Interim management roles are precarious by their nature, and individuals who step into them take on unavoidable risks. These roles require emotional labor as the interim manager navigates their leadership responsibilities, but also the instability inherent in an interim position, and the ways their reports, colleagues, and leaders respond to this instability. Interim managers take chances with how their interim role will affect their career trajectories, interpersonal relationships with colleagues, and future opportunities within and beyond the organization.
Each of the three presenters has served in interim management roles during their tenure at an academic research library and experienced navigating with peers, their leaders, and their direct reports associated issues of trust, risk, and vulnerability that they had not predicted or previously experienced. Interim managers at organizations undergoing change may experience similar challenges in transitions. Considering our positionality, and potential applicability to participants’ varied experiences and local contexts, we’ll speak to our experiences, discussing the most prevalent risks in our interim positions, and the vulnerabilities we faced. The presenters will offer strategies for how individuals in interim management roles, peers reporting to them, and their leaders can all contribute to mitigating these risks before, during, and after the period of the interim position. We’ll invite participants to explore these issues and recommendations through their diverse lenses. Through reflective dialog, participants will leave with concrete ideas and strategies for mitigating challenging aspects of precarity, trust, and risk that can accompany interim management and other moments of organizational transition and change.
