Succession is about trust and letting go

In my family we like to make home made pizzas in a small portable oven

I always used to prepare the dough and the sauce in advance, Paulina rolled out the dough and added the topping and I cooked the pizzas and kept the oven topped up with pellets.

Basically eating pizza while making it and only getting to sit down at the table for the last one!

Until one day Paulina had the pizza ready on the peel to cook but I was still in the shower. I told my son he needed to cook it otherwise the pizza would stick to the peel.

There was some trepidation at first about breaking or burning it but it worked just fine and then he wanted to do all of them and so I came down from the shower and was able to sit at the table and relax and enjoy the pizzas for the first time.

Now he wants to cook the pizzas all the time and guess what? I want to do pizzas more often!

It got me thinking about succession. How many leaders in organisations are overlooking the potential of their more junior employees because they don't trust them? Be it leading a call with a client or whatever, it's worth letting go sometimes and you may not only be surprised, it may also take some load off your plate and allow you to do your main job as a manager - to coach and mentor your staff. And its great for succession as you won't be around forever!

Of course participants have to be willing, the challenge not too anxiety inducing and the impact of mistakes not mission critical. Imagine a boat - its OK to pierce the hull above the waterline, that can be repaired in port.

What have you recently offloaded and been surprised at how your understudy has stepped up to the plate and even done a better job than you?

This post was written by Mark A King. You can follow him here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkingbravo/