🙌 Ready to level up? Let’s go: 3 insights, 2 quotes, 1 tip, and 1 challenge
May 19, 2026 4:31 am
Happy Monday
More than 4,800 leaders across manufacturing, distribution, and technical industries are reading this right now.
This week's episode is about a question most senior leaders avoid.
Is your successor ready?
The leaders who answer it honestly tend to be the ones who move up. The leaders who avoid it stay where they are. The episode walks through why this question is operating discipline, not a sidebar conversation.
My guest this week is Jeff Newell, President of Mouser Electronics. He stepped into the seat in 2025 after replacing a leader who ran the company for 36 years. He has been in this industry since 1991. He has seen the cycles, the disruptions, and the long stretches in between.
If you are sitting on a team that is starting to feel like the next promotion depends on you alone, this one will feel familiar.
Here are 3 insights, 2 quotes, 1 practical tip, and 1 challenge to take into your week.
🔍 Three Insights on Building Leaders Who Carry the Work
I. Your Successor Is the Real Promotion Signal
Most senior leaders think readiness for promotion is about themselves.
The work. The wins. The scope.
That is the wrong place to look. The accurate signal is whether the person below you can pick up your work.
If they cannot, you are not free to take on more. Your team becomes the bottleneck. The next move stalls before the title even gets offered.
Build the bench. Then move.
II. Feedback Lands When It Is Fast and Private
Praise in public. Critical feedback in private.
Never wait so long that the moment is gone.
If you sit on a hard conversation for three months, the details are forgotten. The message lands as judgment, not help.
The other side: ask for feedback yourself. Follow up with questions to check what people actually heard versus what you said.
Open communication is not a soft skill. It is the operating system of trust.
III. Staying Open Is an Active Discipline
The leaders who get the next opportunity are the ones who keep their door open.
Say no too many times, and the people around you stop bringing you ideas. The career narrows. The choices shrink.
You do not have to take every opportunity. You do have to hear it out.
The next role is rarely the one you planned for. It is the one that scratched an itch you did not know you had.
💬 Two Quotes to Reflect On
“If your successor is not ready, then you're not ready. That's one of the things that any leader should think about the first day in the job.”
– Jeff Newell | President, Mouser Electronics
“How do you know if you're a good leader? That's a tough question. Everybody needs to look at that and think about it so they can become a much better one.”
– Sannah Vinding, Engineer | Product Marketing Leader | Host of Leadership in Manufacturing
✅ One Actionable Tip For You
Run the Successor Check on Yourself This Week
Most senior leaders carry the weight of their team's outcomes without ever asking whether they have built someone who could step into their seat. The longer that question is avoided, the harder it gets to take the next role.
- Name the one person on your team who is closest to ready to do your job
- Write down the two skills they need to build to be ready in 12 months
- Have one direct conversation with them this week about where they are headed
- Put one stretch responsibility on their plate this month
- Set a 90-day calendar reminder to check the gap again
When you do this, you stop being the bottleneck for your team's growth.
🎯 One Challenge For You
Give the feedback before the moment disappears
This week, give one piece of feedback you have been sitting on.
In private. Specific. No more than 24 hours from the moment you decide to do it.
Then ask yourself:
- Did the conversation land the way I hoped?
- Did the person leave with something they can act on?
- What kept me from giving this feedback sooner?
- What does that tell me about how I lead?
The leaders who grow people are not the ones who manage them harder. They are the ones who build successors quietly and consistently, then move out of the way.
That is what makes the next promotion possible....
Markets shift. Tools shift. Generations shift. The leaders who keep moving forward are the ones who stay coachable, stay reliable, and stay close to the customer when the answer is not obvious.
That is what this episode is about.
If there is a leadership topic you want to go deeper on, or someone you think should be on the show, I would love to hear from you.
I am grateful you are part of this community.
Stay curious.
Keep learning.
Sannah
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P.S. Send this to the senior leader on your team who is on the edge of being ready for more. They will recognize the question