Is Your Team Ready for your Departure?
You got the job! The brass ring! You are ready to move to your next leadership position. But, is your current team ready?
Are you leaving a team of professionals who can perform with a new leader or even without a leader? Or will they struggle because you were the one thing holding them together, making all of the decisions?
As leaders, it is great to be the center of attention, the one who has all the answers, the one that people come to when decisions are needed. That’s great for your ego but not so great for your team and the overall organization, in particular when you leave (and you will eventually leave).
There are two aspects of a leader’s transition:
- Your preparation way before you, as the leader, have the new job
- Your transition out of the job.
Both are important. Both are needed. Good work in the first one makes the second one easier. So let’s unpack these two aspects of the transition.
Preparation before the leader has a new job
The work to help your team in your transition to your next job started the moment you started your current job. As part of your effort to move into your current role and start leading the organization, you started getting to know your team (Relational Leadership) so that you could identify their strengths and weaknesses and they would trust you. As you got to know them and worked on outlining and leading the various initiatives, you started thinking about who could you delegate things to. Not just because they were better at it than you or because you didn’t want to do it, but because it would provide them an opportunity to grow and get to be known by others in the larger organization.
At the same time, as you understood their strengths and weaknesses, you worked with them to come up with a development plan to help them obtain the skills they would need to support their future growth and opportunities. If Jane is a great technical leader but struggles with her teammates, maybe she needs some classes and opportunities to get feedback, learn techniques, and get better.
You worked with them to share and expand your vision (Personal Leadership) of the team and help them feel a sense of community (Contextual Leadership). As they tackled new initiatives, whether in leadership or in their own domain of leadership, you were there to inspire and help them (Inspirational Leadership) while making sure they felt safe (Supportive Leadership). And in all of these efforts, you made sure they understood their responsibility to be good stewards of the organization (Responsible Leadership).
You also started thinking specifically as to who could take over your job if you were gone. As requests for new efforts were identified, efforts that you could easily lead, you thought “maybe this would be a good opportunity for Jane.” Or maybe it was Peter. Or both and they you have good potential candidates to take over.
You also worked with the rest of your team who may not be ready for leadership (or may not want to be leaders) so that they improved their skills and value to your team, your organization, and themselves.
In all these efforts, your team members are maturing, acquiring skills and confidence. Thereby they are improving their abilities and the overall abilities of your team (Responsible Leadership).
Leader’s transition out of the job
Hopefully you’ve done a great job developing your team, delivering on all of your and the team’s commitments, and are now being recognized as a leading candidate to take on a new, larger job. You interview for the job, have a great interview, and are offered the position. How do you tell your team? How do you prepare them for their own transition?
Part of this transition includes a negotiation with your own leader on a transition period and process (not always the case but let’s assume it here).
Time to work with your team. Be open. Rumors will start flying as soon as you get a job offer, even before you accept! So, as soon as you can, negotiated with your own leader, announce that you are moving on and the expected timeline. Explain your rationale but, more important, explain how you think their own transition process will proceed. Is your current position being opened for them to apply for? Maybe Jane or Peter who you thought could do the job are the ones that should be applying. But there may be others within your team who think they should apply. And of course there will be outside candidates. Communicate an expected process and timeline. Be as open as possible.
Also recognize their efforts and successes. Give them credit. Here’s a great opportunity to help them feel good about themselves and all the effort they’ve put in working with and for you.
Continue documenting your projects and processes. How you do things. It is not intended for your replacement to follow them to the letter but to use them as a reference as they work themselves into the role.
As soon as your replacement is identified, work with your replacement to share your knowledge. Introduce them to your team. Share your knowledge.
At the same time, share your knowledge with the team and delegate those things that could be delegated but have not been delegated yet. This will help them grow, allow you to coach them while you are still there, and free some of your time for other transition work (interview of candidates, anyone?) And, also, if your replacement is not in place before you have to leave, some/most of your work will be taken over by members of your team.
If you have been working in developing your team before it was time to go, this transition will be easier than if you are scrambling. However, that is not always possible, so don’t give up. Identify the most important things that should be transitioned to your team. Work with your leader on those that cannot be transitioned.
Then move into your new job. Hopefully you’ve already been working on how to be ready. Books such as The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins and Right from the Start by Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins are great resources to prepare yourself to be successful in your new role.
To develop your team prior to your transition, consider the works of Patrick Lencioni such as The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Ideal Team Player. Another great resource is Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You by Frances Frei and Anne Morris.
I refer in this article to various types of Leadership (Personal, Relational, Contextual, Inspirational, Supportive, and Responsible). These are the domains in the Six Domains of Leadership™ model. You can find more information about it at Delta Leadership’s website as well as in some of my Medium stories such as “HBR Leadership Styles & The Six Domains of Leadership”, “Situational Leadership and the Six Domains of Leadership” and other articles you can find in my Medium list of stories.
Contact
Contact me at jose@coachsolera.com to find out how to improve your leadership.
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Visit my team performance coaching website: https://coachsolera.com
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