A leadership transition is rarely simple. The outgoing leader worries that decades of effort could unravel. The incoming leader worries that every new move will be judged against the past.
The result is friction. Either the founder hovers over every meeting, or they step away completely, taking crucial institutional wisdom with them.
Jim Morgan offers a third way. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld’s study of how fifty CEOs left their organizations identified four types; two hang on too long, and two finish well. Jim places himself among the Ambassadors, one of the types that finishes well:
“Ambassadors don’t tend to prolong their goodbyes and they also don’t feel a need to replicate their experience in a new place, although they enjoy sharing hard-won insights.”
That is the shift. Driver to navigator. You offer context and counsel while the next leader drives.
Questions to consider:
How can your outgoing leadership best support your new director without second-guessing their day-to-day decisions?
Does your organization have a structured monthly check-in focused purely on context, rather than performance monitoring?
Next step:
If a peer organization is heading into a transition, send this to them. The free Applied Wisdom booklet is there if they want more. It’s free, and it always will be.