. And then they retire and the next day there are no emails in the box and people don’t return calls as quickly. So it is quite a dramatic experience.”
With retirees 28% more likely to experience depression compared to the overall adult population, Lamberti believes that before taking this life-changing leap, everyone should consider the three “Big Ws” of retirement: who, what, and where next?
Who Can I Spend Retirement With?
With loneliness considered a common concern among retirees, it is important to consider your post-retirement relationships. Oftentimes, individuals in C-suite positions neglect their relationships outside of work and are left at a loss for the social interaction essential for their psychological and emotional well-being.
Many CEOs unknowingly rely on the social dimension of their positions which becomes problematic upon retirement as they are left to decipher between what Lamberti calls “real friends and deal friends.”
“Very few of the people in your work environment are real friends who expect nothing more from you than friendship,” says Lamberti. “Most of the people you interact with in the work environment have a transactional motive If you happen to like them, that’s a bonus, but they’re not there for the personal relationship.”
Work environments tend to create asymmetric relationships, and CEOs who don’t cultivate relationships through the roles and communities external to their careers will quickly discover the instability and unreliability of their old networks.
What am I Going to Do?
As retirement frees up 40 to 60 hours of your time per week, retirees should also develop a general plan for how they wish to spend their golden years. “Any evaluation of a post-retirement lifestyle must be guided by one’s resources. What are my fundamental physical, intellectual, emotional, and financial resources? Am I physically active and resilient? What is my mental acuity? Am I psychologically robust and motivated? Am I financially independent? More broadly, the creation of a sustainable retiree identity will rely on our past memberships of industry or professional organizations, our social circles, our networks and our reputation. These resources cannot be underestimated in the quest for well-being in retirement.”
While many look fondly upon retirement as a time to live out their leisure activities, without thinking of the bigger picture, they will quickly learn that leisure is only considered such because of work. If you approach retirement as a full-time pursuit of your hobbies or leisures—like playing a sport or painting—these things will soon lose their novelty and become more of a job, void of the enjoyment you once found in them.
“You cannot turn your leisure into a full-time activity. Some people contemplating retirement suffer from the delusion that retirement is a fun time of relinquished responsibilities and pressure. Well, fun has only got purpose for so long and it gets boring,” Lamberti curtly states.
Lamberti finds that those who experience the most fulfillment in retirement are the individuals who have distinct multifaceted identities beyond their business cards. These identities can help answer existential questions like who you are and how you should meaningfully dictate your time to ensure a robust lifestyle and purpose beyond full-time employment.” So these are deep questions, who am I now and how do I redefine myself? And then the big question, of course, who do I hope to become,” he explains.
Where Next?
Most executives are accustomed to operating their business and personal lives with a level of infrastructural support that is lost upon retirement. Whether or not CEOs choose to live out their non-executive years in a different location, Lamberti posits that they should focus on maintaining or establishing services and functions that support the new activities and roles. “Arranging appointments, booking flights or low-level administration can be a debilitating diversion from more purposeful, meaningful activities founded on their unique capabilities, experience, and resources.
“Those to me are the big Ws, there are no one-line answers to these questions. They require deep introspection and reflection. They require a ruthless assessment of who one is without the CEO title and everything that surrounds it. The journey to fully assess and appreciate one’s essence, en route to self-redefinition in one’s later years, can be among life’s most lonely and difficult. It can also be unexpectedly liberating and exciting when approached with integrity.
See more from Mark Lamberti: https://oxfordbusinessgroup.com/articles-interviews/chain-reaction-obg-talks-to-mark-lamberti-ceo-imperial-holdings-interview
