I was recently speaking with a good friend who is contemplating retirement. He is slightly younger than me, and I just signed a 5-year contract. So, I was interested in why he is considering retirement now. Just so you understand, he is not one of those people who makes decisions on a whim. He thinks through every decision and weighs all of the options. He shared that his mother and father had passed in the last few years. This got him thinking about his life expectancy. After considering his parent’s age and uncles and aunts, he decided he had roughly 20 years he could count on. He wants to travel, and he has a wife, children, and grandchildren he wants to give himself to for as long as he has left. Then he said something that immediately resonated with me. He noted that typically retirement can be broken into three stages: The Go-Go stage, the Slow-Go stage, and the No-Go stage. As you can imagine, the Go-Go stage is the active stage of retirement filled with activity and travel. The Slow-Go stage is still active, but less so than the Go-Go stage, as retirees often face health challenges and the frustration that they can’t physically do what they once could. The No-Go stage is the final stage, where people stay at home and settle into a routine of sameness. You may be asking yourself what all of this has to do with leadership. When I heard my friend describe the three stages of retirement, I immediately thought of the parallels to leadership. These same three stages happen in the life of many leaders. Let’s look at the similarities: The Go-Go Stage This stage generally occurs at the onset of each leadership experience. The leader moves into a new challenge with energy and excitement as they consider the possibility of making a difference. After all, they assume they were brought in to lead change and enhance performance. In fact, I have seen many leaders who create change to feel necessary. They walk into an organization that isn’t necessarily broken and break it in order to feel necessary and important. Sometimes the leader you follow was doing things right. In that case, the Go-Go leader should focus on evaluating and building on the successes of their predecessor instead of immediately launching into change mode. THREE STAGES of LEADERSHIP
TAKING the LEAD
Scott Humphrey CEO, WFCA “ As a leader, your goal should be to stay in the Go-Go Stage. To do so, constantly seek to challenge your habits and those of your team.”
04 Premier Flooring Retailer D3 | 2024
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