Succession Planning: How to Build Your Next Leaders
Nearly one in three CEOs leave their company with almost no notice. Most organizations have no succession planning in place for when that time comes.
There is no plan for who will step in, what they need to know, or how the team keeps moving in the meantime. Just a gap where that plan should have been.
I see this constantly with the leaders I coach.
Rising stars with real potential and no development path built for them. Teams waiting to hear a plan that has never been discussed out loud. High stakes roles with no successor in sight, and no one willing to be the one who brings it up.
Leadership Succession Planning and the Generational Shift
The generational shift happening right now makes this even more urgent.
More than 11,000 Americans reach retirement age every day in this country. The generation stepping into senior leadership now works, communicates, and uses technology in fundamentally different ways than the one stepping back.
That is a major handoff and most organizations have not addressed it at all.
Where Succession Planning Starts: Identifying Your Rising Stars
When I work with C-suite executives on succession planning, there is a crucial area to focus on: identifying your rising stars.
Find the people who are both technically skilled and have social and emotional intelligence. Those who know how to read a room, have built trust with their colleagues, and are excellent at their job. Those two things, technical mastery and emotional intelligence, are what your rising stars have.
Once you know who they are, it's time to build them up even further. Enhance their technical resources where they need depth, and develop their people skills where they need additional emotional intelligence.
That is not something most leaders have the bandwidth to do alone on top of running the organization. It is exactly where an executive coach comes in to work alongside you and your team to develop the leaders you are counting on to lead the next era of your business.
Succession Planning in Action
I have sat across from three different C-suite leaders this year alone, in three different industries, who hadn't started succession planning until we began working together.
Not because they did not care. But because they were so busy running the organization that stepping back to consider what comes next felt impossible to prioritize.
One of those leaders had recently been through a merger. Overnight, his direct reports nearly doubled, well past the number any one person can lead well. The real work was not only reorganizing the chart. It was figuring out who on his expanded team had the maturity, the presence, and the experience to grow into the most critical roles, CEO and COO. At the time, no one did.
We worked together to identify two people with real potential for those seats. He began mentoring them directly. Over time, he was clear with both of them that they were being developed for what comes next. Today they know it and are working with intention, both on the business fundamentals and their own growth, while he continues to support them.
This is the kind of coaching we love, being a confidential sounding board and allied partner for our clients. Someone outside your organization, who helps you see what you already sense, and gives you the space to create a plan worthy of supporting and carrying on the business you have spent your career building.
Where The Horizon Meets You: Succession Planning That Outlasts Any One Leader
Succession planning is not about admitting you are replaceable. It is about proving that what you built can outlast any one person, including you.
The leaders who get this right are more honest with themselves. Honest enough to name their rising stars. Honest enough to admit when someone on their team is ready to handle more than they have been given. Honest enough to ask whether they are truly developing their people for the future or not.
That kind of clarity rarely happens alone. It happens when you are with an executive coach who asks the right questions.
If you are ready for that conversation, I invite you to join me for a Connection Call.
Where The Horizon Meets You
Succession planning is not about admitting you are replaceable. It is about proving that what you built can outlast any one person, including you.
The leaders who get this right are more honest with themselves. Honest enough to name their rising stars. Honest enough to admit when someone on their team is ready to handle more than they have been given. Honest enough to ask whether they are truly developing their people for the future or not.
That kind of clarity rarely happens alone. It happens when you are with an executive coach who asks the right questions.
If you are ready for that conversation, I invite you to join me for a Connection Call.