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In my 15+ years in the Drupal community, I’ve been fortunate to have been able to lead a few Drupal-related groups and I sometimes find myself in the position of encouraging other leaders – who are experiencing burnout – on how to gracefully step down from leadership positions after multiple years of service.
When I say “groups,” I’m talking about things like:
- Drupal event organizers
- Drupal module/theme/project maintainers
- Drupal initiative leaders
- Drupal working group leaders
It seems counter-intuitive to encourage folks to step away from things they have successfully led, but I’m very fond of the concept that the true sign of a healthy organization is a successful change in leadership to make way for new perspectives, insights and ultimately fresh ideas.
In this article, I’ll share some of my thoughts on my experiences in doing this exact thing with two prominent Drupal groups: the Florida DrupalCamp organizing team and the Drupal Community Working Group.
Being a leader in the Drupal community comes with responsibilities, but it also comes with prestige. Leaders tend to be more visible and therefore able to promote themselves or their organizations to their advantage.
Background
My leadership positions were gratifying, and I was still committed to them, but from my perspective, I had remained in them longer than was good for the organization or for me. But, I had an incredibly strong drive to ensure that I left the group in better shape than when I joined.
I was one of the original organizers of Florida DrupalCamp and ended up being the leader of the team by attrition. The other original organizers became less involved as the years went on, and I ended up taking on more-and-more duties. There wasn’t a breaking point, but I realized that things weren’t heading in the right direction.
For the Drupal Community Working Group, I was added to an incredibly strong team dealing with really difficult issues, but without a structured plan for length of terms or any other way to protect the mental health of its members.
In both cases, I was incredibly proud of the work we were doing, but didn’t see a clear path to roll over leave either team in a healthy manner.
The good news
From my perspective, there are two things people need to do in order to successfully step down from leadership positions:
- Train your replacement(s).
- Codify roles and responsibilities.
The bad news
Neither of these two steps can be done overnight.
The details
Train your replacement(s)
You (yes, you) need to make a concerted effort to identify, approach, and ask someone (or in many cases, “someones”) to fill your role when you leave. Once you find these magical people, then it is (again) up to you to train them in what you do. It is important that you communicate not only the work involved in being a leader, but also the advantages that come with the role.
For Florida DrupalCamp, I made it known well in advance that I was looking to step down as its leader (but willing to stay on in a lesser capacity). I knew it would be good for the event and community if there was new leadership. I told the other organizers as well as mentioning it during the event’s opening and closing sessions. Most importantly, I did it early and spoke about it often. This directly led to several people stepping up.
This will likely be a time-consuming process, but it will make the team stronger. It will force you to document and organize what you do, and just the act of explaining it to someone else will allow you and your replacement to identify things that need to be documented as well as possible opportunities for efficiency gains.
Assume that you’ll need to be training your replacement for at least a few months, but the timeframe really depends on the cadence of your team’s primary tasks.
Codify roles and responsibilities
This was especially important for the Drupal Community Working Group, as prior to my joining the group, there weren’t any guidelines for length of term, how the leader was selected, and how to step away gracefully. Under the leadership of George DeMet, our team implemented all of these, and more. Both George and I led the team for more years than was probably healthy for either of us, but by the time I stepped away, there were clear guidelines for all of these things (with a significant focus on the mentally draining Conflict Resolution Team).
For less formal teams, this could be as simple as a wiki page or an issue in the project’s queue with what you and the other leaders do, what your boundaries are, and what your plans for the future are. This can be especially effective when someone makes a request of you that you feel is above-and-beyond – it is nice to have a document that you could point to where roles and responsibilities are detailed.
I’ll admit that I skipped this step when stepping down as leader of the Florida DrupalCamp organizing team, as I wasn’t leaving the team completely – I just stepped down into a lesser role but was always available to the new leaders for questions and advice.
Getting started
There are many Drupal groups that have informal leadership roles, with many leaders who definitely feel that if they leave, then the group will fall. Clearly, this is not a healthy situation.
In this case, my advice is this: start by writing up a document/drupal.org page that describes what you do as leader and share it with the rest of the group. Then, be proactive and find a potential replacement and start the training process using the document as a guide.
No replacement
It should be obvious that the “finding your replacement” step requires a human being other than yourself being involved. But what happens if you can’t find someone…
This situation can be stressful and heartbreaking at the same time, but I have a strong opinion on this – if you find yourself in this situation, then maybe it is time for the team to be disbanded or go dormant. If there’s not enough interest in the community to keep the group alive, it’s not your responsibility to sacrifice your time/money/mental-health. My advice is to write up your thoughts, announce your intentions (and time frame) and post it to all members of the group. This can be done in a way that sets up a future leader to use the codified roles and responsibilities as a framework to get things moving again. In a way, you’re still training your replacement – just not in realtime.
Will there be people who are disappointed and/or angry with you for “abandoning” the group? Perhaps, but you’ll need to do your best to ignore those folks and focus on setting up the next leader for success.
I would suggest that you keep things simple and focus on the main goal of always leaving the group in a positive manner, setting up future leaders for success.
Thanks to AmyJune Hineline, Adam Varn, Mike Herchel, George DeMet, and Gwendolyn Anello (who reviews pretty much everything I write) for reviewing this post prior to publication.
