Feature By Shannon Alter You’ve built an incredibly successful business with a strong team around you.But, you didn’t build a business that relies solely on you and you may already be thinking about who will take the helm after you retire. Here’s the most important question: Who is next in the C-Suite, after you? Is there a stand-out star in your leadership team who can step up and fill the role that you’ve so efficiently and effectively made your own, or is there a gap in your leadership team? It may not be easy to choose who will be your successor and continue to grow and expand your brand, your reputation and your high standards. The leader who will take the reins from you is a vital part of your exit strategy, so it’s crucial that this is woven into your succession planning, even if your exit isn’t imminent. Real World Situations My client Jason* came to me recently for advice on how to successfully develop his rising stars. He knew that several of his senior leaders were talented and he wanted to promote them, but he just couldn’t get them there. As an example, one of his senior leaders was right on target when it came to analyzing numbers, but her ability to lead and influence missed the mark. Jason said to me; “She’s very transactional in her communication and delivery style, but people didn’t buy into her ideas or want to do the work the way she wanted it done.” Jason knew he needed help with how to get his upcoming leaders in the best position to succeed, but didn’t know where to start or how to tell them what they needed to know. He also realized he couldn’t achieve the change and leadership performance he wanted by himself. Jason needed someone who wasn’t his Mom or Dad to help him. He needed to bring in an executive coach to help him assess and develop his future C-Suite leaders, to extract the talent he knew his team had and then guide them to lead the way. If this sounds familiar, ask yourself these two questions first: • Who is next, after you? • How are you building your 2026 Leadership Bench? The critical issue Time is ticking away. You know your company has a leadership talent gap and you also know you need to fill it with the right leaders, fast. You’ve been relying on promoting managers who’ve been with your company for a while because they know their stuff and they know the company. This is a trap that many CEOs fall into - they promote managers because of their excellent skills, but an excellent manager doesn’t necessarily make an excellent leader. Those key skills need to be taught, yet many CEOs assume that they’ll figure it out for themselves. Expecting them to figure it out on their own is the first step towards failure - it’s unfair to them and often results in them performing poorly, or jumping ship to another organization that invests in continual learning and development training. Here’s how an executive coach can help them (and you): Assess whether you have the right people in the right places. Don’t put this off any longer as it will inevitably cause more problems in the long run if left for too long. If you know that the wrong people are in the wrong positions then you need to do something about it before it negatively impacts performance and eventually impacts revenue and staff turnover. You need to decide which leadership competencies are critical to your company. A coach can work with you to determine what your best leaders look like and assess who and what you have in place and what else you need. Consulting firm KornFerry estimates that only 10% of leaders surveyed actually evaluate new recruits for their future leadership potential. Hiring teams don’t always think about this early enough in the recruitment process, or they believe they have time to train new recruits and mold them into the perfect candidate. But waiting carries a risk. If you wait on offering those future leaders the professional development they crave, there is a greater chance they will leave and find the leadership and C-Suite roles they want at another company. One that can either hire them into that specific role straight away, or at the very least create a leadership development plan that shows what they need to implement before they’re ready for promotion. You will miss out. Implement a roadmap to nurture your future leaders. Navigating Succession Planning: Preparing the Next Generation of Leaders When it comes to leadership development, KornFerry tells us that nearly half of organizations don’t have a program in place at all. Worse yet, the programs that are in place are often old and outdated. They don’t fit the future of work in today’s hybrid environment and they aren’t suited to the next leaders you want to put in place. When I work with clients on executive coaching, I like to start the process by reviewing a company’s organization chart and looking at the roles, not the people in those roles. Next, I break out the whiteboard and identify exactly what’s needed in each role and then help you find the right people for that role. Pay close attention to the “soft” skills. Skills such as communication, executive presence, emotional intelligence and relationship building aren’t simply a “nice-to-have” option in the workplace today. If you want to hire and keep top talent, then soft skills are a necessity. As an executive coach and consultant, I’m obsessed with helping C-Suite leaders succeed. The ability to communicate clearly and build key relationships is critical. Consulting firm Gallup tells us that several behaviors directly affect leadership performance, including the ability to build relationships, connect and further develop employees. Why C-Suite leadership development planning matters Business often moves so quickly that you don’t stop to consider when and how to implement your leadership succession
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