A great boss can make your career and change your life. But how do you handle that sudden meeting when your team gets called together and your great boss announces they are leaving?
We often think about leadership in a very individual way. But once you are in a middle to senior level leadership role you are part of a leadership group. Your effectiveness in your role is heavily influenced by your working relationships with your boss and peers. Your confidence to lead your team, contribute to wider leadership and to drive significant change is not grounded just in your own brilliance but in your sense of unity and support with your boss and peers. How do you deal with this big change?
Face your grief to face your future
The first thing to do is allow yourself the time and space to face up to your own reactions to this change. Your reaction can depend on a lot of factors. Some people respond with strong emotions of grief, disbelief and even anger. They assume that all will be lost and that a glorious phase of their career is coming to an end. This may be true. Or it may not be. Either way it’s too early to tell. But if that is your real reaction then it’s vital to face up and acknowledge it. That is what you are feeling. This can sometimes be a challenge. Most organisations are not comfortable with strong emotions and we don’t always know what to do with the deeper human experiences that are going on for us and others. Losing a boss who you admire, who supported you through tough times, who may have been your mentor and advocate is a deep loss. It is not merely a shuffle on the corporate organisational chart. You may choose to pretend to be unmoved on the surface but it’s vital for your own well-being and future that you fully acknowledge and express your loss to at least yourself and most likely to some others that you trust, either in the organisation or outside the organisation. Some of the questions that can plague us through this experience can be:
- How can they (the leader) do this to us?
- Why is this happening? Did they get fired?
- How will the organisation strategy and culture survive this change?
- Who will I get next?
- Will they be as good?
Why is acknowledging your feelings important? If you don’t, you run the big risk of getting stuck in an organisational time warp. This is where your loyalties and energy are trapped in an earlier era of the organisation. If you are not aware your career can actually stall. You end up being that person who always talks about how great the ‘good old days were’ and how the new strategies, style and culture are destroying something wonderful. Bitterness can take root in your being. You go from being an engaging and effective leader to a backward looking, bitter member of the ‘old guard’. Like any loss, taking the time to grieve fully and properly is the best way to have the energy and will to move into the next phase.
Support your new boss
As you acknowledge and allow yourself to experience your emotional response to the loss of your great leader, there comes a time to prepare for the arrival of your new leader. Give yourself, your team and your organisation the best chance of success by doing all you can to support the arrival and success of your new boss. It’s natural to focus on yourself. But do all you can to shift your attention to how you can best support your new leader to get fully up and running in their new role as soon as possible. Here are some approaches I have seen people develop in their coaching programs with me:
- Be clear on the what’s important for the organisation right now (make sure it’s not just a projection of what you like and want)
- What can you do to ensure the new leader’s success?
- How and what will you communicate about the arrival of your new boss to your own teams and leaders? Formally but also informally. This is where the work you have done on facing and clearing your own emotional response is essential. It will reduce the chance of you leaking emotions and, in the process, sowing discontent and anxiety.
- What will be most important for your new leader to understand and do in the first three months?
Know what’s important to you
And it is also about you. You don’t know how this new world will work out. To grow through this experience, it’s essential to get clear on your important professional and personal anchor points. Some things to think about include:
- What are the highest priorities in my life at the moment?
- What really matters to me in this role? In my professional working life? For my future?
- What is my high value contribution to this role and organisation through this time?
- What are my real non-negotiable requirements through this transition?
With significant professional changes perspective is vital. Focus on what really matters rather than assuming that your deepest needs and goals can only be met through how things were. Change can bring loss. Change can also bring opportunity and growth.
Stay or go?
Okay, so you have made the best contribution you can to the success of your new boss. You have genuinely faced up to and experienced the emotions associated with your great boss moving on. You are really clear on what matters to you now. Then you are in the best position to make the big call; whether to stay or whether to go. It can be worth giving the new leader and yourself some time to see how it goes. Healthy acknowledgement of your own experience of this change can actually see you transition to a new working world. This world may well be an opportunity for growth in your current organisation. But sometimes, the new boss and the new direction may just not be your thing. It may take a bigger break to be able to move on. Then it may be time to go. The sooner you can face this and own the decision the better for you, your team and your organisation.
