Don't squander this hidden management opportunity . . .

This HBR article and the underlying report add hugely to the toolkit of managers and HR teams navigating family leave decisions, but there is one really important constituency worth a deeper look. And it can be a critical catalyst for performance. 

Many women and men headed out for maternity/paternity leave (or other forms of family/personal leave, sabbatical, etc.) are themselves managers and have direct reports of their own. The exercise of preparing a team for your leave, and as part of that, engaging in a cold-eyed assessment of your direct reports’ actual skills and trajectories, can be a watershed leadership development moment.

I’ve been part of a bunch of these conversations over the years, and – to paraphrase Samuel Johnson – you can fill out succession planning templates till the cows come home, but nothing focuses your mind on a team’s actual depth like your imminent absence. Some of my best succession management conversations have been on the cusp of a manager's leave. The leader had the chance to imagine each of their direct reports responding to different situations – and often ended up restacking their view of their team, and allocating opportunities differently.  Of course, sometimes they didn’t spot a gap until the leave was well underway and the “high-potential succession candidate” was flailing. (Not an ideal scenario, of course, but still a lot better than a permanent org chart move that exposed their weakness.)

As a case in point, over our last cup of coffee/fizzy water before her likely delivery date, the leader of one of my prior company’s large product lines laid out our game plan for her leave. She had set up a regular check-in cadence with both her team and her division lead, tightly choreographed and carefully thought through. And I had a similar clock-driven cadence for my checking in with her. 

Then we accidentally stumbled onto the real question – did she trust me and her division head to loop her in when anything material happened in her world? (And as a corollary, did she trust that if I didn’t call, it was because nothing material was happening?) Likewise – who on her team did she most trust most to make good decisions about where her perspective and direction was needed?

She ended up changing the point person on her team to someone whose judgement would ensure she got the right calls (or no calls) across her leave. And her division head and I had two weeks where we called her multiple times (due to the rumored sale of an asset we all had an interest in) and lots of weeks where we didn’t call her at all due to the fact that things were under control. Her designee similarly made good choices about where her direction was necessary and where her perspective was valuable. 

Was the total footprint of conversation lower than the original, rigid “check in” plan?  Probably not. To the good, she settled into an easy cadence with her newly designated key lieutenant. To the bad, the strategic questions I sent along ate up some of the operational time savings.  

But – to the extent that we refined, tested, and affirmed our succession plan, got my colleague needed operating leverage on her return, and we all stayed focused on the highest leverage use of a scarce set of calls across the leave period – I’ll put this one in the win column. 

More broadly, those of us in management roles have all had the experience where time away from the business can lead to new insights about the business. If I had a nickel for every call I'd ever gotten from a new parent, or someone caring for a sick relative, or someone stepping out to handle a personal matter that began with the phrase -- "Now that I'm away from the business, it is so obvious that we . . .". I once had a new mom call me while strolling with her newborn and say -- verbatim -- "I was changing my son's diaper and it made me think of the sh%^ show we had in this section of the business last year -- I now see a solution." To the extent that we are overly rigid in programming contact during a manager's leave, we sometimes fail to get the mental distance necessary for these insights.

We obviously can't do this in all situations. Some leaves are too sudden to allow for this sort of planning. But all too often, we fail to seize the opportunity for "live fire" leadership development when it presents itself. Not taking a hard enough look at one's team can ruin the very purpose of taking a leave, and can -- in time -- lead to burnout and disengagement. So preparing for a manager's leave period can be a huge moment for their sanity, their development as a leader and their perspective on the business. When possible, other leaders should help them take advantage of it.