Whenever a valued executive retires after many years, he or she takes with them a wealth of experience, insight and wisdom. This valuable resource is lost for good. 

It doesn’t have to be that way. A planned approach can ensure a significant knowledge transfer.

So what does an effective planned approach look like? The following guidelines provide a useful starting point.

  1. Support the executive in reflecting upon and mapping out their experience and wisdom under categories such as domain specific knowledge, major roles played and intensive learning situations. An experienced coach or mentor can be invaluable here in helping them reflect upon the tacit knowledge they hold but have not catalogued.
  2. Provide the executive with an appropriate level of training as a professional mentor. This is essential to give focus to their conversations with younger colleagues. Being an effective mentor in this context requires a substantial additional skillset to that required for day-to-day leader-as-coach/mentor interactions. If the executive is looking to create post-retirement career, accreditation as a professional mentor will be an alternative to becoming a consultant or a coach. (Coaching tends to value the executive’s accumulated experience far less than coaching.)
  3. Identify the critical challenges that the next generation of executives is likely to face. Where would the experience of someone who has “seen it and done it” add greatest value?
  4. Facilitate the creation of mentoring relationships between the executive and the next generation. It’s important that these are more than ad hoc, one-off “knowledge dumping” sessions. The real pay-off comes when the mentee absorbs thinking patterns and perspectives that their career to date has not prepared them for. However, don’t spread the mentors too thinly – up to 10 strong learning relationships are much more effective than dozens of ad hoc ones.
  5. Create a cohort of peers amongst the soon-to-retire executives. Make this a rolling programme, so that people don’t drop off the radar, when they do finally retire – their experience and wisdom may still have value for a few years to come.

The executive and the company have invested immense time and money in creating this reservoir of tacit knowledge. While it is not a tangible asset that appears on the balance sheet, it is nonetheless an important resource for continuity and avoiding repetition of past mistakes.

If you would like to know more about equipping your retiring executives for this role, please go to:
Professional Mentoring Academy Foundation Course
Professional Mentoring Academy Practitioner Course

©️David Clutterbuck, 2025