The Duarte Guide to Leadership Development
Succession Planning: Leadership and Organizational Stability
What defines successful succession planning? Too often, organizations allow their leaders to set the pace. This risks throwing leadership suites into disarray when an executive pivots careers, seeks early retirement, or worse. As any leadership team that’s teetered on the lip of a power vacuum will tell you, without proper foresight, unplanned vacancies can disrupt business-as-usual at every level. That’s where thinking through the unknown and shoring up leadership positions with a stable of trained candidates can help avoid tumbling headlong into chaos.
Table of Contents
Preparing for Succession Planning
How Leadership Development Programs Support Succession Planning
What Leadership Development Programs Need for Successful Succession Planning
Training for Leadership Development and Succession Planning
Workshops for Leadership Development and Succession Planning
Leadership Development Coaching for Succession
Choosing the Right Leadership Development Partner for Succession Planning
What Succession Planners Get Wrong
Imagine an offensive line without a quarterback or opening night without a leading role. Now picture your organization without key, knowledgeable, and practiced decision-makers at the helm when they’re needed most. Yikes.
Rather than hoping leaders will consider who will take my place and act accordingly, organizations can get ahead of succession problems before they arise with internal pathways for leadership development. When it comes to succession planning, organizations that build, test, and maintain leadership development programs are better equipped to weather best- and worst-case scenarios. On the one hand, those at the top are given a runway for succession planning to prep their replacements with training, coaching, and hands-on mentorship. This allows time to guide emerging leaders and nurture budding skillsets toward becoming load bearing pillars within their organization.
On the other hand, it accounts for a brutal truth: succession doesn’t always play so nice. It can arrive like an uninvited guest and demand immediate accommodation. Departures that strike without warning test governing fortitude and force org charts to realign quickly. Having contingency plans in place establishes a trusted chain-of-command for new leaders to step in and fill vacancies without losing altitude.
Below we’ll explore what constitutes succession planning, how creating an effective leadership development program can help, and when choosing a leadership development partner is the most prudent path for future-proofing your organization.
What is Succession Planning?
Succession planning is where individuals are prepared to assume leadership roles when vacancies arise within an organization. Ongoing succession planning is a hallmark of healthy talent management and typically requires support across departments to ensure a smooth process. Succession planning is important for leadership positions, high-performing, and operational roles alike to maintain organizational stability. A CEO’s retirement, a department head changing careers, or more lurid outcomes like deaths and resignations can all be better navigated through thoughtful succession planning.
Preparing for succession planning typically requires the following steps:
- Determining which positions are critical to organizational functioning
- Assessing current performance and leadership potential across the candidate pool using a 9-box grid or equivalent rubric
- Conferring on whether it’s more cost effective to build or buy talent: create a leadership development program in-house or hire a trusted external partner
- Aligning and gaining necessary buy-in and approval from HR, L&D, and C-Suite to pursue a leadership development pathway that supports targeted succession planning
With L&D crafting curricula, HR tracking progress, C-Suite participating in regular touchpoints and reviews, and workers across teams taking part, leadership development for succession planning unites whole organizations toward a shared goal. Carefully planned programming bolsters employee retention through clear incentive structures and keeps institutional knowledge intact. A regular cadence of leadership development opportunities can help organizations set an expectation of high performance that is reinforced through active skills enhancement. Taken together, organizations that encourage leadership development enable individuals to gain the confidence and aptitude necessary to communicate and collaborate as leaders.
Whether the result of foreseen or calamitous circumstances, organizations that invest in succession planning are better positioned to hold internal teams, shareholders, and customers steady during periods of transition. Vice presidents, understudies, second-string quarterbacks, and sous chefs all serve this function in various capacities across their industries. In corporate, military, and government organizations, succession planning insulates essential functioning from the turbulence of unplanned personnel changes and puts processes in place for elevating individuals waiting in the wings to rise and take the reins.
Succession planning plays out in ways both relatable and fantastical in popular culture. But rather than circulating golden tickets or hang-wringing over which conniving child deserves the crown, many organizations and institutions opt to implement leadership development programs to sculpt and train replacements on their terms. By avoiding the caprices of chance and the pitfalls of dynastic nepotism, thoughtful leadership development programs encourage cross-departmental collaboration to refine talent within an organization.
How Leadership Development Programs Support Succession Planning
Successful succession plans are typically supported by leadership development programming that polishes candidates for management and C-suite distinction. Leadership development programs can begin at any stage of employment but typically require initial onboarding and baseline performance review. When applied effectively, leadership development curricula are designed to treat career advancement and skill-building as an ongoing process. In other words, current and future leaders undergo a sustained series of workshops, training, and educational opportunities to develop new skills and update existing abilities.
In practice, a leadership development program that supports succession planning is bespoke to the needs of the organization but broadly structured for the greatest impact. It can look like a company-wide investment in data storytelling to ensure engineers and marketers alike can communicate dashboards and metrics effectively. Or it’s giving teams, departments, and even entire organizations access to executive presence training to ensure all internal and external facetime is polished and professional. Such broad investment respects every employee’s capacity for leadership by nurturing desirable leadership qualities at scale. This high-tide approach raises the caliber and efficiency of communication company-wide and empowers employees to see the value and potential of their contributions.
Where hiring the right people upfront plays a role in fostering tomorrow’s leaders, organizations that take a broader approach to leadership development enjoy knock-on effects alongside a heat-treated line of succession candidates. Rather than cherry-picking individual candidates to undergo specialized training, organizations can invite all professionals to take part in leadership development programming on a quarterly, bi-annual, or yearly basis. This approach makes executive-level storytelling, confident delivery, Adaptive Listening®, and audience-centric presentation skills attainable and expected across your organization.
All it takes to set this in motion is the right leadership development program that meets your organization’s unique succession needs. Not to mention the bigger question: Is it time to build or buy that talent?
What Leadership Development Programs Need for Successful Succession Planning
It’s no secret that everyone learns differently. For organizations seeking to harness the unique strengths across their workforce, implementing a leadership development program for succession planning requires a multifaceted approach. While countless apps and tech innovations have rushed to reinvent education for the digital age, global brands and Fortune 50 companies know there’s no replacement for human-to-human connection. This means ongoing commitments to in-person or virtual training, interactive workshops, and personalized coaching to close skill gaps and perfect existing abilities.
Just how high-quality ingredients require preparation to become delicious meals, succession planning needs leadership development programming to refine raw talent toward meeting specific organizational outcomes. This can look like large gatherings at headquarters to share in a workshop experience or fostering an ecosystem of learning opportunities for a diverse approach. To this end, let’s examine how training, coaching, and skill-building workshops combine to prepare workers and rising leaders to shoulder the responsibilities of department heads, executive committees, and corner offices.
Training for Leadership Development and Succession Planning
Effective leaders are lifelong learners. At a high level, leadership development programming usually features an element of seminar-style training where knowledge or skills are first introduced. In-person, virtual, and on-demand training can serve as the lecture part of succession planning by laying critical groundwork to build future workshops and coaching. Just like in primary school or higher education, the teacher or facilitator guides training participants toward a better understanding of the topic through careful instruction.
A subject matter expert (SME) will typically share knowledge in accessible language to ensure audiences walk away with clear, concise takeaways. When offered live, SMEs provide opportunities for Q&As to personalize the content and boost comprehension. It’s in these moments where engineers, accountants, marketers, HR professionals, and data analysists align core communication best practices, enhance their storytelling abilities, or build new skills from the ground up.
However, it’s important to note that this approach is just one aspect of a successful leadership development program that supports succession planning. Anyone who’s remained alert in a large lecture hall knows the reward for staying focused is two-fold. Retaining knowledge is an obvious benefit. But entering quiz sections or small group discussions with a firmer grasp of the material helps deepen pathways of understanding. Effective programming for leadership development bakes in additional touch points for professionals to apply what they’ve learned in a hands-on setting. Workshops help this happen by supporting training content and accelerating employee growth.
Workshops for Leadership Development and Succession Planning
Workshops for leadership development and succession planning serve to deepen understanding and connect knowledge gained through training for day-to-day use. They’re the quiz sections where learners enjoy greater access to facilitators and dive deeper into the material. Workshops allow L&D and HR teams to highlight the so what? of a training initiative and give learners the opportunity to practice their expanding skillsets. By working through case studies, role playing with colleagues, and giving small group presentations, trainees gain experience through guided applications. Afterall, learning how to package key takeaways into data-backed recommendations or using Adaptive Listening® strategies during high-stakes decision-making is easier to grasp before the pressure’s on.
Workshops used in tandem with larger group training can serve as breakout rooms to test new skills in real time. As venues, workshops foster cross-departmental interactions that move professionals outside their comfort zones and strengthen relationships beyond their immediate teams. Alternatively, team-centric workshops can give colleagues the chance to improve their skillsets alongside their closest collaborators and lean on each other for support. In either approach, workshops demonstrate the value of learning new skills by urging participants to immediately apply new learning in a safe, pressure-free environment.
Leadership Development Coaching for Succession
After large group training and smaller scale workshops, one-on-one coaching is the most direct way to ensure leadership development programs are working in service of succession planning. To drive the campus analogy home, coaching is the equivalent of attending office hours to learn directly from instructors and close remaining skill or knowledge gaps. When paired with internal mentorship programs, coaching can offer targeted skill-building that’s unique to each individual. Mentors pass on roll-specific insights to their successors that’s bespoke and critical for effective performance. In turn, coaches can offer tailored educational opportunities to augment existing skillsets and shore up weak points in succession candidates.
At Duarte, executive presentation coaching is a core offering that fine-tunes every aspect of presenting. Duarte speaker coaches tighten body language, introduce breath control, and ensure vocal contrast emphasizes key takeaways for the audience. With careful guidance, no detail escapes notice. When applied at scale, coaching ensures training and workshop efforts are absorbed into daily workflows and provides opportunities for learners to elevate aspects for further instruction. Rather than taking time in group settings to iron-out an individual problem, coaching respects unique learning styles and the precious time of fellow participants. Taken together, training, workshops, and coaching form the pillars of leadership development programming that allow succession planning to flourish.
Choosing the Right Leadership Development Partner for Succession Planning
There’s no silver bullet for succession planning. People are unique, the future is uncertain, and customer trends are constantly in flux. But in the same breath, successful leadership boils down to core communication skills that can be learned by anyone willing to put in the work. Where this can be daunting for individuals to tackle on their own, organizations have the advantage of specialized departments and when allotted, budgets to make educational opportunities available at scale. However, having a trusted, experienced partner to craft curricula, build materials, and facilitate training is what separates good and great succession programs.
For over 35 years, Duarte has served as the go-to communication expert for global brands and Fortune 50 companies seeking to improve their messaging, upskill their workforces, and align a vision for the future. From providing specialized training packages to partnering on presentations and industry events, our experts, coaches, facilitators, writers, and designers know what it takes for leaders to win rooms and leave lasting impressions.
Whether you’re seeking to retool your organization’s approach to leadership development or pressure-proof the next generation of leaders, it all starts with a quick conversation with a Duarte Solutions Architect. We can help diagnose your most urgent communication needs and determine the best pathway for readying your organization to overcome tomorrow’s challenges.
Instead of printing those golden tickets, book a call with a Duarte expert to see how we can help.
For more free resources and tools to aid your succession journey, visit The Duarte Guide to Leadership Development.
