execute the handoff before the seat is empty?
She brought other women with her.
…that is a story you don’t see much in Women’s Leadership. Now a very powerful senior vice president and CIO, Deb had decided to step aside for her family. You see that headline… and often the truth is different. But in this case, it was… and to harken back to last week, she had been actively developing a successor. So when she stepped away from corporate work, not only did the seat not go empty, nobody had to scramble. And, it went to Ronda, the woman she had been preparing to execute.
If you stepped away Monday, who would your boss call… and does she know it is her?
5 women, 5 parts, and nobody soloing
The Go-Go’s ran on 5 distinct roles. Belinda out front. Jane writing. Charlotte composing and arranging. Kathy on bass. Gina on drums. They voted on decisions and shared the credit, in an industry built for 1 star and a backing band, where the usual all-female group was assembled and run by men. Their punk roots left them no choice but to rely on each other. Beauty and the Beat sold over 2 million copies and held number 1 for 6 weeks. And Charlotte and Jane wrote Turn to You, a single off Talk Show in June 1984 that went to 32. By then every one of them knew who to turn to for what.
execute as a band… Nobody over-controlled. Nobody did all the work. The results were repeatable because they did not depend on 1 person having a good night, and the women who wrote the songs handed them to the woman who sang them.
Nobody plays all 5 parts.
…and to execute is to not travel alone
The Signpost for execute is the leader who gets the work that matters done well. Tracks the numbers so the results can be told, delivered, improved and repeated. Keeps an eye on the bottom line. The Roadblock over-controls and meddles, does too much of the work alone, and ends up with weak followers who never got the chance to be anything else. It travels alone.
Succession is a sponsor spending her name
Women with a sponsor are promoted at 1.7 times the rate of women without one. And fewer than 1 in 4 companies run any formal sponsorship program, so most of it happens the way Deb did it… 1 leader deciding who is next, and saying so early. The bench is where you execute, not the dashboard.
And it pays the sponsor too. Women who sponsor report more satisfaction with their own advancement than women who do not, 60% against 53%, and the men show the same lift. The real lever is the stepping-stone assignment, the big visible job that leads to the next one. A sponsor gets her into it. A mentor tells her it exists.
And the gap never fully closes, even near the top. At vice president and above, 66% of women have a sponsor, against 72% of men. The seat Deb handed on sits right in that gap. Sponsorship is a range, not a switch… a mention in the right meeting, a stretch job, and finally the seat.
empowering a successor is the only result that keeps executing long after you leave.
The seat did not go empty
I sponsored Deb. Deb sponsored Ronda. It can work that way, and it almost never does, because the person at the top is usually too busy doing the work to hand it on. Deb executed the last part of her job as well as she did the first.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: write down the name of the woman who could do your job. Then send your boss 1 email this week that says so. That email is what empowering a successor costs you.
Helping leaders execute the handoff while there is still time to do it well is work I never get tired of. Schedule time with me here.
When Deb stepped away, the whole team already knew who to… Turn to You
