Is Your Next Set of Leaders Ready to Lead?
We know how challenging it can be when you’re besieged by urgent and important problems to set time aside to think and plan for future talent management success. Savvy talent leaders know this and whenever they talk about getting the next set of leaders ready to lead they explicitly:
- Align succession planning to the current and future strategic priorities of the business
- Focus on building “must have” skills and competencies across the organization
- Emphasize future leadership needs to meet critical future business requirements
- Measure impact throughout the process
Thoughtful, forward-looking succession planning is a must for organizations looking to ensure that there is a next set of leaders ready to lead based upon the challenges that you face both today and tomorrow,
Successful Succession Plans
The goal of an effective succession plan is to be primed to put the right people in the right place at the right time to achieve your strategic goals – both now and in the future. This means that you need to (1) define the critical roles and positions that matter most, (2) agree upon the skills and leadership qualities needed to succeed in those roles, and (3) identify and assess high potential leadership candidates best qualified for those positions.
The goal of succession planning should not be to simply identify potential successors, but also to create customized development plans to ensure that when opportunities become available, you will have “ready now” candidates for any given position. The most basic leadership succession questions revolve around:
- Do you know with confidence where your up-and-coming talent is in the organization?
- Have you thought through how to engage and retain your HIPOs for the long run?
- Are you proactively planning for succession in key leadership roles?
- Who has potential to move into a higher roles and how should they be developed?
- Are any long-tenured leaders blocking the career path for others?
- Which roles make good rotational or stretch assignments?
- Have you created success profiles for key leadership positions?
4 Keys to Getting Your Next Set of Leaders Ready to Lead
To get the next set of leaders ready to lead:
- Be Strategically Proactive with Top Talent
Succession planning should never begin with a resignation notice. By then, your options are limited and your risk is already elevated. For every role that truly matters to strategy execution, continuity, and growth, you should be deliberately developing people who can step in when needed.
That requires more than a static org chart or a once-a-year talent review. It means clearly identifying critical roles, defining what success actually looks like in each one, and building a disciplined pipeline of ready-now and ready-soon leaders. A healthy succession bench is intentional, continuously refreshed, and aligned with where the business is going — not where it has been.
When organizations fail to do this, they are forced into reactive hiring, rushed promotions, and costly leadership gaps. When they get it right, leadership transitions become a competitive advantage.
So ask yourself: Are you consistently identifying your most critical roles, clarifying success profiles, and investing the time to rigorously assess and develop high-potential leaders — or are you still hoping talent gaps won’t catch you by surprise?
- Focus on Future Performance and Potential
Strong performance in a current role is not a reliable predictor of success in the next one. The capabilities that enable someone to excel as an individual contributor — technical expertise, personal drive, problem-solving speed — are often insufficient, or even counterproductive, in roles that demand influence, judgment, and people leadership.
As responsibilities expand, so do the expectations. Leading at higher levels requires different skills and mindsets: systems thinking instead of task execution, coaching instead of doing, sound decision-making under ambiguity instead of certainty, and enterprise perspective instead of functional focus. Without these shifts, high performers can quickly become overwhelmed or misaligned when promoted.
If your leadership pipeline relies primarily on past results rather than demonstrated potential, you are optimizing for yesterday’s success — not tomorrow’s demands.
So the real question is this: Is your leadership pipeline evaluation truly focused on future performance and potential, or is it still anchored to current results?
- Use a Proven Assessment Process to Identify Strengths and Development Needs
Gut feel and past performance are not enough when the stakes are high. Today, there is no shortage of rigorous, data-driven leadership simulation assessments, manager assessment centers, and talent management tools designed to predict future leadership performance. The question is not whether these tools exist — it is whether you are using them consistently and well.
Critical succession decisions deserve objective, validated data. When assessments are applied correctly, they surface more than surface-level strengths. They reveal leadership behaviors under pressure, decision quality, learning agility, motivation, and the gaps that will matter most in the next role — not just the current one.
Organizations that rely on opinion, tenure, or reputation often misjudge readiness and potential. Those that use proven assessment processes make fairer, more defensible decisions and dramatically improve development outcomes by targeting what actually needs to change.
So ask yourself: Are you taking an objective, data-backed view of people’s strengths, development needs, learning agility, potential, and motivations — or are you still making high-impact talent decisions with incomplete information?
- Ensure a Smooth Leadership Transition
Leadership transitions are high-risk moments. More than one-third of leaders report elevated stress when stepping into a new role, and the longer it takes — often beyond the first 90 days — for a leader to feel confident and effective, the greater the risk to team engagement, performance, and retention.
Too often, succession planning stops at the promotion decision. Without structured transition support — clear expectations, early feedback, mentoring, and targeted coaching — even strong leaders can struggle to gain traction. The result is unnecessary friction, slower time to impact, and avoidable strain on both the leader and the team.
Organizations that take transitions seriously treat the first months as a critical investment period. They set leaders up to succeed by clarifying priorities, accelerating relationship-building, and reinforcing the behaviors that matter most in the new role.
So ask yourself: Do you have a disciplined leadership transition process that helps new leaders build confidence, credibility, and momentum — or are you leaving success to chance?
The Bottom Line
Eighty-five percent of leaders report receiving no formal training before stepping into a new role, and nearly sixty percent underperform during their first two years. That gap is not a talent problem — it is a leadership preparation problem. Over time, the organizations that invest in deliberate, well-supported leadership transitions dramatically reduce risk and accelerate performance. Are you making your next generation of leaders a strategic priority?
To learn more about ensuring that your new leaders succeed, download 6 Traps That Can Sabotage Success as a Leader or 5 Key Succession Planning Trends and Lessons from the Field
Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.
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