Effectively pass your knowledge and experience on to future leaders!

“[An] effective leadership transition is the process by which past and future student leaders in an organization work together to review and learn from previous events and programs and prepare for the upcoming year.”  -Adrienne M. Craig

The transition from old to new leaders is vital to an organization’s success.  Leadership transitions allow members to reflect on the past and plan for the future.   Chloe Chavez, a former Vice President of the Hispanic Business Student Association (HBSA) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) had a very positive experience:

At the end of each school year our current officers hold a transitional meeting to brief incoming officers on the success and debacle of that year’s events, the most attention would center around the largest events that consistently brought in the most revenue and/or provided the most benefit for our members.  Our leadership transitions run especially smooth because our leaders create soft copies of important files such as event planning that future leaders may use as a How To Guide; this gives them a head start for the upcoming year. Efficient transitions enable the professional progression of our organization, officers and members.

Chloe’s situation is definitely the exception.  Other organizations lack a systematic way of transitioning new leaders into their organization.  Some new officers are even left with the responsibility of contacting a past officer, sometimes even after they’ve graduated, to gain needed event or contact information.  Some have no luck and have to start their planning from scratch.

In this situation, this leader’s valuable experience of what works and what does not work is no longer existent; the organization can no longer benefit from this leaders hard work and will have to, basically, reinvent the wheel over and over again until an effective leader transition system is implemented.  Sadly this is a problem for many organizations.

So how can organizations avoid this dilemma? Adrienne M. Craig, director of Student Activities at Johnson & Wales University-Florida, in an issue of Campus Activities Programming by NACA (May ’09) gives a few tips for effective student leader transitions:

1. Plan a retreat. Allow leaders to focus on having a successful year for their organization.
2. Create a map of the organization’s journey. Reflect on the past, in order to plan for the future and maintain traditions.
3. Be honest about the past and realistic about the future. Discuss and assess past events that way past mistakes will not be repeated.
4. Take time to learn your available resources. Whether they may me past food deals or other resources from staff.

What tips would you give students who are transitioning into a student leader position?