Have you thought about creating your own succession plan? You need to start working yourself out of a job almost as soon as you take it. This wasn’t one of the lessons that I learned early on, but I saw the importance of it as I progressed through my career. There are 4 major reasons that doing this will help you in the long run:
- You need to time to think and recharge your energy
- If you don’t prepare your team to lead things when you are out of the office, then things will fall apart. You need to start delegating to them quickly and preparing them to handle things without you. You will be able to enjoy time out of the office and also feel confident that things are still moving forward.
- You will be seen as a strong leader
- Prepare a strategic plan of how you will build your team to be able to learn what you know and how to accomplish the goals without you having to be in every detail. You have to accept the fact that no one is irreplaceable and that sharing what you know is very important to the continuity of the group and the organization.
- You may be penalized as a leader if you don’t put this in place
- Your management is looking for you to have a strategic plan and be executing against it. Look at the team members and are they ready to assume more responsibility? If not, what will you do to prepare them? Your own promotion may be held up if you don’t put a plan in place. Management cannot the organization struggle and fall apart, so they are not going to make a change without some stability being put in place. Share your plan with your management so that they understand and are aligned with your vision.
- Leave on a positive note
- Frances Hesselbein, who was the CEO of the Girl Scout organization, said it best: “Successful transition is the last act of a great leader.” You want to make sure that you do all that you can to have as thorough transition as possible. Create a good transition plan that shows what will be transitioned and have due dates assigned to show progress. You want to ensure that you have prepared the person taking over your role, so you can begin to focus on your new role. You may have to pull double duty and do both roles for a period of time during transition. This is obviously challenging, but it is important that people see that you have done as much as possible to have a smooth transition. Communicate to everyone that the new person is ready to go and that you will be moving to your new role.
Do you want to prepare your own succession plan? The ReVISION Group Coaching Program is starting soon and can help you work on those changes. Check out the NEW packages that ReVISION is offering and the testimonials from the people who just completed the program at this link:http://susanmbarber.com/revision-program/ The next group is starting soon, so reserve your spot today!