Transitions as Transformation
It seems that leadership transitions are occurring in the social sector at an elevated pace. The pandemic tested the most resolute of leaders, and an overdue racial reckoning has led many white-founded organizations and their leaders to question their entrenched leadership structures and tenure.
Both of us, as founders and former CEO’s, cycled out as our respective organizational leaders in 2020. While both of our entities, under new leadership, have continued to thrive, at the time of the transition, we found the transition process to be challenging, relatively isolating, and devoid of easy to access guidance.
In talking to a multitude of other social-sector leaders, we have realized that, despite the heightened rate of leadership transitions in the sector, the topic remains relatively taboo. Fearing that alerting and involving others in a possible leadership change can be destabilizing, leaders are often left to quietly leverage their personal and professional networks to glean any insights and support they can from those they trust to engage in confidential conversations. Leaders are often unsure where to turn to for funding, support, and relevant research and tools for the complex planning of their succession.
Even more problematically, the opportunity to experience a successful transition, both for leaders and organizations, is not equitably distributed across the social sector. As white-founders, we had more access to opportunity and resources than most in going through the transition process. For many, left to go it alone during one of the most important stages of an organization’s development leaves many leaders with no choice but to reinvent the wheel, and try to figure out in a cloak of silence and isolation how to uncouple the personal identity from an organization and ensure the organization can thrive into the future.
Recognizing the need to better support social-sector leaders transitioning out of leadership, we have spent the last three years building the Leadership Transition Community, to support founders, and long-term CEO’s which we define as those whose personal and professional identities are intertwined, as they explore their leadership transitions. Our work has involved creating communities, organizing cohorts of exiting leaders, and providing coaching and consultation.
In the past few years we’ve heard the transition stories of over 50 leaders through our 6-month long cohorts. While our work is just getting started, we have gleaned several learnings so far that we believe can be helpful for leaders throughout the entire sector.
Being in Community Matters: When we each went through our own transitions, we were struck by how isolating, lonely and simultaneously how all-consuming the process could be. Planning and executing a transition is a full-time job on top of a full-time job. It is all at once an emotional and for many a spiritual experience, a strategic, and tactical one– all at once. It is a massive change management undertaking that a leader must lead themselves and others through all while continuing to do their day job . Along the way it becomes difficult to know how to take care of yourself, relate to your team and not be perceived as a lame-duck leader or a founder that is holding on too tight. We found ourselves in a constant state of reflection:
Did we strike the right balance of empowering without abdicating?
Were we supporting our teams without micromanaging?
Were we helping our boards lean into their responsibility of leading and managing a transition without relying on us too much?
How could we appropriately leverage our expertise and insights?
Through it all, we had to manage the varying emotions present both in ourselves and others, ranging from excitement to guilt, grief to fear.
Perhaps the most powerful component of the cohorts is co-creating a space where leaders can be in community with each other as they transition. The leaders all run different organizations in diverse communities with varied budget sizes and transition plans- but the experience of leading an organization through a transition while recognizing the complex emotions that are triggered is normalizing, inspiring, unifying and reassuring.
As one leader shared: “Being with other transitioning leaders and surfacing our challenges together has made those challenges less daunting. For me, it's been too easy to immerse myself in the organization and deprioritize continued exploration of who I am and what I want my life to look like, and the cohort has given me space and tools to explore both the needs of the organization and my own needs.”
Another leader reflected: “During the transition process I have to care for others, so I can’t be as transparent as what this is like for me, that makes me value this cohort space where I can do that and be supported.”
Leaders need to be supported as they go through such an intensely personal, and organizationally powerful transition. They need to be in a community where they can be vulnerable, authentic, and honest about their own experiences and receive support, advice, encouragement, and comfort from being with like-minded peers going through a similar experience. They need a safe space to understand and process the emotional aspects of their transition and receive tools to manage the strategic and tactical components of a leadership change. This in turn empowers them to be more grounded, confident, and able to provide their teams, boards, and stakeholders with suggestions, structure, and resources to manage their transition with intention and care.
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Intentional Practices, not Best Practices: At the outset we feel it important to name our bias that we do not believe that there are truly best practices, rather intentional practices. For example, some organizations thrive with internal candidates emerging as the next CEO, some hire from outside. Some organizations have as much as 18 months-2 years between the CEO announcing they are leaving and a successor taking over, some have as little as four months. Some CEO’s stay on as a staff member or advisor, and some have a clean break from the organization. We believe strongly that almost any decision can work, as long as there is intentionality and thoughtfulness behind the decisions.
Equity Needs to Be Foundational- Before the Actual Transition: Organizations like the Building Movement Project have done critical work highlighting that too many leaders of color take over for white founders without the needed support in place. These leaders often enter organizations that have not sufficiently prioritized racial equity at a foundational level.
Organizations that truly value prioritizing racial equity cannot solely look to hire a Person of Color as their leader to solve all of their challenges. Rather, in the years leading up to a transition, equity must be elevated as a foundational component- from Theory of Change, to Board of Directors composition, to the financial model and fundraising operations. Organizations need to be intentional about their staff diversity, ensuring decision-making is equitable.
It is also important to consider what support and structures should be put in place in advance of a new leader arriving to help ensure they have the support they need to thrive. Perhaps it is considering how leadership roles are defined at the organization and whether they are truly sustainable; ensuring a sufficient financial cushioning (i.e. some suggest six months of cash on hand) to be available, as the transition occurs; building funds into the budget to support coaching/leadership support for the new CEO; and designating a board member or stakeholder to make themselves available to the new CEO in the months after the transition to provide ongoing support as needed.
These considerations would be valuable for any CEO transition but particularly for BIPOC leaders following founders or long-term CEOs. In addition, to the challenges of transitions in general they also face the significant challenges pervasive in our communities as a result of structural racism.
Boards of Directors are Vital: There is perhaps no more vital role that a Board of Directors can play than hiring the CEO, especially after a founder. But many Boards do not spend nearly enough time preparing for the task. In the organizational life-cycle, Boards often defer key decisions to founders, and may resist or in some cases refuse to deal with leadership transition until they are forced to. In conversations that we’ve had with exiting leaders, far too many struggle with the role of the Board- seeing them as not ready to lead a succession process, or not trusting they will make the right decision. Founders and long-term CEO’s aren’t clear how to best support their boards in this process and questions abound:
How much guidance and opinion sharing is too much? Not enough?
How and when do you start talking about your own transition without losing your credibility as an invested and committed leader?
How do you ensure that the Board is talking about your transition without it being interpreted as a negative reflection of your own current leadership?
The process of preparing a Board to hire a CEO, especially following a founder, should start the day the Board is formed. Normalizing for leaders that planning their own succession with their board is normal, healthy, strategic, and a good thing to do, even if it is years away.
Additionally, we’ve seen how helpful it is when Board members have the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships with the organization’s staff, building the board’s confidence in the full team that supports the organization, and the team’s confidence that the board understands their culture, work, and needs- all of which will create a solid foundation for the process of selecting the next leader.
Honor the Challenge the Loss and Joy: Irrespective of how international organizations and leaders are as it relates to transitions, they are always challenging and a great deal of work. It can be exhausting for all involved. They always have loss- for the organization, and for the exiting leader.
At the same time transitions can be joyful. There can be much to celebrate. Founders and long-term CEOs who are ready to transition consistently report that they believe their organizations are ready to thrive without them. A decision to transition is an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate how much the staff, volunteers, clients, board, and stakeholders have done over the years to build and develop an organization that is ready for this important time of change.
There’s power in making all of the emotions and feelings welcome, in honoring the loss and joy through an actual ritual to bless and release the Founder or long-term CEO and welcome the new leader. This sacred moment in time gives clients, staff, volunteers, board members, and stakeholders a chance to connect and re-ground in why the organization matters to them, celebrating what together the organization makes possible, and committing to moving forward with intention, determination, and gratitude.
Transitioning out of a leadership role is beautifully complicated. It should be seen as important as the initial founding and building of the organization. When done strategically and thoughtfully, leadership transitions can multiply the impact individuals and mission-driven organizations can have on social good: creating space for new leaders, intentionally promoting equity, and setting an organization on a more democratic path to sustainability.
Perhaps most importantly, however, is the need to further a paradigm shift on the entire notion of leadership transitions, working to ensure that the topic is not forbidden, but rather a way to further an organization’s mission. Leadership transitions can be treated as an opportunity to promote and further social change itself. Rather than perceiving transitions as a necessary evil, a setback, a signal of weakness, or a daunting and exhausting undertaking, there is the potential to re-envision the process of transition as an enriching and healthy endeavor.
Transitions in the social sector should not be taboo topics. They should be seen as natural. Inevitable. And yes, even transformational.