Transcript: 5 Keys to Successful Leadership Transitions // Steve Woodworth, Masterworks

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“5 Keys to Successful Leadership Transitions“

April 29, 2024

Steve Woodworth

Intro: What's the difference between a successful leadership transition and a disastrous one? How can the board, CEO, and other senior leaders prepare for leadership transition? Well, today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we'll look at leadership succession and how to prepare for inevitable changes. Listen in for practical steps that you can implement in your organization as I talk with my guest, Steve Woodworth.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the book Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being. And I'm passionate about helping Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces.

Well, I’m delighted to welcome Steve Woodworth to our podcast today. Steve is the CEO of Masterworks, a marketing agency dedicated to supporting Christian organization. He's also author of the book Lost in Transition: Lessons from the Most Disastrous & Successful Ministry Successions.

Throughout our podcast, you'll hear Steve talk about five keys to a successful transition; also, the importance of culture in the transition process, the role of boards in transitions, and the importance of open, honest communication throughout the entire process.

I think you're going to love this interview with Steve Woodworth. But before we dive in, this episode is brought to you by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey, and you can sign up today to discover the health of your organization's culture. Now is a wonderful time to listen to your employees with our easy-to-administer online Engagement Survey by going to workplaces.org. Being a certified best Christian workplace improves your ability to attract more productive, talented employees and keeping them longer.

And hello to our new listeners. Thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this.

Let me tell you a little bit more about Steve Woodworth. Steve has more than 40 years of experience advancing Christian organizations. He served at World Vision for more than a decade, overseeing annual double-digit growth in their marketing- and donor-services area. He's been at Masterworks since 1992. Masterworks is a premier marketing agency dedicated to aiding Christian organizations and advancing their mission. He also serves as a volunteer on nonprofit boards. Steve leads the Communication Working Group for the Lausanne Movement. Steve is the author of Lost in Transition:—the book we’re going to talk about today—Lessons from the Most Disastrous & Successful Ministry Successions. Along with the wisdom gained from many organizational transitions, Steve shares his own succession process at Masterworks, where he's identified and mentored Bryan Brown for his leadership potential. Eventually, Bryan transitioned into the role of president to oversee day-to-day operations as Steve transitioned to the CEO role.

So, here's my conversation with Steve Woodworth.

Steve, it’s great to have you back on the podcast. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today, particularly about this topic.

Steve Woodworth: Thank you, Al. I enjoyed, last year, talking to you. Really enjoyed your interview style, and looking forward to this.

Al: Yeah. Well, Steve, in your recent book, Lost in Transition—and I oftentimes want to say “lost in translation,” but no, it's lost in transition. And oftentimes organizations do get lost in transition. But you describe the different leadership-succession scenarios. And some have great outcomes; some were terrible. You also highlight important principles to guide positive leadership transition.

But before we get into some of the practices that you've uncovered, let's talk about the inevitability of transition. You say that every leader is an interim leader, and I've heard that and believe that. But why should a top leader, even a president or a CEO, start thinking about succession, maybe in the beginning or even at the middle of their tenure in that role?

Steve: Well, yeah, Al, as you know, I mean, we're all on this earth for a limited time, and it doesn't seem like that some days until something happens that shocks you, from a diagnosis. And I remember hearing John Piper say that people would ask him how he was doing, and he always said fine or great or whatever. And then one day that happened. And, Al, a couple hours later, he got a phone call saying that he had prostate cancer. And so now he says, “As far as I know, I'm doing fine,” things like that.

Al: Yeah.

Steve: So I've been in my position for 31 years. I know you were in yours for a long time too, and when you're in the middle of it, it doesn't seem like there's ever going to be an end to it. Most people don't really think about it. But you look back at the greatest leaders in the Bible, like Joseph and Moses and David, and they had a long chance to serve the Lord, but in the scope of history, it's just a small sliver of time. And so they were a part of God's plan, but that was for a time. And God looks across hundreds of generations to fulfill His plan for us and for the world. And we're just stewards of whatever we have, our gifts, and of the time that we have. So we should always be thinking and planning with a view to, what does God want me to do with what I have right now, and the time and the situation we're in? And how do I build it so that when I leave it, it flourishes? So that what I build, the people I hire in, you know, absorb the values, absorb the core principles, you've done this, you've gone through your own succession, and I know you've thought long and hard about it, and I've heard it's going really well. So you’ve got to be very deliberate. And it’s really a multi-year process to do it right so that it does flourish in the next generation.

Al: And it does take longer than you might think, for sure. I think for a successful one, as you say, Steve. Yeah. And throughout your years of working with other organizations, you've seen a lot of transitions. And as you've reflected on this topic in the book, you've identified five transition truths that can make or break a succession process. And I'm anxious for our listeners to hear what they are. I think they make a lot of sense. Why don't you lay out these five keys, and why do they matter?

Steve: Okay. I'll just keep going all through all five, and you stop me if you want me to talk more about one or—

Al: Yeah.

Steve: —you can loop back if you want me to, after I've gone through all five. Either way.

First of all, boards don't know enough to choose a leader on their own. For a board of directors, they know that this is their single most-important responsibility: choosing the CEO of an organization. So I think there's almost an implicit assumption there on the part of board members and board chairs then, that because it's our most important job, we need to know how to do it. We should know how to do it. We don't want to admit that we're nervous about whether we're going to be able to do it, and they just don't know enough. They spend five days a year maybe on thinking about an organization, and the senior staff spends 365 days a year thinking about it. Because if you're in a C-suite kind of position in an organization, you're thinking about it even when you're on vacation.

And so my position is that, and I've seen this, and I tell stories where boards have gone horribly wrong in choosing a leader. They've either chose the wrong one or they've done it in a vacuum without enough information. And one of my core contentions in the book, and I tell stories that have done it right, is that the person who really knows the job the best is a current CEO. So unless that person is failing, they should be involved in the process. They should help write the job description. They should help interview the final candidates. They should be allowed to express their opinion on what's needed and who's the right fit. And I tell some stories where that happened, and it worked out extremely well. And I tell some horror stories, like a board that chose a successor and the guy didn't even know that the board was looking for somebody, and he’s suddenly told, “Your tenure is over, and we have your successor,” and he's still mad about it. So that's a first one.

The second one is the culture fit is crucial, and you're all about culture, and so you probably know more about that than I do, and you probably have more stories, good and bad, about that than I do. But I feel that when successions fail, often it is because there isn't a good culture fit, and the best way to have a good culture fit is to hire from within. And so I'm a strong believer. I've asked many people what they believe the success rate is in Christian organizations and churches, and everybody comes out with about 50%. That's sort of like the guess that everybody I've talked to says. And yet, as I've looked at it, as I really got deeper into it and interviewed a lot of people for the book, I came to the conclusion that's probably because an internal succession success rate’s probably 80%, and an external succession success rate’s probably 30%. When you hire a person and you groom them, or you have somebody already in your organization that you groom over time or multiple people and wait to see who emerges, you know they fit the culture and you know where their strengths and weaknesses are. And so that's a strong argument. I think the culture fit is a strong argument for thinking well ahead, finding that person, and helping groom them for the job.

Al: Yeah. I've seen over and over, Steve, a new leader comes in, they’re there for a year and a half. And the reality is that the flags start going up sooner. But then by the time a year and a half, two years goes by, you know, then you're making another change because the culture, there wasn't a good culture fit. I mean, the cost of the organization is just significant. No question about it. That's a huge issue. Yeah. Culture fit. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. That's a good point too, that it takes time to figure out when you don't have a good culture fit if there's a new person that you don't even know.

Al: Yeah. So I like that. Hire from within whenever possible. Yeah. What's the third one, Steve?

Steve: The third one is about respecting the outgoing leader. The outgoing leader, if they've been successful at their job, they have deep relationships with key constituents throughout the organization or church members and respect of the church, if they're a pastor. And I've seen that so often the outgoing leader feels disrespected in the process, either because the board doesn't keep them informed or doesn't want their input, or sometimes an incoming leader can show disrespect and have an attitude of “It's my day now. I don't need you. Get out of the way. You’re just going to slow me down. I know what I want to change.” And for whatever reason, when an outgoing leader is disrespected, there's also an emotional component, Al, that I found from talking to people who had felt disrespected. Two men in their 70s, in my interviews with people, talked about how badly they were treated by their board. In one case a board, in one case a younger leader who was coming in and was not respectful. And two grown men choked up telling me their stories. This is years after the thing happened, and they're mature Christians. They've forgiven. They didn't try to tear the organization down, but they were so hurt that they still carry pain, and they won't have anything to do with the organization. And I believe that a lot of times when significant donors don't continue to give, it's because they don't get an enthusiastic endorsement from the outgoing leader that this organization is going to see its best days ahead, and you should continue to support it. And they take the new leader around to meet the donors. You know, in a good succession, you have this goodwill. You may have an emeritus role that's formal or it may be just informal, but that goodwill carrying on for the long term after the succession is really important. And that's where organizations can lose a large chunk of their income. And the worst case I've seen, the organization lost 50% of its income because they was just a total falling out between the outgoing leader in the organization.

Al: Must be something to that commitment. Honor your father and mother in that regard. And that's almost—

Steve: Yeah, could be.

Al: It makes me think about it. But yeah, honoring the past, as a great transition process. Yeah. Wow. So, respecting the outgoing leader. Yeah.

Then, the next one. What’s that?

Steve: Well, the next one probably seems kind of obvious, but humility is required on everyone's part. And I think people often forget this. They don't check their heart. They maybe even start well, but they get into the process and they don't keep that humble attitude. Or the outgoing leader, I've had several outgoing leaders tell me stories that are just kind of funny, like they start to, well, it's such an emotionally charged time in a person's life. I don't know if it's the same for women. I talked to some younger women that were coming in as CEOs. I didn't talk to any that were transitioning out. But for a man, your identity is tied up with this position. If you've led an organization, it's who you are. You know, when people ask you what you do, you tell them, “I lead this organization.”

And I'm going through this myself. I've chosen my successor. We're in process right now, and I find myself—I’ll just speak about myself for a minute—I find myself sometimes thinking, “Why didn't Bryan include me in that meeting?” or “What's Bryan thinking about that? And doesn't he want my opinion?” And, well, I have strong opinions about that. And so I just try to keep humble about it. I try to keep telling myself it's not my thing; it's God's thing. And I want to do this right. And I don't want to alienate Bryan. So I'll go to him, try to keep very short accounts. That's the next point, the last, final point I'll come back to is communication. But everybody having a humble attitude. And every time I come to Bryan and tell him I'm feeling, I literally quote him and tell him, “I'm feeling insecure. Like, you're taking on so much so fast. I'm concerned you're going to come to me before I really want to go and say, ‘I don't need you anymore. I can't afford you,’ and I don't have any plans for anything else right now. I'm looking at this being a multi-year thing,” and he always reassures me, “I don't see a day when you're not wanted around here, so don't worry about it. You know, we're friends too. You've given me a real gift by helping bring me into this position.” And so that humility on everybody's part just has to be—it's not a natural thing to be humble every day, day in and day out. So you just got to keep checking your heart.

Al: I think of a story where a new CEO or, in this case, is a president coming in. And the outgoing president said, “Well, I'd love to have you come in, and let's work together for a period of time to make sure this transition goes smoothly.” And the new president said, “I'm not really interested in that at all. I'm just going to come in, and I know what I want to do.” And there was, you know, no transition. And I think humility had a big part of that. So that's great, number four, humility. Yeah.

And then the last one, Steve?

Steve: Last one is communication, as I started to mention. It's like the oil that makes the engine work. Just constant, open, honest, consistent communication between the board and the senior staff, between the CEO and the staff, the CEO and the board, the incoming leader and the outgoing leader. The overlap time. If you're bringing in somebody from the outside and you don't know them well—this is what I did with Bryan—he had been on our staff, two levels down, and I started to think he had something special. I wanted him reporting directly to me. He was a hard-driving business guy, and I wanted to kind of work with him to see if I could soften that, see if I can help him develop a more relational management style, which is deep-held value for me. And so we just talked about—we spent a whole day together one day just talking about values and how they play out in the role of running the organization. We spent a couple other half days together just to get off of the agenda of the urgent, you know, what decisions need to be made and what do we think about this? What do you think about that? But to talk about our values and what I saw in his leadership and things that I would like to see him work on that would make him a better CEO. And he's been just wide open to it. In fact, there was one thing that he had a tendency to do to verbal process with his team. And oftentimes when the thoughts and direction wasn't very well formed in his mind, it would freak people out. And I told him, you know, “A CEO needs to have, like, maybe one confidant that they can run by their kind of crazy ideas, and that person learns not to freak out, but just to share what they really think, and then let you go away and process it.” And he had a real hard time doing that. And after a few times of me telling him, “You did it again,” I said, you know, “I'll stop telling you. Maybe we need to adapt to you. Maybe you can't change that about yourself.” And he said, “No. I want you to keep calling me on it every single time I do it.” And you know what? He doesn't do it anymore. It's been a couple of years now, and he doesn't do it anymore.

Al: Yeah. Extroverted processors and CEO roles, I've run into that many times, and that just freaks out the leadership team or the organization. “I thought we were doing this, and now you're talking about doing that? But we haven't finished doing this.” So yeah, that's a great example. Communication. Open, honest, and have it continue, and have it scheduled I think is another thing that you're talking about to really focus on it.

Well, let's go back, Steve, to the culture piece. I love that. As you know, we're all about helping Christian ministries, churches, Christian-led businesses grow flourishing workplace cultures. And you mentioned that if an organization has a healthy culture, it should focus on promoting from within. And I'll have to say I agree with that. And it's hard. I found it's hard in particularly smaller Christian ministries because they don't often have the bench strength to promote from within, but flesh out the importance of culture and mentoring internal candidates. You've already mentioned in your example when you pick somebody in your organization, but if an organization doesn't have a healthy culture, should they automatically look outside? Or, you know, we found that unhealthy organizations don't always realize the degree of their problems. Now what are your thoughts?

Steve: Well, I think culture surveys are very helpful. If you have tension in your culture, I think most people kind of know that. You know, they realize there's employee turnover. There's lack of engagement and so forth. If you have things like that going on in your organization, you should definitely do a culture survey like the one you guys do, the Best Christian Workplaces. And I think it's healthy to do that anyway every few years. Even if you think you're culture is strong, it's still helpful to get an outside reading on that.

And if there are culture problems, then no, I don't think you should automatically look outside. I think if the CEO is failing, so they're the cause of a, like I say, let’s say a toxic culture—person has an anger problem or something like that—as a CEO, there's still probably people on the senior staff who know exactly what's wrong and who know how to fix it and who want to fix it. And those people should still be consulted and be involved. And if you really are having a CEO that is failing at the job, then you may have to go outside, and then you should use an external recruiter. But you should still, I believe, involve the senior staff in the process, and you should still look hard for internal candidates, and only as a last resort should you go outside.

There's kind of an axiom in successions in Christian organizations, Al, and I found that it's true for churches, too, that you shouldn't ever hire a person internally without doing a nationwide search to make sure you have the right person. I don't even agree with that. There was just a succession in Prison Fellowship where Heather Rice-Minus took over for James Ackerman, and James had been grooming her for years, and he was not in a hurry to leave. So he told the board about two years before he was intending to leave, that he was putting Heather forward as the candidate that he was grooming. And the board chair started to build a relationship with her too. And he was an executive coach. And so he took her on as a person that he was coaching. And they got to the point where Heather is just so smart, and she's been at the organization for a long time—she was in charge of their advocacy, helped pass the prison-reform bill a few years ago with bipartisan support—and the board decided to take a vote first on, do we even need to do a nationwide search? And they voted no. We don't need to do a nationwide search. Heather's the candidate. So that is going really well. She's just a few months into it, but she's just doing a great job.

Al: Yeah, that's a great example, Steve. I remember in my corporate career, I'd see these successions of these organizations go so smoothly from one generation of CEO to the next, and they were all internal candidates, and they fit the organization, and the success was evident. They didn't skip a beat. And we've just seen so many examples in Christian ministries where it's a huge issue, and the ministries then have difficulties continuing on. So yeah, that's a great example. And you know, I've heard CEOs of large ministries say, “Well, yeah, we had a couple of strong internal candidates, but we did hire an outside search person,” because they wanted to communicate the confidence that the person was the right person even though they looked outside. So yeah, I appreciate your perspective on that. If it's done right and you don't have to do that. Yeah, great.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: Welcome back to my conversation with Steve Woodworth.

So, it's the board who is ultimately responsible for hiring a CEO. But sometimes board members aren't fully aware of the needs of the organization or the day-to-day responsibility of the CEO or the senior leaders. So how does an effective board prepare for a CEO transition? I mean, you've just given an example, for example. But what are the common pitfalls that you see in a board in how it handles the succession process? What kind of interaction does the board need with both the outgoing CEO and the incoming CEO as a result of a successful transition?

Steve: Well, I think the most common pitfall is, as I mentioned a little bit ago, that the board thinks they know how to pick a CEO, or that they should, and so they act as though they do, and in reality, they need all the help they can get. One CEO that I interviewed, the very first thing, before I outlined any of the principles, said, “Well, first of all, boards are clueless.” And I started laughing, and I said, “Okay, you ticked off one of my five checkmarks here.” He said, “I told my board that you only know what I want you to know and what I tell you. I'm the filter for all truth that comes to you.” So they need to get to know the senior staff, and the CEO needs to pull back the curtain and allow for that.

Normally, a board shouldn't be interfering with the senior staff. We’ve both seen situations where the board gets too involved in operational issues or, you know, a person who knows marketing is telling the marketing person what they should be doing when the board really should be staying out of operations and going through the CEO. But by the time you're in a succession, the communication amongst all the parties becomes so important that it's important for there to be some direct conversations with the HR person, with all the senior leaders. And I think that more than anything else, the board should be talking to the outgoing CEO, if they have been successful, and they should be encouraging the outgoing CEO to stay involved in the process with them. And in the best successions I've seen, the outgoing CEO even gets to interview the final candidates. And if there are external and internal candidates, gets to advocate for their internal candidate, if they really believe that person is the best. And ideally, there should be years of mentoring so that the board gets a chance to see that successor in action. And increasingly, the outgoing CEO, as I just mentioned about James and Heather at Prison Fellowship, James let Heather run a board meeting by herself before she was fully in charge and coach her on how to do it in a way that will help bond her with the board. And that board said afterwards it was one of the best meetings they’d ever had. So yeah, everybody working together and open, honest communication.

Al: Yeah. Well, those are great examples, Steve, yeah. You just described an example of development. You give the person a chance to do something, to step into a new role or responsibility, not when they're fully in charge, but as they're growing into the role. That’s great. Yeah.

Well, healthy communication is one of our eight attributes for a flourishing workplace culture here at the Best Christian Workplaces. And you also cite the importance of communication and facilitating a strong transition process. So communication is number five of your five keys here. Give us some examples of what healthy communication looks like in a succession process. What are some of the pitfalls that you've seen, or where have you seen communication even break down?

Steve: Well, boards often seem to think that the process should be secretive, that they should do this, you know, themselves behind closed doors, and that just breeds insecurity on the part of the staff and the CEO. I've seen cases, I tell a couple stories in the book where the board found somebody they thought was the right person, and they sped up the timetable, and that really hurt the outgoing leader because they thought they had an agreement on the timing, and they were being very collaborative. And then the board decides, hey, why wait? Let's move this up by six months and lost all the goodwill of that leader, that multiple donors that gave $1 million a year quit giving because that leader was not enthusiastic. And they were not disparaging the organization; they were just giving lukewarm responses when asked about the organization and the worthiness of support.

So healthy is the board listens to the senior staff. The board involves everybody. There's open discussion. In an internal succession, the outgoing CEO communicates far more than just being a boss. Like I described about my conversation with Bryan. It's not about just, here's your goals. You know, here's what I'd like to see you accomplish. Here's what I think you should work on. It's how are you as a leader developing, and it's helping them develop into the leader they need to be.

As you know, Al, being a CEO is a totally different kind of job than any other job in an organization. It's a very lonely job, and it's a job with a lot of pitfalls. And when I say lonely, I don't mean lonely in the sense that I wish I had more friends. I mean, just nobody really understands the pressure that you feel, and you can't share that openly. And so there's a whole experience of being a CEO that somebody that aspires to the job doesn't understand the hard parts of it. And to be able to be coached in those things so that when you get there you're ready for that is a huge gift that an outgoing CEO can give to a younger person.

The worst break downs I've seen are the outgoing leader becoming insecure and feeling disrespected. And I saw that happen over and over again in my career. And I tell several stories of that in the book that are true stories. In those cases, we disguise the organization just so as not to hurt the organizations, because we didn't want to do that.

Al: It is interesting, Steve, how somewhere this theory came out that we want to be secretive; you know, that's going to be best for all; and then when the announcement is made, it's made; and we're done. And you're really suggesting something that I feel very strongly about, that needs to be a collaborative process. The time frame needs to be communicated. It needs to be a transparent process. You need to work out ways of even, well, I believe in having the senior team even involved in the interview process so that they know who the candidates are because they're able to read, I think you would agree, they're able to read, well, which one of these candidates is going to do the best and be able to work with the culture that we have? So, yeah, that's open, transparent kind of communication is this critical.

Well, Steve, there's one area of transition that you cite as particularly fraught, and that's when it's time for the founder of an organization to turn over the reins to the next leader. And that's close to both of our hearts, I know. And I was, am, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and have been involved in growing this for now for over 20 years. And nearly two years ago, I completed a successful succession plan with Jay Bransford, who's our president and CEO. And things are going great, Jay's doing a great job, and I couldn't be more happy with the way things are going. And I now serve as the board chair and have stepped out of operational responsibility. So why is it that we founders have a particularly difficult job of letting go? What are some of the practical steps that you'd advise for a board and leaders in an organization of a long-time founder and CEO to prepare for succession? And we have several of those that we work with in our space, that's for sure.

Steve: Yeah. I think the founder has accomplished something rare. It's one thing to lead an organization; it's a whole other level of complexity to create it and build it into an ongoing, successful venture. So even if you give God all the credit as the founder, you still have an unusual emotional investment in wanting the organization to succeed and to go on and to fulfill what you've seen as God's calling and the mission and vision and values carry on. So even from the very best of motives, it's hard to let go. It's hard to, it's hard to feel like, for sure, this next person is ready, and they don't need me anymore.

And in fact, I think actually best practice, Al, is exactly what you're doing. And I'm hoping to do the same thing, and that is to stay involved and to hold everything very lightly, to make sure that Bryan is able to run the day-to-day operations. He's already doing that. And I talk to him sometimes. We're working on something this week where I told him, “If there's something that you think I might disagree with you when we have this meeting to go to make a hard decision, and there's two camps on which way we should go on a decision, if you want to talk it through with me first to be sure that I'm supporting you, let's do that. I'm wide open to do that. Or if you just want me to show up and respond real time, that's your call. But I don't want to be oppositional toward you and your direction in front of the staff. I would rather hash it out ahead of time.“ And ultimately, there are things that he's decided that I didn't agree with, and I had my say on why I thought my way would have been better. But I let him do it his way, and then I support it totally. And that's hard to do.

But I think staying involved has allowed me—and I don't think Bryan's quite ready, and he doesn't either. We're looking at another year, probably—but just like you had a timeline and a process, we're going through that. He was COO for a while, now he's president, and I'm CEO. I'll move into chairman at some point, just like you did.

And then I think having some meaningful work to do, like the book that I just did, Lost in Transition, was because a year ago, I have been having people tell me, “You should write a book on that.” And I said to Bryan, you know, “It's going to take a significant chunk of my time, so you'll have more on your plate; you'll have less of me.” And he said, “I think we should make it a top priority for 2023 for you to get that done.” And then he made space for it. And it was good for him, he had an opportunity to grow into more responsibility, and it’s something I wouldn't have been able to do if I was still holding the reins of the day-to-day operations. I never would have got it done.

Al: Well, that's an interesting thought, Steve. To have a successful succession, write a book about it.

Steve: Yeah. Now I have to be really careful to do everything right, because I lose all credibility if I blow this. I'm very aware of that, by the way, as I wrote a book.

Al: Oh, wow. This is such a pertinent topic. I know our listeners are listening. They're wishing, if they're in the middle of a transition right now, they're wishing that the board would be following these steps. And they're hoping that if they're not in the middle of a succession, they will be probably relatively soon, and that these are the steps that people go.

Well, this has been a great conversation. Going back to your five key factors to a successful succession, transitions, number one, boards don't know enough to choose a leader on their own. And I think that in itself is a key nugget. That culture fit is crucial, that respecting the outgoing leader and how we've seen that not happen and how it hinders the organization, humility, and then communication, the oil that makes it work. This has been a great conversation, as we've talked about each of those culture and transitions in communication, and to be sure that it's not a secretive process and to have it be an open process. And I found in our own situation, everybody was involved at one step or another in the process. They were asked for their input. And it really did work very effectively.

So this has just been a great conversation. How about, Steve, a bottom line or anything you'd like to add that we've talked about?

Steve: Maybe I haven't said enough about inviting God into the process and bathing it in prayer. I've seen that at a couple of organizations that just really took that part seriously. The discernment, you know, some people on boards have fasted and prayed, that they make sure that they have God's will, and it's ultimately His work. He has a plan. Even if you have a high view of the sovereignty of God, you can't take this lightly. I know one organization went out of business because according to someone who knew the organization well and knew the founder well, he had such a high view of the sovereignty of God, he didn't think that they really needed to plan. He thought that God will just send the right person. And that didn't happen. And that ministry doesn't exist anymore. And like most things in life, this is a paradox of the human responsibility, which is what I really focused on today. But it's also trusting God, that He has a plan, and being yielded to Him and being very prayerful about it, and practicing the fruit of the Spirit throughout the whole process is really what humility is in there, and our job is to be good stewards and hold this lightly and discern God's will.

Al: Well, Steve, thanks much for your contributions. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to investing in Christian leaders for the long-term Kingdom impact. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners.

Steve: Thank you, Al. It’s always a joy to see you, to talk to you, whether it's on tape or not. And so look forward to seeing you also at CLA in a little while here.

Al: I look forward to it. Thanks, Steve.

Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Steve. And I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing workplaces, please email me, al@workplaces.org.

And leaders, if you want to explore your leadership, expand your organization's impact for good, and see greater faithfulness in our broader culture, help us to achieve our goal to see more flourishing Christian-led workplaces. To help, please share this podcast with another leader or launch a project in your organization to discover and improve the health of your workplace culture. If you're interested in learning more, go to workplaces.org and request a sample report.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.