The time between when you have decided to bring in new leadership to your business and when that person starts can be a very critical time. It can take months, or even years, to create a company growth strategy in which a changing of leadership is required for that strategy to succeed. Most CEO’s spent countless hours putting together that strategy to ensure these leadership changes are successful once they come about. Once a search begins to hire new leadership a mind shift can take place within the existing leadership that can be very harmful to the present operation.
Some of these critical issues include:
- Deferring decisions– Waiting to make critical decisions that impact your business now because you believe that a new person will have a better answer
- Ignoring employee issues-Letting a new leader deal with underperforming employees, wrong metrics or even praising of overperformers
- False sense of security– “This person will come in the first day and have all of the correct answers”. The reality is that the current leadership regime has been able to bring success to the company so far and likely can continue making tough decisions along the way, rather than waiting for a savior to come in.
- Self-doubt- Deciding to bring in someone else to help lead the business can sometimes feel like failure. This happens deep in the small voice inside your head which impacts your confidence; this can be seen by your staff and impairs clear thinking.
- Unrealistic Time expectations- Forgetting that a search and onboarding process could take months and to not let that precious time slip away. During this time, you still have clients to service, revenue to build and goals to hit.
So, what can we do to avoid these mistakes while we’re hiring leadership?
- Act Swiftly – Once a decision is made to change or add leadership act swiftly to get the search underway.
- Start your plan…now! Make a conscious decision to either start executing on your new plan that you will continue to implement when your new leaders come in, or ferociously attack your current plan to improve on it.
- Make decisions– They may not always be right, but they must be made. This will keep the morale of your staff high and help to erase your self-doubt.
The decision to bring in new or additional leadership is one that many leaders make. The transitions can be a dangerous time and you must be aware of where the pitfalls. Hope for the best, but do not use this as a strategy.
