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When your year as an officer/organizer/etc. of your group begins to come to an end, and new officers are selected, how do you leave your position? How do you ensure that the new officers are as ready as they can be to continue to provide your organization with strong leadership?
A THOROUGH OFFICER TRANSITION PLAN HAS SERVERAL BENEFITS:
- Provides for transfer of significant organizational knowledge.
- Minimizes the confusion of leadership change.
- Gives outgoing officers a sense of closure.
- Utilizes the valuable contributions of experienced leaders.
- Helps incoming officers take with them some of the special expertise of the outgoing officers.
- Increases the knowledge and confidence of the new leadership.
- Minimizes the loss of momentum and accomplishments for the group.
WHEN DO YOU START?
- Begin early in the year to identify emerging leaders.
- Encourage these potential leaders through personal contact. Help in developing skills, delegating responsibility to them, sharing with them the personal benefits or leadership, clarifying job responsibilities, letting them know that transition will be orderly and thorough, and last, modeling an open, encouraging leadership style.
- When new officers have been elected, bring them together as a group with all of the outgoing officers. This process provides the new officers with opportunity to understand each other’s roles and to start building their leadership team.
- Be sure to transfer the knowledge and information necessary for them to function well. An organization history and flowchart might be helpful.
WHAT TO TRANSFER:
- Reports about traditions, ideas, projects, and continuing projects and concerns or ideas that were never carried out.
- Leave behind files you won’t really need, but think might be helpful to the new people.
- Leave things organized; stuff in desk drawers in piles might be more hindering than helpful. •Leave: constitution, goals and objectives for the last year, job descriptions, status reports for on-going things, evaluations for projects completed, previous minutes, financial records, mailing lists, etc.
Information adapted from Occidental College-Office of Student Life
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