Ask most incoming and outgoing leaders what they've built together and they'll point to a transition plan. Ask Sara Thorndike and Audra Kahr and the conversation drifts, within minutes, to a Disney Lego set one of them owns and the other has been meaning to buy. It turns out to be the most revealing moment of the hour. On the exhibit hall floor at the EACUBO Annual Meeting in Buffalo, Howard Teibel sits down with the association's current chair and the vice chair who will succeed her, and what emerges is a portrait of a handoff that began a year early, in weekly calls, in decisions made together, and in a shared understanding that the role belongs to the organization rather than to either of them.
Along the way, a self-described introvert and an unapologetic extrovert compare notes on what volunteer leadership asks of each of them. Sara and Audra talk about why the CFO's seat at the president's table has stopped being a courtesy, how an association rebuilds value for members whose travel budgets have thinned, and what question each would put to the other as the baton changes hands. Running underneath all of it is a quieter discipline: taking care of oneself, whether on a rail trail with no cell signal or in a house slowly being overtaken by Legos.
For leaders facing successions of their own, Sara and Audra offer a model worth studying. Continuity is practiced from the first week, so that by the time the baton moves, the hand is already there.
Links & Notes
Partners in Leadership: A Conversation with Sara Thorndike and Audra Kahr
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Building Financial Resilience Through Culture and Strategy: A Higher Education Case Study
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