Leadership Transitions: How to prevent your hive from turning on (and killing) its new queen
Bringing in fresh, outside leadership can be natural and healthy for an organization — and both the organization and the leader play a role in making it a successful succession of leadership.
In the natural course of a beehive, queens must be replaced.
She might die naturally, or, the bees and/or beekeeper will notice that she’s longer doing her job effectively. Her primary job is to lay the eggs that form new worker bees — and if she fails, the hive will die.
Similarly, organizations periodically need fresh leadership — sometimes grown from within (which bees can do!), but sometimes brought in from “the outside.”
Years ago, I was asked to analyze retention data for a company’s executive level leadership & compare it with external research. I learned that a surprising number of externally hired executive-level leaders fail — which is disappointing, given the significant time and expense put into recruiting these senior leaders.
Can we do a better job of supporting these leaders?
To maximize the chances of leader success, we can apply learnings from how beekeepers integrate their new queens into a colony.
I learned a lot the first time my husband introduced a new queen to his hive.
First, you learn that bees are on the list of animals shippable via USPS (alongside day-old poultry and scorpions). :-O
The queen arrives in a small, prominently-labeled box with several attendants (other bees*) tasked with keeping her well-groomed and fed during the journey.
The box has a small wire grate on top, with a wall of sugar inside that provides food for the bees inside the box, and a cork capping the end.
Scents are incredibly important in the bee world. A new queen and her court, sauntering into the hive, smell unfamiliar. If the existing bees in the hive detect that scent, they will kill the new intruders.
So, the box is intentionally designed to carefully introduce the queen and her attendants to the new hive.
- The cork is taken out.
- The whole box is put into the hive.
- The open wire allows existing bees to smell the newcomers and become accustomed to their scent.
- And, the sugar wall is just enough food that allows enough time for the hive to acclimate to the new bees before they eat their way through the wall and emerge from the box.
(side note: Can you imagine having to EAT your way out of a box, even if it’s a food you love?! Personally, I’m a bit of a chip enthusiast so that would be my preferred wall medium…)
What do we take from the beehive to the boardroom?
- Provide a sugar wall that fills the new leader’s time intentionally in their first few weeks.
This wall likely looks like a robust onboarding plan, specialized for an executive leader. Consider all of the elements needed to help them hit the ground running, from:
- Meeting their peers, direct reports, key functional stakeholders and partners, external parties (board members, investors, business partners) and understanding how they will work with those individuals
- Understanding the organization and its key metrics, business challenges, strategic plan, short/mid/long-term business outcomes
- Understanding key people processes (eg how hiring, promotions, terminations work)
- Navigating the organization, particularly in an organization that relies on a lot of institutional knowledge, possibly assigning them ‘buddy’ — another seasoned executive that was hired in and has been successful integrating into the company
This gives them ‘a lot to chew on’ in their first few weeks and they can emerge from the box, armed with a first wave of functional knowledge.
While these might seem like obvious tips, executive onboarding can sometimes fall through the cracks in the busyness and excitement of a new executive leader, so someone — whether it’s that person’s leader, the HR person supporting them, a buddy….anyone!…should ensure this is happening in some form.
It’s easy to forget that although that executive is an expert in their domain, they’re NOT an expert at the organization (yet).
2. Let the hive get to know the new leader.
While executives are getting onboarded, carve out time for employees to really get to know the new leader — free of action items (either taking them on or giving them out), burning priorities, or issues. This allows them to begin building relationships and trust across the org, while keeping some of the power dynamic to a minimum.
In addition to the job-specific knowledge that execs are acquiring in tip #1, ‘get to know you’ looks more like:
- A well-formed communication plan (in advance, ideally before their first day) around the new leader and their role
- Small group get-to-know-yous with folks at all levels
- Regional visits, extra-important if this leader has team members or significant headcount in a location other than their home location
- Casual events that help team members get to know the new executive on a personal level
Building this trust takes time, but this foundation allows new executives to move more quickly in the future, using trusted relationships as an accelerator.
Finally, unlike our queen bee who is mostly waiting on the hive to acclimate to her, the leader should take proactive steps to acclimate into the existing culture.
Not everything, of course — after all, many times new leaders are brought in to evolve the culture — but find out what’s important to people who have been living and thriving in the culture, and adopt the ‘best of’.
Certain elements of the culture may not be your thing, but showing that you care about being part of an existing culture that other people love, goes a long way.
Where have you seen leaders misstep as they enter an organization, and what else would you suggest to help set them up for success?
*probably a topic that deserves its own separate post! and like everything, there are tradeoffs!