3 Tips for Leadership Transitions and Staff Turnover
Maybe you feel like everyone is leaving their job. It has taken up large amounts of screen time and page space in the news. People are leaving their jobs or were laid off and decided to never return. This makes it a perfect time to discuss leadership transition. Whether the transition is expected or unexpected, your organization can be prepared to handle to shake up without suffering setbacks. Without a doubt, quality leadership and staff leadership are key components of nonprofit strategy. We are going to take a look at best practices from the perspective of a staff member and as an organization. Let’s take a look.
Think Ahead
Turnover in your organization is bound to happen, so don’t wait until it does. As an organization, prepare for leadership transitions by planning for how to handle a leader leaving and how to onboard a new one. Your departing leader might not be able to help train their replacement, but you can document their responsibilities and best practices. Having a manual to give to the staff member in any role is helpful to the organization and the new team member.
As a staff member, the more notice you can give to your organization the better it can prepare for the transition. People move on for many reasons. Whether it is a new opportunity or just time to retire, giving your organization proper notice and lending your expertise to build out the transition plan sets the organization up for success. Think about what information and skills were critical to your role and be sure to pass on that knowledge. Remember that you will be on the incoming end of a transition at your new organization, so think about what you want to get out of that transition and work to help whoever fills your role.
Don’t Limit Yourself
Many nonprofit organizations place heavy emphasis on nonprofit experience. We won’t deny that this is important, but it often eliminates for-profit leaders from your selection pool. Technical skills specific to the nonprofit space can be taught and many for-profit skills will be impactful in the nonprofit sector particularly when in a leadership capacity. If your organization wants to open itself up to the best and broadest pool of candidates, don’t overlook leaders leaving the for-profit sector. For-profit leaders that are innovative, driven, socially skilled, and excellent communicators will make high-quality nonprofit leaders once transitioned. Further, take this as an opportunity to reflect on your own organization and leadership. Are you concerned that a for-profit leader won’t fit into your structure? Is that because of the differences of the nonprofit sector or is it because your organization lacks the innovative, advancement-focused, and clearly defined structure that for-profit organizations must have in order to succeed. This could be an opportunity to improve your organization and attract quality leadership talent at the same time.
Don’t Forget What’s Yours
It is easy to focus on the incoming when facing a leadership transition. Training, onboarding with tech, and general adjustment to leadership/team tactics. It is critical to remember that someone is leaving too. Be sure to control your organization’s information, specifically email, logins, and data. If these things seem hard to control then this should serve as a wake-up call to secure your information and network. Have staff document logins, passwords, and URLs in order to prevent a scramble to figure them out when the new team member arrives. This will save the departing team member time and hassle of being asked to recall every single login and will help onboard the new team member quickly and efficiently. One of the often-overlooked aspects of technology when transitioning is email. Many organizations don’t provide a clear technology policy (hint: you should if you are not) and some employees don’t want to relinquish their email. Nevertheless, emails are company property.
These are just a couple of tips for nonprofits facing transitions. Every transition faces its own challenges, but the important thing is to plan. Don’t get caught unprepared and attempt to attract quality leadership talent or lead a new hire through a messy onboarding process. The better the transition, the quicker your newest team member can start contributing to the organization.
At NMBL, we have decades of experience leading nonprofit organizations. We have transitioned personally and overseen transitions. We apply these experienced-based insights when helping nonprofits craft leadership transition plans and leadership development. Learn more about how we can help develop all aspects of your nonprofit’s leadership today.
