Succession. The transfer of leadership or responsibility. It’s common. Assuming your organization doesn’t just disappear – every leader will experience it. Despite this, we treat the topic of succession as awkwardly as “the sex talk.” We keep the conversation as short as possible, avert eye contact and hope everyone will just figure it out.

Three reasons why succession conversations are difficult to have:

We Struggle with Self-Worth: Many leaders have so anchored their sense of self-worth to their position that succession planning feels like planning for their own purposelessness. Additionally, there may be a fear that the next leader will not value the past and their legacy.

• If we want to lead at our highest level, we need to focus on cultivating a deeper and more enduring sense of self-worth. As a leader, we serve others by having a personal foundation in something that is greater and more solid than our title or ability to accomplish. It’s a service because we won’t feel the compulsion to get or stay in other people’s way to serve ourselves.

We Haven’t Established Personal Security: Many leaders, particularly those of retirement age, have actually done a poor job of planning for retirement. So, even though they no longer feel the fire in their bellies for the job, they can’t afford to walk away from the paycheck.

• If we want to be the best leaders, we need to run our lives like a well-stewarded organization. We need to plan for the future – whether that’s encore careers, a well-funded retirement, both, or something else altogether.

We Don’t Have an Accomplishment to Pursue: Many leaders are wonderfully intuitive executors. They’ve been accomplishing and winning and getting things done effectively for a long time. The thought of planning a transition feels, to them, like a lot of work that results in…nothing. They’re just not motivated to phase out or launch into the void.

• We need to define what a successful encore career looks like. What are major contributions we could make? What are accomplishments we’d like to pursue? This can be as simple as making up for lost time by investing in family. It can include starting new ventures or stepping into new leadership roles. It is an act of service to have a clear “what’s next” plan for ourselves.

The bottom line? The difficulty organizations have with succession has almost nothing to do with finding a successor. It has almost everything to do with the outgoing leader.

The interesting thing is the outgoing leader has everything to gain by cultivating stronger self-confidence, planning for a secure financial future, and having goals to look forward to.

Is succession in your foreseeable future? What steps can you begin to take today so that you can lead a succession process well?