Leading at Light Speed is a powerful leadership book for businesses, public agencies, and nonprofits revealing the 10 specific ways an organization must act and behave to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization.
The Succession Paradox is a concept in Leading at Light Speed described in Chapter 9 along with three other Leadership Paradoxes. Buy the book to read about the other three.
It has been said that a true leader always plans well for his or her own departure. If the organization is well-stocked with capable successors, you have done your job. If the organization is left foundering, you’ve failed. The question isn’t whether you have a succession plan. It is how able you are to surround yourself with people you believe to be capable of stepping up and taking over. And therein lies the paradox.
Some of the seemingly most successful leaders fail to find the path through this paradox. They can’t handle the challenge of surrounding themselves with people who are ready to take their jobs. Again and again, we see examples of leaders failing to deal with the succession paradox.
On the other hand, we also see great success stories. At one of our client companies, the CEO surrounded herself with a senior staff of highly capable leaders. Her board of directors knew that they could count on a bank of worthy successors should anything ever happen to her. At another, the CEO of a construction company made a conscious choice to confront this paradox. He held an off-site meeting devoted exclusively to planning the next wave of leaders in the firm. Together with his management team, they identified the selection criteria, evaluated the candidates, and then changed the management structure to give three colleagues the opportunity to buy into the firm.
Cutting through the succession paradox is easy once you let go of the notion of your own indispensability. It’s another fear you have to overcome – a fear of the unknown. This step is not easily done by all, but it must be accomplished if a high performing organization is to be maintained.
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