Proactive succession is not necessary
If you’re a leader who cares about people development, you take succession planning very seriously. You list all critical positions, prepare for emergency situations and develop clear and resilient succession planning. This includes your position. Leaders who fail to prepare for their succession are doing their organization a disservice. More importantly, leadership as a competency, trait, or ability is not genetically transmitted. While some of the personality traits might be.
A CEO must be able to identify a successor and actively prepare him for the takeover. Proper preparation includes continuing education, appropriate mentoring, and a reasonable amount of coaching. This includes working on areas of improvement and leadership gaps with this successor without creating a clone of yourself. It’s about transitioning a new leader into their role while respecting the leadership culture.
This brings us to one of the hardest things a leader can do – intentionally make yourself expendable! Being able to let go with confidence, knowing you’ve perfected your team to take care of business. As the Smart Alec saying goes, all CEOs will eventually leave office, some of them may be carried in the final passage!
A confident and confident leader who is confident in what they are doing and wants to do with formal retirement knows how to build the next line of leadership. A worthy successor at the right time, not too late, is the true legacy. But who asks the “essential” leader?
