For a few years, I assisted one of the pastors at our church in teaching soft skills to seminary students in one-day classes through the NXTGEN Pastors organization. We taught a class entitled “Healthy Pastoral Transitions”, which was written by pastor Christopher A. Polski. The module was specifically written about making the transition from the founding pastor of a church to the first succeeding pastor. A key takeaway from the session for me was that every pastor is an interim pastor.  Click here to read my article “A Leadership Succession Success Story”.

The same can be said about any leadership position. No matter what position we hold in our organization, we won’t be there forever. It doesn’t matter if you are the President of the United States, a CEO, or a first line manager, you are only in the position for a relatively short period of time. Someone will eventually replace you. In fact, in the organization in which I worked, it seemed that leaders would change positions about every three years. Using that assumption, I probably had about twelve different positions during my career, if not more.
So, applying what Pastor Polski wrote, we can say that:
Every Leader is an Interim Leader

With every position that I had, I always tried to leave it better than I had found it. I would say that is a common desire of most, if not all leaders. We only have a short time to serve those on our teams, our leaders, our customers, and drive results, before we move on to a new assignment or retire, and someone else takes the leadership position that had been ours.
We can look at this from the perspective of stewardship. Stewardship can be defined as the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care. That is how leaders should look at the positions that they hold. The job will not be ours forever. We don’t own it. We just steward it.
The Lord has entrusted us with all that He’s created, including our vocations. As leaders, we should long to hear from our Lord:
‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’   Matthew 25:23
How does knowing that you are an interim leader change the way you look at your leadership position?

This is an Adapted Excerpt From My Book “A LEADER WORTH FOLLOWING:
40 Key Leadership Attributes and Applications to Master”.