Business leadership isn’t a permanent assignment and it’s not eternal. Eventually, the mantle of the leadership is transferred to another person. Resignation, promotion, demotion, retirement and death are situations that require the succession of business leadership. If you have a successful business, it is important that the succession is performed in a proper manner. The profitability and overall growth of the company shouldn’t be hampered by the change of leadership. In fact, the new leader should be similar or preferably better in terms of skills and experience. The leader should be someone who is prepared to deal with challenges when it is required. When you are on the verge of permanent retirement, you should have the peace of mind that the leadership will be given to the proper individual. You will be able to enjoy retirement better. If you don’t have the right leadership, it is possible that your company will slowly crumble to the ground. It is important that you have established a pool of likely successors, at least a decade before the transfer of leadership.
You need to become a mentor for these younger professionals so you will know who will become your likely replacement. When mentoring these young professionals, you need to focus on developing faithfulness, dependability and loyalty. There are characteristics that can help you to get through the thick and thin of the moments. It is important to make sure that the potential successors have inherent characteristics for being faithful and loyal. As a mentor, you should see whether the potential successors don’t focus only on their personal ambitions. A good successor will focus on common goods and have desire the grow the company in a proper way. Mentors should be known as articulate visionaries. So, they need to instruct successors to develop great visions on their own. Loyalty and skill without vision isn’t enough. This condition may actually result in stagnation, because the company isn’t directed in a way to ensure growth. Successors should be told on making their own unique direction and visions for better results.
Mentors should make sure that potential successors are responsible enough. It will be more than a few years before one of these people will take the helm. So, you need to make sure that they can become excellent followers and subordinates. In this situation, you should make sure that the person has a proper level of responsibility. People who have responsibility will carry their tasks to the end. Mentors could test their potential successors by giving them tasks based on their current positions. This is also a good way for us to measure their level of proficiency. You should be able to see whether some of them have ego problem that cause them to reluctant to take small tasks. It is not a good sign if the person focuses on building their ego and trying to fulfil their own agenda. In the end, a good successor is someone who is flexible enough and willing to learn.