The Outgoing Leader: Transitioning to a New Leader

The most important step in any departure is the transition to a new leader. Your job is to make this transition as smooth as possible.

Here are some tips to make this transition process smooth:

1. Document your daily, weekly, and monthly procedures – the new leader needs to know what you do today. You may be surprised everything you do automatically that they’ll need to do once you leave
2. Transition portions at a time – identify one activity or sub-team to transition at a time. Work toward a paired approach, allowing them to shadow you. Slowly transition to you shadowing them. Then, give them full control as they get comfortable, allowing your team and leaders from other teams to get comfortable with them in the leadership role
3. Transition email, phone, and other contact methods to them – at some point, make them the primary contact. If they hit a question, they can come to you to ask how to resolve the issue. This allows them to find out what they still may not know
4. Let the new leader handle the meetings – giving the leader control of portions of a meeting at first, then the full meeting later (with you taking smaller and smaller portions over time) allows the team to get comfortable with the new leader
5. Give the new leader full control – stay available for questions, but give them full control. This allows them to earn the respect they need from the team

Your leadership depends on reproducing yourself early and often, before you know you are leaving. If you haven’t taken this essential step, then your team may experience difficulties when you leave. Use the tips above to slowly begin to let your backup leaders take some of the burden from you before you are called to leave.

If you left today, do you have a leader capable of taking over? If not, you need to begin to identify and prepare that leader today.

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