Navigate Transition Like a Pro

Takeaways

Navigating a leadership transition can be either a celebration of your years of investment in an organization or a frantic sprint toward the finish line. Follow these tips to help it be a celebration.

So many people have either been through a transition themselves, are thinking about it, or have been navigating someone else’s transition over the past few years and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. After navigating several transitions of my own during my career and helping others do the same, here are some tips to work through this season like a pro.

Manage Emotional Energy Level.

You need to transition when you have enough energy to lead through your last day with the organization. You don’t want to end your time with your team on a whimper, you want to be able to offer your very best to the very end. Too many people wait to resign when they are totally out of gas. We need to rethink that. A transition is an emotionally taxing and leadership-intensive season. If it is your time to make a change and you know you are exhausted, take a strategic break before you announce your departure so you are able to help everyone around you process the transition on a full emotional energy tank. 

Manage the Timing of Information.

Once you decide to go, the period where you hold that information private may feel awkward to you. For some who are very close with their teammates, it may feel like you are being disingenuous. But if you are in organizational leadership, once you tell one person, you need to begin working through a planned order of stakeholders, telling key people individually, and doing so with carefully thought-out messaging.  Until you have carefully mapped out your communication and transition plan, the kindest thing you can do is hold that information to yourself. Leaders who share important transition news without a plan almost always create unnecessary tension and damage for others. They will feel better in the short run, getting that burden off their chest, but it is reckless (and maybe even a bit selfish) to share something like this without a careful plan that is followed with strict discipline.

Honor Organizational Structure.

Once you resign, keep in mind that whoever you work for has the option to take the reins. If you are a senior leader, the CEO may want to speed up the transition you had planned and that is their prerogative.  If you are the senior leader, the board now has the option to take the reins.  They may adjust your timeline, take back operational control, or even appoint an interim. It is often helpful when you announce to discuss with the board what possible options are for them. It is usually some version of these 3 scenarios usually aligned around organizational size and budget.

·      Smaller organizations with few staff and a working board are used to being involved in operations, so the board will often drive the search process entirely themselves.

·      Medium-sized organizations with a professional staff but not the resources to hire a search firm will often task the staff to assist with elements of the search (managing job posts, drafting documents, coordinating information with candidates) while the board will own the process of final interviews until a candidate is chosen by the board.

·      Larger Organizations usually opt to have a search firm manage the process of recruiting and vetting well-qualified candidates.  Allowing the team to focus on keeping programs running as normal and donors engaged is worth the expense.

Plan Your Messaging.

Your departure is often the result of a complicated collage of reasons.  There is rarely just one factor. No one needs to know all of your reasons for leaving. Pick one of those reasons and make that the publicly stated reason. Make sure that it is a reason that paints you and the organization in a positive light. Determine to always speak well of the organization, teammates, board, and all stakeholders. We all have that suspicious friend who desperately wants to know the “real” reason you are leaving. Don’t even think about telling them anything more than you tell everyone else.

Remember it is all about the Next Leader.

If you are transitioning out, focus your efforts on helping the objectives and initiatives of the next leader get a strong launch. Transition is not the time to establish your legacy and try to keep things the same. That season is past. If you haven’t done that yet, you won’t be able to do it now. You are leaving. It is a new day. Be the type of leader you hope to follow in your next post. Help set up that new leader with your support of their ideas, your loyal endorsement with staff, board, and donors, and a humble public acknowledgment that the best days are yet ahead. Allow for change to happen.

Interim Leadership.

It is not unusual that a process may take longer than anticipated and bringing in an interim leader is a great way to provide continuity during a transition. Someone experienced at this, will help set up the organization for the next leader – paving the way for a new leader to come into a situation ready for growth.

Leave.

It may seem silly to have to point out the obvious but there are a surprising amount of transition misfires and attempted “un-resignations”. After promising the reigns to a successor, a retiring leader gets a burst of energy now that they are no longer having to manage people and decides to stay a couple of years longer than promised, causing the new leader to hit the eject button in frustration. A founder transitions into a legacy advisory role because they don’t know what to do with the next stage of their career and unwittingly becomes a roadblock for the new leader to drive needed innovation and change, ultimately sabotaging them. If you decide to leave, then you really need to actually do so. The sun will still rise and set. Your team will be fine. Your programs will continue. Go out on top. Don’t be that leader who overstays like relatives that just won’t leave when the Holidays are over. That is not how you want to be remembered.

The reality is that how we transition out of a role has a tremendous impact on an organization. It also has a tremendous impact on how you will be remembered by that organization. Spending that extra time and energy on the way out to invest in others one last time, pass along key insights, and prepare your board and donors for the next leader will be some of the most important investments you can make in your career.