The Shift from Entrepreneur to a Leadership Team – Organisations’ Best Kept Secret!

If you track the rise and fall of organisations there is one key transition which gets little attention but whose impact can at best stifle and at worst undermine an organisation. It is the transition from the style of leadership that invents, creates, launches and pioneers a new organisation or process or system (often located in one or two entrepreneurial individuals) – to the need to create a leadership team who can both stabilise and capitalise on the initial growth.

The problem is that while many organisations can focus on the ‘hard’ issues of this transition, the process is often severely hampered because little or no attention is paid to the huge undercurrents of the emotional and psychological processes of shifting the power base of the company.

Some of the Key Issues Faced in this Transition are:

• Creating a strategic view which honours the past while planning for the future
• The emotional shift of power from ‘my baby’ to ‘our baby’
• The loss of role and identity for the entrepreneurs
• Allowing the goal to remain the same while the style and appearance of leadership may change
• How people influence one another during key transitions
• The process of creating ‘enhanced’ verses ‘impaired’ working teams
• Dealing with leadership vacuums and the emergence of secondary or competitive leaders and power bases
• Managing the tension between holding on and letting go
• Clear objectives which allow personal style differences to emerge
• Developing a high-trust culture in the leadership team
• Retaining buy-in and keeping everyone on board with the changes

A process of facilitation and coaching which may include:-

• Interviews with each member of the team leadership team (including the ‘entrepreneur’)
• Creating a report for discussion
• Coaching the team in agreeing its development agenda
• Coaching or facilitating the team through its agreed agenda

• One-to-One Coaching on making the transition