photo credit: marfis75
When you reach that time of moving on to another company or even starting your own business, many people ponder the thought of how to tell their successor as well as the team that work’s directly under them. If you have worked with these people for say 20 year’s, it can be difficult to find the right way to let them know you have to go.
One way that this has been done in the past is to have the successor chosen years in advance, this way they and everybody else knew well ahead of time who would be next in line, which leaves only having to tell your team that your leaving.
Coach your successor on how to handle each of his key stakeholders – individually. Some of them will be thrilled with the news, some of them will be angry, some disappointed, and some hopeful. This is to be expected. Role-play with your successor how he will handle these different reactions, before he talks with each stakeholder.
You can also take the team aside individually yourself and speak with them before your successor does, this will sort of grease the wheels a little and hopefully make it easier when it comes time for your successor to talk with them all individually.