Leadership Succession: Have a Programme, Not A Prayer

Engaging members across generations is an essential first step for today’s associations and hospitality organisations—but engagement alone is not enough. The real challenge begins once members are active and invested: how do you encourage them to step forward into leadership roles? Moving volunteers from participation to responsibility does not happen by chance. It requires intention, structure, and a clear pathway. 

In this opinion piece, Mark Levin explores why leadership succession should be planned, not just hoped for, and outlines the key elements of a programme that transforms engaged members into confident and committed leaders.

Author: Mark Levin, Executive Vice President of the Chain Link Fence Manufacturers Institute

In a previous article, we talked about the importance of those of us in leadership roles in the association and hospitality professions being ‘bilingual’ in today’s multigenerational world. One of the values of learning to speak the language of other generations, we noted, was the opportunity to engage a broader range of our members and other stakeholders.

However, the question still remains: once you get them engaged, how do you get them involved? How do you get them to move from being an active member of your organisation to taking that next step and accepting a role as part of the leadership of the organisation? When we speak about leadership, we mean anything from a member of one of your organisation’s committees to an officer position in your organisation (or one of its affiliates/chapters).

The key to developing the future leaders of your organisation is to have a leadership succession programme, not a prayer. You need to move past the old-fashioned technique of issuing a ‘call for volunteers’ (and a prayer someone will respond) to implementing a well-defined programme for attracting future leaders.
 

To Ensure Your Organisation’s Future, You Will Need to be Multilingual

Here is an example of what the five basic elements of that leadership succession programme might be:

1. Proper Recruitment – Do not expect people to rush forward when you announce that nominations are now open for an officer position or that you are seeking members for your committees. You need to have a person (hopefully a member, not a staff person) talk to a person. The current member needs to be prepared to tell the prospective volunteer exactly what they can expect when they take on their first (or next) leadership role. They will want to know what the time commitment will be; exactly what the position entails; and what the outcome will be (how will it help the organisation).
    
2. Effective Orientation/Intake – Once you get someone to commit to a leadership role, be sure there is some follow-up. Be sure there is a thank you note sent from the organisation’s President thanking them for accepting their leadership position. Invite them to watch a short video that gives them an overview of your organisation’s leadership structure, defines roles and responsibilities, and talks about the goals of the organisation for the coming year.
    
3. Customised Training – Regardless of what leadership role a member commits to, they wants to be successful in that role. They may have never been on a finance committee, or chaired an event, or been responsible for hosting a guest speaker at a meeting. In addition to providing a job description, make sure your organisation provides some position-specific training for your leaders. This training may very well help to develop one or more leadership skills that members can transfer to other parts of their personal or professional lives.
   
   

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4. Guided Involvement – Once new leaders have been properly recruited, effectively oriented, and trained to carry out their roles/positions, you need to let them do the job they volunteered for. By giving leaders a specific task and appropriate training, you are setting them up for success, but they still have to follow through with their commitment. Too often we encourage members to take on leadership roles only to have them later feel that they wasted their time, or did not really understand what their role was, etc. That is why we need to be good delegators. If we have recruited properly, oriented carefully, and trained for success, we should have confidence they will do their job well, and get a feeling of achievement and a sense of accomplishment.
    
5. Appropriate Recognition – If your leaders put in the time, and give it their best effort, someone has to ‘pay’ them. Since they are volunteers, you cannot pay them with money. You can pay them with recognition. Saying thank you is important, and the way you say it is also important. Not everyone deserves a plaque or a trophy, but everyone deserves some level of recognition. Social media gives us unlimited opportunities to recognise our leaders. So, do our organisation’s website, newsletters, and events. Forgetting the recognition step may mean losing a key leader who works hard but does not feel appreciated.

A lot of these steps may seem somewhat obvious. The question is, do you have any of these steps identified anywhere in your organisation’s programme of work? Is there a staff person assigned to implement a leadership succession plan? Is there any money for leadership development in your organisation’s budget or strategic plan? If not, maybe it is something you can consider adding.

If someone in your organisation takes a chance and volunteers, then goes through the steps outlined above, they are likely to have successful experience and be ready to take on other leadership positions in your organisation. In addition, they tell their peers that getting involved in leadership was a benefit, not a burden.

That is a great story to have them tell!
 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Levin, CAE, CSP has more than 20 years of experience as an association executive and is also an internationallyknown speaker and consultant to the non-profit and association community. He currently serves as Executive Vice President of the Chain Link Fence Manufacturers Institute, an international trade association, and as President of B.A.I., Inc., his speaking and consulting firm.
 

Published by Meeting Media Company, the publisher of Headquarters Magazine (HQ) – a leading international publication based in Brussels, serving the global MICE industry and association community.