When dealing with a sudden leadership vacancy, many senior leaders will pretend everything is okay "business as usual" or end up having informal conversations with some team members who want to discuss the situation or seclude themselves to avoid having to discuss the leadership issue with the team.

 

These same senior leaders are frustrated about restarting from the beginning to establish a new leader of the team. They're unsure about what really happened. And, of course, they are considering now how to reassure the team after the upheaval of losing their leader.

 

The problem for senior leaders is that they can unknowingly hinder the team from moving forward and erode their effectiveness as a leader.